The talent balance sheet: Is Ghana subsidising the west?

By Professor Felix Nikoi Hammond

Last week, I visited a supermarket in Shiashie for a brief errand. The experience was routine until it deviated; the POS system was non-operational, and the young shop attendant, who assisted in carrying my groceries to the vehicle, accompanied me on a brief journey to a nearby ATM to complete the payment. As we drove, he broke the silence with a question that has become the haunting refrain of a generation: “Sir, please, can you help me find a job?”

Surprised, I asked, “Are you not working right now?”

His response was a sobering indictment of our current economic landscape. He told me he was a graduate of the University of Ghana, one of Ghana’s premier universities. He had completed his degree five years ago but had spent the intervening half-decade at home, unable to find a foothold in the formal economy. To survive, he had accepted a role helping customers at a shop, essentially trading his university-trained intellect for the meagre tips earned by carrying bags into car boots.

This young man is not an anomaly. He is a data point in a national crisis. Every day, in Accra, two different types of “exports” leave our shores. One is visible: the heavy trucks carrying cocoa beans and other produce to the Tema harbour. The other is invisible but far more expensive: the young professional at Kotoka International Airport clutching a one-way ticket to London, Toronto, or Berlin.

In the hallways of the Ghanaian corporate world, we call this the “Japa” phenomenon. But on the national balance sheet, it is time we call it what it truly is: A massive, unhedged economic leak.

The “Japa” Subsidy

For decades, the Ghanaian taxpayer has heavily subsidised the development of our human capital. From the Free Senior High School (SHS) programme to the subvention of tuition fees at our premier universities, the state invests billions of GH₵ in developing engineers, nurses, managers, and scientists.

However, when a professional trained at the taxpayer’s expense migrates to the West, Ghana receives no “export duty.” We have paid for the training and foundational education, yet a developed economy benefits entirely from the productivity and tax revenue. Often, these migrants accept jobs well below their skills and face significant discrimination due to their skin colour. We are, quite literally, subsidising the prosperity of the West while our local hubs suffer a “talent drought” and graduates in Shiashie carry groceries.

The Institutionalised Export: The Nursing Dilemma

Recently, we have seen this trend take an official turn. The government has begun formalising the “export” of Ghanaian nurses. While framed as a strategic move to manage domestic unemployment and secure remittances, we must ask: at what cost?

When the state becomes the main recruiter for overseas health services, we risk institutionalising our own brain drain. While these bilateral agreements might bring in short-term foreign exchange, they do not account for the “depreciation” of our local healthcare system. If we are exporting our nurses while our own district hospitals remain understaffed, we aren’t just exporting labour — we are exporting the very essence of our social infrastructure. Remittances can purchase consumer goods; however, they cannot compensate for the decades of clinical manpower lost to a hospital in Birmingham or Bridgetown.

The Mindset Trap: Employment vs. Enterprise

The young man I met in Shiashie revealed a deeper, more structural flaw in our educational philosophy. In our conversation, he spoke only of finding a job, never of founding one. This is because our system is designed to produce high-functioning employees rather than agile entrepreneurs.

We have inadvertently cultivated a culture in which wealth creation is seen as the realm of a “special breed”—a rare, elite class of founders whom the rest of the population is conditioned to serve. Our graduates observe the empires built by icons like Sir Sam Jonah, Zoomlion’s Dr Joseph Siaw Agyepong, Dr. Kwabena Duffuor, or the Despite Group’s Osei Kwame Despite, and they do not see a clear path; they see an insurmountable peak. They are led to believe that the “business of business” belongs to these exceptional outliers, while they—the Legon or KNUST graduates—are merely the “caste” of workers destined to fill positions within an existing corporate hierarchy.

We train our youth to wait for an invitation into an existing corporate structure rather than equipping them with the tools to create new ones. In a country where the formal sector cannot possibly absorb the 100,000+ graduates entering the market each year, an education that does not prioritise self-reliance is incomplete. We have taught our graduates how to manage a balance sheet, but not how to build a business that requires one.

The Degree-to-Job Mismatch

The “Japa” leak is only half the story. The other half is the “Industry-Education Gap.” The young man I met is a victim of a system that produces “paper-ready” rather than “job-ready” graduates. Visit any HR director in Airport City, and they will tell you the same thing: “We have many applicants, but very few recruits.”

Our tertiary institutions remain bastions of rote learning in an era that demands technical agility. We are producing Marketing graduates who have never run a digital campaign, and Accounting graduates who have never navigated a modern ERP system. This mismatch creates a “double loss.” While our best are leaving for the West, those who stay are often “unemployable” without six to twelve months of expensive corporate re-training.

Conclusion: The ROI of a Citizen

As we navigate our current reset agenda and recovery, we must remember that our most valuable asset isn’t the gold in Obuasi or the oil in the Jubilee Field. It is the three-pound organ between the ears of our youth.

If we continue to export our best brains for free while failing to equip those who stay with market-ready skills, our national balance sheet will never truly balance. We cannot afford to have University of Ghana graduates waiting five years just to carry bags into car boots. It is time to treat education as the most critical industrial policy of our time.

The author, Professor Felix Nikoi Hammond, PhD, MBA, Fellow, Higher Education Academy, Executive Director, The African Leadership Institute (TALI) and Governing Council Chairman, Southshore University College, writes the weekly column “Human Capital Economics and the Ghanaian Business Landscape” for the Business & Financial Times.

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