Africa Education Watch (Eduwatch) has disclosed that it has petitioned the Chief of Staff, Julius Debrah, to immediately halt the accumulation of more than GH¢600 million in foreign scholarship debt owed to universities in the United States and the United Kingdom.

In a Facebook post by the Executive Director of Eduwatch, Kofi Asare, on Saturday, January 24, he indicated that although the recently passed Scholarships Law has effectively ended the award of new foreign scholarships, commitments made before 2025 continue to generate what he describes as unsustainable financial obligations, even as Ghana’s public universities remain chronically underfunded.

He noted that over 95 per cent of the academic programmes pursued abroad under these scholarships are available in local universities at a significantly lower cost. He cited an example where the government spent approximately GH¢600,000 on a single Master’s degree in Public Administration in the United States in 2019.

According to him government must recall beneficiaries of the affected scholarships and facilitate their smooth transition into Ghanaian public universities to complete their studies.

He added that Eduwatch would be forced to take legal action on the validity of the MoUs if the government fails to terminate what he describes as wasteful non-bilateral foreign scholarships

“No more dollar scholarships in an IMF economy. Build Ghana. Fund Ghana. Study in Ghana.”

“If the government fails to terminate those wasteful non-bilateral foreign scholarships, we will challenge the validity of the MoU’s in court” he said

Source: Citinewsroom