Over 70 percent of Ghanaian adults say they would move abroad if they could, and 1 in 4 say they would even do so illegally if necessary, according to surveys conducted for GhanaWeb.

Surveys of 1,130 Ghanaian adults in April and 500 in June, shows the favorite destination for most Ghanaians is United States (US) followed by United Kingdom (UK), Canada and Italy.

Some less known destinations like Ireland, Sweden, United Arab Emirates and South Korea were also mentioned as targets for immigration by over 5% of the adults surveyed.

Germany and the Netherlands have fallen off the radar for most Ghanaians, since only 3% of those polled mentioned it as a possible destination.

9% of those polled just wanted to leave Ghana and did not care about the destination.

The survey also showed that, more than half of university graduates would move abroad if they could, and 1 in 6 would do so even if they had to do it illegally. Their preferred target was the US, UK and Australia. Language played a major part in the selection of a destination for the graduates.

The survey found that, Ghanaians willingness to leave the country is driven by a desire to improve their economic status and join family and friends already there.

Despite the arguably marginal improvements in Ghana’s economy, people with and in the process of getting university degrees believe they have greater economic opportunities by migration to the west - even illegally - than they would staying in Ghana.

In September of last year, a United Nations report on International Migration painted a grim image of Ghana’s workforce, saying that about 50% per cent of the ‘highly-educated' Ghanaians have migrated - mainly to more developed countries such as the United States, Britain and others within the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development.