By Stephen Armah Quaye | Toronto, Canada
Every morning across Ghana, thousands of young men and women wake up with certificates in their drawers, degrees on their walls, and frustration in their hearts but nowhere to go. No office. No factory. No paycheck. No future in sight. This is not just a social concern. It is a national emergency. And if left unresolved, Ghana’s growing army of unemployed graduates could become the most dangerous time bomb threatening the country’s stability, democracy, and development.
As the New Patriotic Party (NPP) prepares for its presidential primary on January 31, 2026, delegates are faced with a decision far bigger than party politics. They must answer a defining question, “Who has the practical capacity, not just the rhetoric, to confront graduate unemployment and restore economic dignity to Ghana’s youth?”
Unemployment Is No Longer a Statistic, It Is a Daily Reality
Graduate unemployment in Ghana has moved beyond policy debate into lived suffering. Young graduates are burdened with rent arrears, medical bills, family responsibilities, student loans, and rising insurance costs all without steady income. For many, economic freedom remains an illusion.
This same dilemma once shaped the NPP’s decisive choice ahead of the 2016 elections, when delegates selected Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo on the promise of economic reform and opportunity creation. Today, the party finds itself at a similar crossroads one that will determine whether it regains power in 2028 or remains in opposition.
A Warning That Still Echoes
The danger of graduate unemployment is not new. As far back as 2012, during a town hall meeting in Toronto, then NPP National Youth Organizer and former MP for Lawra, Anthony Karbo, issued a stark warning. He described the growing association of unemployed graduates as “a time bomb that could explode at any moment.”
Speaking at the Ghanaian Presbyterian Church auditorium under the theme “Taking Action to Restore and Redeem Ghana,” Karbo cautioned that a nation that produces graduates without pathways to productivity is courting instability. He argued that youth must be empowered economically within their lifetime not postponed to endless promises. That warning remains painfully relevant today.
Why Did the NPP Lose in 2024?
After the NPP’s defeat in the 2024 elections, many Ghanaians are asking hard questions. Is history repeating itself? As Karbo once suggested after the NPP’s 2024 loss, was defeat a painful lesson meant to expose poor governance and reset national priorities?
If so, the message is clear, joblessness especially among educated youth has become politically fatal.
No amount of slogans can silence empty pockets. No manifesto can substitute for a job.
Delegates Must Choose Capacity, Not Comfort
For NPP delegates, the task ahead is not sentimental it is strategic. They must select a candidate whose policies can be implemented, not merely announced. A candidate who understands job creation not as theory, but as practice.
Among the five aspirants, many within Ghana and the diaspora increasingly point to Hon. Kennedy Ohene Agyapong as a standout on this issue. Not because of noise, but because of record.
As a private-sector employer with investments in manufacturing, media, agriculture, and industry, Agyapong speaks about jobs from experience, not abstraction. To unemployed graduates, that distinction matters.
Education Must Lead to Employment
Many Ghanaian professionals in Toronto observing the NPP primaries share a common concern. Education in Ghana too often ends without employment pathways. From kindergarten to senior high school and even university skills are acquired without a clear bridge to the labor market.
Some note with alarm that three to four out of every ten JHS or SHS students never complete tertiary education, drifting instead into unemployment or criminal vulnerability. Any serious leadership contender must therefore connect education reform with skills training, TVET expansion, and industrial growth.
The Cost of Inaction Is Too High
A nation cannot ignore millions of educated but idle citizens without consequence. Unemployment breeds despair, despair breeds unrest, and unrest undermines democracy.
Ghana’s youth are not lazy. They are waiting. Waiting for leadership that understands urgency, rewards productivity, and restores dignity.
Conclusion: The Choice Before the NPP
The unemployed graduate is no longer a future problem it is today’s crisis. The NPP’s delegates must therefore rise above factional loyalty and ask a simple question, “Who can realistically turn education into employment and restore economic hope?”
The answer they choose on January 31, 2026 may well determine whether Ghana defuses this ticking time bomb or watches it explode.
The future is watching.
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