Ghana is producing graduates for yesterday’s jobs – Prof. Dzidonu

A human resource gap analysis is to be carried out this year by the Accra Institute of Technology (AIT) to ascertain the undersupply and oversupply of skill sets demanded by Ghanaian industries.

President of the Institute, Prof. Clement Dzidonu, says the study will inform the country on the reality of graduate unemployment and the direction for tertiary institutions in running their courses.

“Nobody, no where can put a figure on the graduate unemployment and in which area,” he observed.

“The gap analysis basically is ‘what are the demands of industry for particular skills – engineering, business, IT?’ Then we also see what we are producing in terms of the supply. Then we see the gap and based on that we advise universities,” Prof. Dzidonu explained.

AIT as an independent technology-focused university has already undertaken similar study for the Government of Burundi.

 

According to the renowned Professor of Computer Science, Ghana is not producing quality graduates to meet the needs of the economy.

“I think we don’t have graduate unemployment; we have produced a lot of people for yesterday’s job,” said Prof. Dzidonu, noting that some companies in Ghana cannot access graduates to employ because the universities are not producing them.

He cited an instance where an online advertisement by AIT for the position of Administrative Officers attracted over 1,500 graduate applicants within a week, whilst the position of Engineering Lab Technicians had less than 50 applicants – majority of whom were already working.

“The economy itself has transformed,” stated Prof. Dzidonu. “The Americans have shown that in the past where when there is productivity in the economy, it is due to employment; now they are having productivity without full employment, growth without full employment, which shows that in today’s age it’s not the numbers, it’s the quality of the people you produce.”

He believes the application of technology and provision of quality education is the way forward because “there is no point training people either in business, in humanities, in any field without a good dose of IT because I cannot see any serious company today which is not run using ICT”.

He is confident the human resources gap analysis would help Ghana address the problem of graduate unemployment.

Story by Kofi Adu Domfeh