EU supports Ghana to create new jobs

Experts from the European Union (EU) are currently carrying out an audit of all job centres in the country to assess their strengths and weaknesses (SWOT analysis of some sort) so as to make recommendations for interventions.

The team will also present a plan of how they could work better in the future, which will call for some interventions to resource them to carry out their mandate more effectively and efficiently.

The EU Ambassador to Ghana, Mr William Hanna, who disclosed this to the GRAPIC BUSINESS in Accra, said after the experts drawn from Germany and other parts of Europe completed the ongoing analysis, the proposals would be discussed with the government and all stakeholders to agree on the way forward, before real implementation would begin.

The analysis is part of a programme the EU has with Ghana to support job creation and social protection.

Ghana and the EU signed the Ghana Employment and Social Protection Programme, a €31.6 million which will support job creation and social protection. Embedded in the programme are specific projects to support job centres and technical vocational training in the country.

“If it is well resourced and run, a job centre can tell people about where the jobs are across the country that they might not know about. They may be sitting in the village not aware that the skills they have could be used somewhere else.

“So we are taking the experiences we might have in Europe because the issue of jobs are big issues in Europe today just as they are in Ghana,” Mr Hanna told the paper during a Ghana-EU media interaction in Accra. 

After the advice, the EU would follow that up with actions to strengthen and reinforce job centres throughout Ghana to carry out their mandate more effectively and efficiently, saying it was one way of trying to improve employment opportunities.

Technical, vocational training

Mr Hanna stressed the importance of technical and vocational training which, he said, should be linked to the private sector. “The idea is that if you do that training, you get an apprenticeship and a job in the end. So you need to know what the private sector is looking for.”

The likes of mechanics, electricians, carpenters and plumbers are very essential in the job market, as they are responsible for the hands-on work itself. Their role is, therefore, essential in the employment value chain.

Although Ghana has a lot of vocational and technical training institutions, the scale needs to increase with enhanced quality, while the outcome must also improve. The European Union has recognised this and agreed to partner Ghana to deliver on this initiative.

Therefore, the project will again draw on experience from Europe to conduct an audit of the private sector needs and then train people in those skills to fit into the sector and provide them with ready jobs.

Attracting investments

The EU ambassador also drew attention to increased presence of the European Investment Bank in the country, which recently allocated €80 million to five universal banks in the country to finance small and medium scale enterprises (SMEs), another avenue for employment creation.

The banks, according to Mr Hanna, had so far approved 16 projects valued at €30 million to SMEs in water supply, sewage, transportation and storage, manufacturing, construction, accommodation and food, services and education. The projects are to create an estimated 463 new jobs.

New External Investment Plan

The move is part of the EU’s new investment plan for Africa which would focus on investments and jobs.“The new emphasis over the coming years will focus on bringing in investments and creating jobs,” he said.

Mr Hanna explained that they would rely on the same systems that they had developed quite successfully in Europe over the last few years, working with SMEs, banks, credits and guarantee funds, and a whole series of linkages, to attract investments that would facilitate job creation for young people.