The writer
On October 9, 2026, Ghana welcomed 1,568 newly qualified lawyers at the 63rd Call to the Bar ceremony. Congratulations to them all.
Yet, the celebration should prompt reflection on whether Ghana is producing the professionals needed to transform its economy or merely rewarding professional prestige.
According to Afrobarometer’s 2024 Ghana survey, published in December 2025, only 35% of Ghanaians trusted the courts, while 44% perceived widespread judicial corruption and 62% believed powerful individuals frequently influenced judicial decisions.
These perceptions matter. More lawyers have not necessarily produced greater public confidence in justice. Nor can legal education substitute for the scientific, technical and industrial capabilities required to transform an economy.
Lee Kuan Yew’s Warning
In From Third World to First, Singapore’s founding Prime Minister, Lee Kuan Yew, reflected on the development challenges facing countries such as Ghana and Nigeria.
Lee himself was a lawyer. The lesson is not to diminish law but to place it within a broader national strategy. Industrialisation requires strong legal institutions, alongside sustained investment in engineering, mathematics, physics, chemistry, technology, technical training and productive enterprise.
President Nkrumah understood this when he invested in scientific research, technical education and industrialisation. Six decades later, Ghana must assess whether its priorities have fundamentally changed.
Lessons From China
As Ghana’s Ambassador to China, I witnessed how deliberately China connected education, scientific research, technical training and industrial policy.
China’s highways, high-speed railways and millions of factories rest on sustained human-capital development and emphasis on science, engineering, technology and quantitative analysis. It also cultivated technically trained leaders: Jiang Zemin studied electrical engineering; Hu Jintao trained as a hydraulic engineer; Wen Jiabao studied geological engineering; and Xi Jinping studied chemical engineering.
My further studies at the University of Electronic Science and Technology of China, including PhD research, reinforced the importance of empirical evidence, quantitative analysis and measurable outcomes in public administration.
The lesson is clear: education must be linked to national capability. Qualifications matter, but their value depends on whether institutions, industries and public systems can use the knowledge they represent. Ghana must therefore measure results, implementation and competence—not only expenditure, announcements and credentials.
Ghana’s Engineers: Are We Using Them?
Ghana has produced distinguished technically trained leaders, including P. V. Obeng, Yaw Osafo-Maafo and former Vice-President Joseph de Graft-Johnson. Their careers demonstrate that engineering and political leadership can complement each other.
Yet engineers, mathematicians, physicists, scientists and industrial managers remain underused in national policy.
Consider our deteriorating roads and the lives lost annually through road accidents. Technical professionals should determine road priorities, specifications, contractor selection and certification of completed works.
Too frequently, politicians influence decisions requiring independent engineering judgement. Politicians should set priorities and approve budgets; engineers should assess designs, supervise construction and certify technical quality. Procurement must remain transparent, and payments properly verified.
A minister may prioritise a road. That does not make the minister a highway engineer.
This principle should apply across the economy: political leaders must define national goals and create the policy environment, professionals must provide independent technical judgement, and institutions must be accountable for results.
Beyond Engineering
Modern economies depend equally on mathematicians, physicists, chemists, biologists, computer scientists, statisticians, geologists, agricultural specialists and skilled technicians.
These professionals drive artificial intelligence, pharmaceuticals, energy, biotechnology, manufacturing and evidence-based policymaking. Lawyers remain essential: they design rules, protect rights, structure transactions and help institutions operate lawfully. But legal capacity must work alongside technical capacity, not displace it.
Singapore, South Korea, Germany and the United States invested heavily in scientific research, engineering and technical capabilities while building legal and regulatory systems that supported innovation and enterprise.
Nigeria’s Dangote Refinery demonstrates both Africa’s industrial potential and its continuing dependence on imported specialised expertise. Much of the refinery’s technical workforce and specialised expertise had to be sourced from Asia and elsewhere, revealing the skills gap that still constrains African industrialisation.
Resource-rich Africa should not remain dependent on others to process its resources.
Ghana’s STEM Revolution
President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo deserves recognition for expanding STEM education and technical training. I particularly congratulate former Education Minister Dr. Yaw Osei Adutwum for his vision, commitment and leadership.
By late 2024, seven STEM academies were operational, enrolling approximately 4,750 students. Investments in laboratories, robotics, engineering pathways and TVET represented important progress.
These initiatives deserve continuity across governments, but STEM expansion must connect to universities, research institutions, industry, public procurement and a clear industrial strategy.
Training scientists without creating opportunities to apply their knowledge defeats the purpose. Ghana must plan education and production together: identify the capabilities required in agriculture, energy, manufacturing, health, digital technology and infrastructure; train people for those needs; and create the firms, institutions and markets in which they can work.
A National Skills Balance Sheet
Since Independence, successive governments have promised transformation without delivering it. Ghana still exports cocoa while importing processed chocolate and produces gold, bauxite and manganese without capturing sufficient downstream value.
The country needs a clear account of the professionals required to build refineries, pharmaceutical factories, agro-processing plants and manufacturing industries.
I propose an annual National Skills Balance Sheet measuring the professionals Ghana trains, employs and retains against national development requirements. Political parties should relate their manifesto promises to this national skills bank and explain whether the country has, or can develop, the capabilities needed to deliver them.
It should cover lawyers and judges, as well as engineers, scientists, teachers, doctors, agricultural specialists, technicians, artisans, entrepreneurs and industrial managers. It should identify shortages, track migration and unemployment, measure how trained professionals are used, and guide scholarships, curricula and public investment.
The government must align education, scholarships, research funding and industrial policy with these needs by funding laboratories and technical institutions, strengthening apprenticeships and TVET, supporting research linked to commercial production, using public procurement to develop local capability, and protecting professional and technical institutions from improper political interference.
Legal education should be strengthened where Ghana lacks capacity in commercial law, public finance, intellectual property, environmental regulation and dispute resolution. At the same time, STEM and technical education must receive comparable national attention, because laws cannot build factories, design power systems, process minerals or improve agricultural productivity.
We must celebrate lawyers alongside engineers, scientists, mathematicians, teachers, agricultural specialists, technicians and entrepreneurs.
Every profession matters. But professional prestige cannot substitute for national productivity, and no single profession can deliver development alone.
We cannot litigate our way into industrialisation, engineer our way into justice, or build a nation through professional titles alone.
Ghana must now act on four priorities: establish an annual National Skills Balance Sheet; redirect education and scholarships toward clearly identified national needs; fund laboratories, research, apprenticeships and TVET at the scale industrialisation requires; and enforce a firm division between political priority-setting and independent professional judgement. Public procurement must build Ghanaian capability, research must lead to production, and every major national project must be judged by measurable results.
This is a call to government, Parliament, political parties, universities, industry and the professions. Stop treating education, industrial policy and skills development as separate promises. Build one national system that trains the people Ghana needs, employs them productively, protects their expertise from political interference and creates industries capable of retaining value at home.
The choice is stark. Ghana can continue producing credentials while importing expertise, exporting raw materials and explaining failure—or it can build the balanced capabilities that turn knowledge into factories, justice, innovation and prosperity. Future generations will not ask how many lawyers we called to the Bar. They will ask whether we built the institutions, skills and industries that enabled Ghana to create, process and prosper from its own resources.
Ambassador Edward A. Boateng is a former Ghanaian Ambassador to China and former Director-General of the State Interests and Governance Authority (SIGA).
By Ambassador Edward A. Boateng
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