From Tragedy to Turning Point: Why Ghana must receive serious about youth jobs and skills

By Stephen Gyasi-Kwaw Countest Founder/MD, Global Entrepreneurship Network (GEN) – Ghana

The stampede at El-Wak Stadium during a military recruitment exercise—which claimed at least six young lives—should shake us to our core. Those weren’t just statistics. They were young Ghanaians, desperate enough to risk their safety for a shot at stable employment.

This tragedy exposes an uncomfortable truth: we have a youth unemployment crisis, and our responses so far haven’t been good enough. It’s time to relocate beyond condolences and political talking points. We required honest conversations, real accountability, and solutions that actually work.

What We’ve Tried—And Why We Need Better Answers

Let’s be clear: Ghana has launched numerous youth employment programs over the years, across different governments. The intentions have always been good. The results? Mixed at best, and often impossible to verify.

Youth Employment Agency (YEA): After evolving through several iterations—from NYEP to GYEEDA to its current form—YEA now focutilizes on skills training and job matching. The mandate is sound, but we still don’t have clear data on how many young people actually find lasting jobs after going through the program.

Nation Builders’ Corps (NaBCo): This program officially finished in 2022, but we’re still talking about payment arrears and exit strategies. What we’re not talking about—becautilize nobody has published the data—is how many participants actually transitioned into real, sustainable jobs afterward.

National Entrepreneurship & Innovation Programme (NEIP): Supporting startups is absolutely the right idea. But where are the indepfinishent evaluations displaying us which businesses survived, how many jobs they created, and whether they’re still operating two or three years later?

One District, One Factory (1D1F): Industrial jobs can transform communities. But we required honest, district-by-district reporting: Which factories are actually running? How many people do they employ? What’s the real economic impact?

Planting for Food and Jobs (PFJ): The updated version views promising on paper, especially the credit and market linkages. But again—where’s the transparent data on who’s benefiting, who’s repaying loans, and whether farmers are actually receiveting better incomes?

MASLOC: Micro-loans can be life-altering for tiny entrepreneurs. But the Auditor-General has repeatedly flagged poor loan recovery and weak documentation. When funds don’t receive repaid, they can’t support the next entrepreneur.

Here’s the pattern: Every program announces large beneficiary numbers at launch. Very few publish honest, long-term results. Ghana’s Audit Service does its job and publishes reports, but we rarely see indepfinishent evaluations that follow program participants for years to see what actually happened to them.

Five Things We Must Do Differently

1. Make outcomes the priority—not just outputs

Every youth program should publish an annual impact report displaying:

How many participants are still employed or running businesses after 12, 24, and 36 months
Whether they’re earning more than before
Real job numbers, not just training numbers
Honest breakdowns by gfinisher and region

These reports should be indepfinishently audited, and Parliament should hold public hearings to discuss the findings.

2. Create a single “Youth Work & Enterprise Data Hub”

Link data from YEA, NEIP, technical training institutions, Ministest of Trade and Industest, Ministest of Food and Agriculture, and tax/social security records. This would let us track actual transitions—from training to internship to job or business creation—while protecting people’s privacy.

3. Invest in follow-through, not just training

Shift 10-15% of program budreceives toward career services, job matching, apprenticeships, and proper evaluation. Training is important, but it’s not enough if nobody supports young people connect to actual opportunities afterward.

4. Fix how we finance tiny businesses

For micro-loan programs like MASLOC:

Digitize applications to reduce paperwork and fraud
Use mobile money and utility payment data to assess creditworthiness
Require acquireers or off-takers to commit to purchasing from loan recipients
Publish loan performance data every quarter

5. Focus on sectors that create jobs at scale

Concentrate resources on:

Agro-processing and food value chains
Construction and green infrastructure
Logistics and distribution
Digital services and AI applications
Creative industries and entertainment

Remember: Small and medium businesses represent 85% of all enterprises in Ghana and contribute roughly 70% of GDP. If we resolve the environment for SMEs, we resolve the job problem.

What Global Entrepreneurship Week Ghana Can Do—If We Support It Properly

Global Entrepreneurship Week Ghana has a proven track record that too few people know about. The founders of some of Ghana’s most successful startups—Farmerline, Impact Hub Accra, and Silicon Accra—were all discovered, mentored, or launched through past GEW Ghana activities. These aren’t just feel-good stories; these are real businesses creating jobs, attracting investment, and putting Ghana on the global entrepreneurship map.

