Artificial Intelligence, Jobs and Ghana’s Young People

A young graduate in Accra or Kumasi does not need a lecture on how difficult the job market has become. Many have certificates, energy and ambition, yet spend months moving from one application to another. Others take work far below their training simply because something is better than nothing. Into this already difficult situation comes artificial intelligence, with its promise of greater productivity and its threat of doing in seconds what people used to be paid to do. The question for Ghana is therefore not whether AI is coming. It is already here. The real question is whether our young people will be prepared to work with it, build with it and earn from it, or whether they will simply watch it change the economy around them.

The fear about jobs is understandable. AI can write reports, answer customer questions, translate text, analyse data, create designs and perform many routine office tasks. Work that once gave a young graduate a first opportunity in banking, media, administration, customer service or research can now be completed with fewer people. Even small businesses are beginning to discover that one person with the right digital tools can do the work that previously required several hands. For a country already struggling to create enough decent jobs, that is not a small concern.

But we should be careful not to turn AI into a convenient excuse for a problem that existed long before ChatGPT entered our vocabulary. Ghana has had a serious youth employment challenge for years. Recent figures from the Ghana Statistical Service show that unemployment among people aged 15 to 35 averaged 21.9 percent in the second and third quarters of 2025. Nearly two million young people in that age group were also outside education, employment or training by the third quarter of 2025. Those numbers tell us something important. AI is entering a labour market that was already failing too many young Ghanaians.

That is why our response must be bigger than asking whether machines will replace people. The better question is what kinds of work Ghana wants to create in an age of intelligent machines. Every major technology has destroyed some tasks while creating others. The countries that benefit are usually not the ones that complain the loudest about change. They are the ones that prepare their people, institutions and businesses early enough to capture the new opportunities.

Ghana has made a useful start. The National Artificial Intelligence Strategy launched in April 2026 puts skills, infrastructure, data, innovation and responsible use at the centre of the national conversation. The One Million Coders Programme also reflects the right instinct that young people need practical digital skills, not only certificates. Yet strategies and training programmes will matter only if they connect directly to real work. A young person who completes a coding course and returns home to no laptop, expensive data, unstable opportunities and no path into paid projects has not truly been included in the digital economy.

The first priority should therefore be employable skills. Universities, technical universities, nursing schools, teacher training institutions and vocational centres should treat AI literacy as basic workplace preparation. This does not mean every student must become a software engineer. A journalism student should know how to use AI for research without surrendering judgement. An agriculture student should understand how data can help farmers predict disease and improve yields. An accounting graduate should know how automation changes bookkeeping and auditing. A teacher should know how AI can support lesson preparation while still protecting the thinking ability of students. The goal is not to teach everybody to code. The goal is to make every graduate harder to replace because he or she knows how to combine human judgement with modern tools.

The second priority is to help young Ghanaians become producers, not only users. At the moment, much of the excitement around AI in Africa is about consuming tools built elsewhere. Ghana should be thinking about local products for local problems. We need applications that understand Ghanaian languages, tools that help smallholder farmers, systems that support hospitals and clinics, platforms that make public services easier to access, and solutions that help traders, transport operators and small businesses make better decisions. Each useful local product can create work for programmers, designers, sales people, researchers, data specialists, customer support teams and many others who may never write a line of code.

The private sector also has responsibilities. Businesses should not treat AI simply as a way to cut payroll. In the long run, a country cannot automate its way into prosperity if large numbers of young people have no income to buy what businesses produce. Companies that gain productivity from AI should invest part of that gain in training workers for higher value roles. Entry level jobs should be redesigned rather than casually removed. Internships should expose young people to the tools now being used inside firms. Employers must stop demanding five years of experience from people who have barely had the chance to get one.

Government, too, must think beyond training numbers. We often celebrate how many people have been enrolled in a programme, but the more important measure is how many are earning six months or one year later. Public policy should track jobs, incomes, businesses created and products exported. It should also pay attention to the digital divide. A talented young person in Tamale, Ho, Cape Coast, Sunyani or a rural district should not be locked out simply because reliable internet, devices and electricity remain too expensive or inconsistent. If AI opportunity is concentrated only among people who already have good schools, strong networks and expensive devices, technology will deepen inequality rather than reduce it.

There is also a cultural issue. Young people should not be encouraged to use AI as a machine for avoiding effort. If students use it to produce assignments they do not understand, we will create graduates with polished documents and weak minds. If workers copy answers without checking facts, productivity will rise on paper while competence falls in reality. AI is most useful when it extends human ability, not when it replaces the habit of thinking. Ghana needs young people who can question an answer, recognise bad information, understand context and take responsibility for decisions.

None of this means we should be relaxed about displacement. Some jobs will shrink. Some tasks will disappear. Certain workers will need to change careers. Government and employers should be honest about that and build retraining pathways before large numbers of people are affected. But fear cannot be our national strategy. The larger danger is not that AI becomes too powerful. It is that Ghana moves too slowly while other countries train their people, build companies, attract investment and take the jobs that could have been ours.

Ghana’s young people have already shown that they can adapt quickly when opportunity appears. We see it in mobile money, online businesses, digital content, software, financial technology and the many small enterprises built with little support. What they need now is a country that matches their energy with serious preparation. AI can become another force that pushes young people to the margins, or it can become a tool that helps them solve problems, build businesses and compete beyond Ghana’s borders. The technology will not make that choice for us. Policy, education, business leadership and the decisions of young people themselves will.

The future of work in Ghana will not be saved by resisting artificial intelligence, and it will not be secured by celebrating it blindly. It will be secured by preparing people to use it with skill, judgement and purpose. For a country with a young population and an urgent jobs problem, that work should begin with the seriousness of a national economic priority.

By Philipa Serwaa
University of Energy and Natural Resources P.O. Box 214 Sunyani, Bono Region

E-mail: [email protected]