The good old days: Senior citizen compares lives of university graduates in Ghana's early days and now

In the early days of Ghana's history, university graduates were met with a promise of employment and a stable future once they came out of school.

This assurance was a way for the government to express its commitment to ensuring that graduate unemployment was controlled in the country.

However, the landscape has shifted over the years, leading to a starkly different reality for today's graduates.

The 2023 Annual Household Income and Expenditure Survey Quarter Three Labour Report, published by the Ghana Statistical Service (GSS), paints a gloomy picture of the current state of graduate unemployment.

With an average unemployment rate climbing to 14.7% in the first three quarters of 2023, the challenge has become a major hurdle for successive governments.

A senior citizen and former Member of Parliament, Abraham Dwoma Odoom, reminisced about a time in Ghana’s history when the situation was markedly different.

In an interview with Partey Narh on GhanaWeb’s People & Places, he recalled the early days when graduates were guaranteed jobs straight out of school.

To him, the government’s inability to deal with unemployment is disappointing.

“In 1983, I had finished university. I was then working with the cocoa processing company as a management trainee. Those were the good old days. I had my apartment, and I had my Volkswagen Beetle. These days, you people are not fortunate.

“Those were the days somebody would say, we were chopping time; even though there was the 1983 hunger, we were still having a good time, especially for those of us who had a little bit of education. Not these days; you finish school, and for seven years your parents are still taking care of you,” he lamented.

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Watch the full interview in this episode of People and Places



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