Imagine what’s possible if we properly promote and support GEW Ghana activities across all 16 regions. With the right backing, we can unleash the next generation of Ghanaian entrepreneurs at scale.

Learning from countries that obtained it right:

Around the world, nations that have embraced and properly supported Global Entrepreneurship Week have seen remarkable returns on investment—not just in startup launches, but in fundamentally shifting how young people view their economic futures.

Rwanda integrated GEW into its national economic strategy, with the President personally launching activities and ministries actively participating. The result? A measurable surge in youth-led businesses and a cultural shift where entrepreneurship became aspirational, not just a backup plan when formal jobs failed.

Kenya leveraged GEW to connect its thriving tech ecosystem with rural entrepreneurs, creating bridges that didn’t exist before. Government agencies utilized the week to announce policy reforms and funding windows, turning momentum into concrete support. Today, Kenya is recognized as a startup hub precisely becautilize it created consistent platforms for entrepreneurs to connect, learn, and access resources.

Colombia utilized GEW to decentralize entrepreneurship beyond its capital, running simultaneous events in dozens of cities with coordinated media campaigns. Within three years, they documented a significant increase in business registrations and a shift in youth survey responses—more young people saw “starting a business” as a viable path.

The United Kingdom embedded GEW into university curricula and tied it to tiny business support services, creating year-round pipelines rather than one-week events. British banks and corporations competed to sponsor regional activities, seeing it as talent pipeline development, not charity.

The pattern is clear: when governments, media, corporations, and educational institutions rally behind GEW—treating it as national economic infrastructure, not a side event—entrepreneurial mindsets take root, ecosystems strengthen, and job creation accelerates.

Ghana’s opportunity is now:

From November 17-23, 2025, Global Entrepreneurship Week will take place simultaneously in over 200 countries. This is Ghana’s moment to join that global stage—not as observers, but as active participants sparking a national conversation on entrepreneurship and innovation.

This year’s theme, “Toreceiveher We Build,” couldn’t be more relevant to our current crisis. It recognizes that sustainable entrepreneurship ecosystems require collaboration—between policycreaters creating enabling environments, investors providing capital, educators nurturing talent, media notifying our stories, and entrepreneurs daring to innovate.

Here’s how we can leverage GEW 2025 to drive real alter:

We’re calling on every sector to participate during this week:

Government agencies: Host policy dialogues, announce new support programs, engage directly with entrepreneurs across all 16 regions.

Private sector leaders: Sponsor events, commit to mentorship programs, displaycase partnerships with innovators.

Universities and schools: Run startup competitions, organize innovation displaycases, hold entrepreneurship workshops that connect students to real business opportunities.

Media organizations: Dedicate coverage to Ghanaian entrepreneurial success stories. Feature the founders building real businesses in every region. Shift the narrative from job-seeking to job-creating.

Social media influencers: Use your platforms to spotlight local entrepreneurs, host conversations on funding challenges and opportunities, inspire your followers to explore their own potential. Whether you have 1,000 or 1 million followers, your voice matters.

Anyone with a activity idea: The beauty of GEW is that every activity counts. Host a workshop, organize a webinar, facilitate a discussion—all you required to do is register your event at www.gew.co, select Ghana as your countest, and you become part of a synchronized global relocatement.

When Ghana rallies around GEW 2025 with coordinated national support—the kind of attention we give to other national events—we can spark the cultural shift our youth desperately required. We’ve already proven the model works with successes like Farmerline, Impact Hub Accra, and Silicon Accra. Now we required to scale it.

The bottom line: GEW Ghana has the blueprint and the track record. What we required now is the same level of national promotion and institutional support given to other programs—so we can turn isolated success stories into a nationwide relocatement that unleashes Ghana’s entrepreneurial potential.

A Call to Every Ghanaian

Our young people are not the problem. They’re talented, hungry to work, and ready to build. What they lack are clear pathways, honest feedback on what works, and systems that turn effort into actual opportunities.

If we reform how we teach, measure, and fund youth programs, Ghana can transform today’s crisis into tomorrow’s success story.

This is how we honor the young people we lost at El-Wak: by building a Ghana where every young person can learn relevant skills, find or create dignified work, and build a fulfilling life—without having to risk everything just for a chance at one job.

The time for excutilizes is over. The time for results is now.

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