Scholarships Bonanza: How Scholarships Secretariat blows millions abroad on courses available in Ghana

Gilbert Addo (not his real name) completed University of Cape Coast in 2019 and obtained a Cumulative Grade Point Average (CGPA) of 3.97 out of four— a super First Class.

With a burning desire to be an academic, he applied for a Master’s programme in the same university and secured admission. But his parents were too broke to pay his tuition fee.

Rich in grades but poor in finance, he turned to the state for support to fund his academic dream.

He applied to the Scholarships Secretariat for GHS4,000 (equivalent of £237 today) to support him to do his Masters.

He didn’t receive the funding.

Eventually, he used the same credentials to apply for a PhD Programme in an American university. On the basis of his academic record, he was given a full scholarship to pursue his PhD.

“It’s the same documents I used to apply for admission in UCC for Master’s.  The same CGPA. Nothing new,” he told The Fourth Estate.

After receiving complaints from people like Gilbert and other frustrated applicants who applied for support from the Scholarships Secretariat in the past, The Fourth Estate asked in March 2021 for data on those who had been awarded scholarships in 2019 and 2020.

The focus was on those two years because an earlier audit covering 2009-2018 had found impropriety in Ghana Education Trust Fund’s (GETFund) administration of foreign scholarships after it usurped the work of the Scholarships Secretariat. That audit revealed how the political elite had unduly taken advantage of funding from the GETFund.

When we made the request, the Secretariat initially refused to grant us the information, claiming the data was confidential. But the Right to Information Commission ordered that personal information should be redacted and the data released. The Commission based its ruling on the premise that the scholarships were funded with public money.

The information was released on February 8, 2022 – almost a year after The Fourth Estate made the initial request. It showed that the Scholarships Secretariat had spent GHS237.5 million and GHS200 million in 2019 and 2020, respectively on both foreign and local scholarships.

The Scholarships Secretariat, an agency under the Office of the President, was established in 1960 with the primary purpose of providing scholarships to academically gifted but financially needy students. Following the country’s liberation from colonial rule, the Nkrumah administration set up scholarship programmes as a means to incentivise and attract top talents to bolster the nation’s workforce by assisting citizens who lacked the financial means to fund their education.

A major source of funding for the Scholarships Secretariat today is the GETFund. Section 2.2(b) of the GETFund Act requires the Scholarships Secretariat to allocate funds to support “gifted but needy students for studies in second cycle and accredited tertiary institutions in Ghana.”

The Scholarships Secretariat’s website states that its mission is to “utilise Government Funds, GETFund and donor support for the provision of scholarships to brilliant but needy students and qualified workers at a minimum access cost, for human resource development for the purpose of national growth and development.”

Gilbert Addo qualified for a scholarship. But he was denied funding. He didn’t get the GHC4,000 he needed, ostensibly because there wasn’t enough money to go round.

However, The Fourth Estate has found that the Scholarships Secretariat spent thousands of pounds on other students who applied for scholarships to study in foreign universities.

We found, for instance, that in the year Gilbert’s application for GHC4,000 was rejected, his peer from the University of Cape Coast, Vanessa Ampofoa Boadu, received GBP19,000 (the equivalent of GHS321,100 at the current exchange rate of 16.9 cedis) for her Master’s programme at the University of Aberdeen in the United Kingdom (UK).

Another beneficiary, Patience Oware-Danso, received as stipend 10,236 euros (equivalent of GHS172,988.4 based on the current exchange rate 14.5 cedis) to study for an MA programme at the University of Cologne in Germany.

There was even more for Seiwaa Osei Afriyie. The Scholarships Secretariat considered the former student of one of the country’s most expensive private schools, Ghana International School needy enough to grant her GBP36,720 (GHS 620,000) in 2019 alone. This was for her to fund her first degree at the University of Warwick in the UK after enrolling in 2017.

By the time she completed her studies in 2020, there was a job waiting for her at no less place than the Office of the President. The Fourth Estate confirmed that Ms. Afriyie is a Policy Associate at the Sustainable Development Goals Advisory Unit at the presidency.

Courses are cheaper in Ghana

The data we received showed that a substantial portion of the programmes that the Scholarships Secretariat funded were offered by Ghanaian universities, with much lower fees which could help save money and ensure that more needy but brilliant students benefit from government scholarships.

According to the Secretariat’s data, a beneficiary, Mathias Abednego Bonir, received a total of 81,948.46 Canadian dollars (CAD) — the equivalent of GHS807,192 (based on today’s exchange rate of GHS9.85) for a post-graduate certificate in Project Management in 2019, as well as Human Resource Management in 2020. He attended the Georgian College in Canada.

The Secretariat spent CAD16,441.13 on his tuition in 2019 and CAD17,507.33 in 2020. He received CAD2,000 as stipend monthly in the course of his studies.

His stipend alone amounted to GHS19,700 monthly. This amount is more than sufficient to cover the full tuition (GHS17,696) for a Master of Science in Project Management at the University of Professional Studies, Accra (UPSA).

Mr Bonir’s stipend could almost have covered the total fees (GHS20,423) for a Master of Science in Project Management at the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST).

His total fees and stipend for the two programmes he pursued would have been adequate to cover the fees of 45 MSc Project Management students at UPSA and 39 at KNUST.

The Scholarships Secretariat spent funds on other programs that are available in several Ghanaian universities, including:

MSc Computer Science: GBP15,800

Masters of Law (LLM): GBP16,850

MSc Project Management: GBP17,550

MSc Accounting and Finance: GBP17,900

MSc Business Administration: CAD35,100

MSc in Marketing: GBP16,500

MSc in Banking and Finance: GBP 17,355

MSc in Information Technology: GBP 21,000

MA Communication Studies: USD16,130

MSc Management: GBP16,200

The Fourth Estate obtained comparative fees of some Ghanaian public universities in the 2023-2024 against the Scholarship Secretariat’s tuition fees.

Value for money

Prof. Peter Quartey, the Director of the Institute of Statistical, Social and Economic Research (ISSER) of the University of Ghana, raised questions about spending huge sums of money to pay for Ghanaians to take courses in foreign universities when those same courses are on offer locally.

Prof Quartey made a strong case for the Scholarships Secretariat to limit sponsorship of courses that are available in Ghana. That, he said would help ensure that scholarship funds are utilised in a more targeted and strategic manner.

Comparing Ghana’s scholarship system with that of China, Prof. Quartey said he had learnt that individuals funding their own education were not even allowed to apply for foreign transfers to pursue courses in areas the state has not prioritised.

“You cannot go and study literature or history, American history or British history and expect that the Chinese government will gladly allow you to fund and transfer hard-earned foreign exchange,” he said. “So, we need to be targeted in the way we sponsor people to attend schools outside the country. We must rethink the way we sponsor people to pursue courses with our tax money.”

Additionally, Prof Quartey highlighted the importance of directing funds towards critical areas of national human resource need.

“Our focus should be on the critical areas of our manpower needs.

“We need people in IT [Information Technology] and cyber security. That is where the need is. Artificial intelligence and medicine are areas that we need expertise [in].”