Ghana can’t afford free education; what we have now is ‘inferior education’ – Kofi Amoah

Economist and CEO of progeny ventures, Dr Kofi Amoah has slammed government’s free Senior High School (SHS) programme saying that what currently pertains is “inferior” education.

According to him, although education is important for a poor country like Ghana, the country cannot afford to give free education to every child.

Speaking in an exclusive interview with Paa Kwesi Asare on TV3’s Business Focus, Monday August 8, Dr Amoah was of the view that what Ghana needed to do was to follow the blueprint of other industrialized economies like Singapore and Malaysia who started off on the same page with Ghana

He said the most important thing needed to develop as a poor country is not free education but agriculture, industrialization through the creation of factories.

“Do the first things first, build strength, move to the next ladder. Every phase of your development must be strong and productive enough to provide the wealth and the resources needed to do the next phase. If we were to produce a lot of products, livestock, build strength for local consumption and the rest for exports, then we can move to the next phase of industrialization by building factories to process the raw materials”.

Dr. Amoah said there are fundamental things that can be done to turn the economy around rather than of implementing an unsustainable free education policy

“You can’t have a nation that is characterized by joblessness. Borrowing to do a flyover. A flyover does not produce any return, you must say it eases traffic, but we need to do the things that all countries have done to be successful and strong, get your people working and engaged, producing for domestic economy and exports when you do that your currency will be strong, your people will become taxpayers, government will have tax revenue to service infrastructural investments”.

source:3news