Dear Your Excellency my President, I come to you today with my second letter to you since you assumed office some weeks ago.

I do this not because of a mere desire to put some ideas across but because I recognise the opportunity presented to us with respect to your presidency as a golden one which requires the collective support of every one of us as Ghanaians.

In May 1963 Osagyefo Dr Kwame Nkrumah told the members of the then Organisation of African Unity (OAU) that “We Do Not Just Have An Opportunity But An Opportunity To Make A History”.

Your Excellency, indeed your second presidency is an opportunity to make history and many Ghanaians are willing to do whatever they can to help you achieve.

1)Introduction Of Tertiary Education Policy (TEP)

With the looming threat of the overwhelmingly frustrated youth springing up on us every year with no hope, no direction, no accommodation, no jobs, no policy and no readily usable skill, I suggest the national security apparatus consider this as a threat to our normal social order.

Mr President, the nonexistence of an effective Tertiary Education Policy has over the years had a profound effect on our economic development. This is primarily because tertiary institutions in Ghana do not follow any specific policy objective that requires them to train, develop or produce any specific prescribed skillset and expertise. This failure, I consider to be one of the genetic causes of our economic underachievement not only in Ghana but throughout the entire sub-Sahara region.

Taking into consideration that our formal education system including the language of command was inherited from the British, it is important to acknowledge and expect the naturally occurring cases of cognitive imbalance within our society to be widespread. Given that the educational research methods used for creating the education we have now did not originate from our ancestorial knowledge, culture or wisdom but rather, that of the British. Your Excellency, it is solely for this reason that we MUST be intentional with everything we want to achieve as it will never happen either by accident or some sort of social evolution.

Mr President, for example, if we need one thousand (1000) Nuclear Physicists in Ghana or 500 five hundred (500) Astrophysicists or even two hundred (200) Electro Physics Engineers to begin an industrialization programme in Ghana, there is no way of achieving this or developing such talents unless you deliberately establish a system to create it through the introduction of a Tertiary Education Policy (TEP) in which the government works in collaboration with the universities to make degrees more meaningful to the state.

As the case in South Korea or China and most of the Mekong region may be referred to, there is a systematic deliberate policy to create a certain number and quality of some specific skills not only to fill in gaps in the industrial workforce but also to prepare their countries for the upcoming competitive world of knowledge and changes.

Your Excellency, the introduction of a deliberately created TEP in consultation with the relevant academic institutions will lead to uplifting the spirit of education and make students feel more useful and needed by the country. It is a putative fact or generally agreed truth that the development journey of a country is a collective responsibility of all its citizens.

Therefore, every Ghanaian MUST have a role to play towards the development of the country Ghana. In other words, like in China, the state can pass a mandatory law which enables her to have the first right of access to employ any First-Class students or tap into any Ghanaian student with extraordinary talent either in mathematics, engineering, physics, chemistry, electronics, management or any other talent which the country needs for its grand development agenda.

Mr President, according to the great German-born British economist E. F. Schumacher in his book “Small is Beautiful”, development starts with PEOPLE and their EDUCATION and not goods and infrastructure as we Ghanaians perceive. This statement by E. F. Schumacher has been proven in Singapore by Lee Kwan Yew with a country the size of Greater Accra, a population of less than 6 million and an incredible economy size of over 1 trillion on a land size of about 734 square kilometres.

Lee Kwan Yew on countless occasions has “confessed” that his secret was education policy which deliberately focuses on training his people even in the most extremely rarest skill.

In China, from Kindergarten to University, the Chinese government is systematic and meticulous in monitoring individual talents and directing them towards the country’s future needs. This explains why, while a US company struggles to recruit 100 electro-physics engineers, the same job electro-physics engineering job was advertised and published in Beijing and they had a stadium full of qualified electro-physics engineers available for interview.

It is my strong belief that systematically introducing a properly guided Tertiary Education Policy will be the real beginning of an economic transformation in all spheres of our national endeavours.

Indeed, the non-existence of any purposive and strategic education policy has negatively affected almost every part of the nation’s development. Mr President, For the purpose of this letter, please permit me to show how the lack of TEP has affected the development of our health sector.

HEALTH

Mr President, there is an opportunity to make health services in Ghana the most advanced not only in terms of technology but also the most skilled. The Ghana health system has always been in desperate need of more specialised and sub-specialised doctors. The situation is much worse now given the continuous population increase leading to more pressure on these existing few specialised and sub-specialised doctors we have.

Even though the government keeps training more generalists each year, there is no single purposive directive or policy which instructs any institution to train any type of specialist to fill any gap apart from the existing generalists who over some time of practising decide on their discretion to specialists’ programme either out of the country or locally.

With a population of over 30 million, the country needs at least a minimum of 250 qualified sub-specialised physicians in each area of the specialist fields listed below.

