Bawumia’s 1 million digital skills proposal a game-changer for unemployment — NPP MP

The Member of Parliament for Akim Swedru, Kennedy Nyarko Osei, has praised former Vice President Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia’s proposal to equip one million young Ghanaians with digital skills.

He described it as a potential solution to the country’s growing unemployment crisis.

The lawmaker further noted that relying on public sector recruitment alone cannot address the rising number of jobless youth in Ghana, which currently exceeds four million.

Instead, Nyarko Osei emphasized the importance of equipping young people with skills to create their own opportunities in emerging sectors.

“Dealing with the growing youth unemployment in the country is not a matter of recruitments into the public sector workforce but rather equipping the unemployed youth with the skills for the emerging industries and sectors. That’s the only way we can deal with the over 4 million unemployed youth who are currently looking for various job opportunities in the country,” he said.

Nyarko Osei described Bawumia’s digital skills initiative as a transformative approach.

“Dr. Bawumia’s proposal to equip 1 million unemployed youths with the necessary and emerging digital skills would have been a game changer in tackling the growing unemployment which has become a national security threat to the country. Even if we give a government 20 years it cannot through the public sector even employ 2 million people,” he noted.

The comments come amid a surge in applications from over 500,000 young Ghanaians seeking positions in the Ghana Police Service, Immigration, and Fire Service, despite only 10,000 vacancies being available.