1)Urologists/Pediatric Urologist:

A urologist is a medical doctor who has been specially trained to diagnose and treat both female and male urinary and reproductive organs and is a specialist. Pediatric urology is however a sub-specialised area which further requires extra training. Pediatric Urologists are just like Urologists but primarily treat babies and younger children. Unfortunately, the entire country cannot boast of more than 10 qualified very critical professionals in the country.

2)Endocrinologists:

Endocrinologists specialise in hormones and the hormone production system. They diagnose and treat conditions related to abnormal hormonal issues and the entire endocrine system, which produces hormones that regulate many of the body's functions. Since there is no government effort to specifically produce such doctors, my studies could not find more than 5 such specialist doctors across the country. However, Ghana needs at least a minimum of 250 such doctors per the size of our population.

3)Cardiologists

Perhaps the most desperately needed medical specialist group in Ghana is Cardiologists. Cardiologists are specialized medical doctors trained specifically to diagnose, treat, and prevent heart-related diseases and conditions.

Currently, every 3 out of 10 deaths in Ghana are heart-related. 7 out of 10 men over 50 years in Ghana suffer from some kind of heart condition or blood pressure-related issues.

A deliberately instituted Tertiary Education Policy would’ve led to Ghana having more than sufficient qualified Cardiologists to provide quality health care for her citizens. As it stands, Ghana needs at least 400 qualified Cardiologists but unfortunately, the entire country cannot boast of 45 fully qualified Cardiologists.

4)Nephrologists

Nephrologists are specialised doctors in the health and functioning of kidneys and Pediatric Nephrologists are sub-specialised doctors for kidney health of infants and children.

After over 3 months of enquiry into identifying the number of this very all-important medical specialization, it is sad to announce that while we may have more than 10 Nephrologists in Ghana, I was unable to find more than 3 Pediatric Nephrologists.

Mr President, China is producing almost a million engineers every year, India is doing the same and the list goes on. In 2023, India made over USD64 billion from Health Tourism alone. This is largely because there has been a deliberate effort to rapidly grow the Indian health industry over the last few decades.

Ghana too can achieve the same. However, in Ghana now, all fields of professions and training across all sectors require a deliberate and systematically executed Tertiary Education Policy (TEP) to sturdily lead to the total transformation in the overall quality of human resources not only in the area of health care delivery but also across the board in all industries.

Sir, as expounded above, the establishment of a purposive Tertiary Education Policy is key, however, sustainable growth can NEVER be achieved without a bridge between academia and industry.

Mr President, the Western idea of government not leading industrialization is false, and this has been proven over and over. Even everywhere in Europe, most major industries had been set up by the state after the Second World War before it was slowly and carefully released into private hands after some decades with strict conditions.

In 2025, the Ghanaian industry is almost nonexistent and unless we build it ourselves, nobody will do it for us.

For example, we have a School of Mines here in Ghana. But there is not even a single state-owned or Ghanaian mining company in Ghana.

Here is the typical example of training citizens with no industry to absorb them so essentially, the main beneficiaries of the Ghana School of Mines are the Australian Mining Companies, New Zealand Mining Companies, South African Mining Companies etc.

Again, the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST), has trained hundreds of Electrical Engineers yet not even a Power Bank to charge mobile phones is produced here in Ghana for the same reason because there is no industry and the majority of them end up with the banks unless they find their way out of the country.

Mr President, we are Ghanaians and we are good. There is nothing we cannot do or achieve as a country and as a people if we have the leadership.

We know these white boys and Asians, we’ve all sat in classrooms with them and they also know we are good. Even when they take the lead because of their foundation, we always catch up and eventually surpass.

I look forward to seeing a Ghanaian-owned company producing semiconductors before the end of your second term in 2028.

Currently in Ghana, our best or most brilliant students study medicine. In Russia and China, the study of medicine is for the average students and the most brilliant do engineering and the same in all developed countries.

I thank you and may God bless Ghana.

Special Requests

1.Stadium Visits

Your Excellency, looking at the continuous weakening of our local league, while I know your Sports Minister is working hard to bring back the old glory of Ghana football, may I suggest you visit the stadium sometimes to boost match popularity as this may go a long way to perhaps revive even my own Secondi Hasaacas. Thank you.

2.Declaration Of National Health Months

Your Excellency, the rate of cardiac-related deaths in Ghana is now beyond alarming, and the rate at which new orphans are being created as a result of preventable deaths in our communities is taking a great toll on our social development with poverty being its most popular product.

The rate of deaths between the ages of 40 to 60 is a matter of great concern as the country continues to lose some of its brilliant brains before retirement or even soon after retirement.

Mr President, I am therefore with the highest respect proposing that you set up a team to choose a month within the year to launch National Health Month.

The team should formulate a policy which should serve as the guideline and should be binding to all private individuals, and corporate and public institutions to ensure that all their staff engage in some sort of health check or exercise within the selected month.