Education policy think tank Eduwatch has petitioned the Office of the Chief of Staff to urgently address what it describes as growing fiscal pressures arising from government-funded scholarships in universities in the United Kingdom and the United States.
In its petition, Eduwatch said its monitoring indicates that the Government of Ghana currently owes more than GHC 600 million in accumulated scholarship arrears to students and universities in the UK and USA. The group warned that the mounting obligations pose significant risks to public finances amid ongoing fiscal constraints.
Eduwatch’s analysis further found that more than 90 per cent of the academic programmes being pursued by government-sponsored students in British and American universities are available in Ghanaian public tertiary institutions. According to the organisation, these local programmes cost about 10 per cent of the tuition and related expenses incurred overseas.
The continued sponsorship of such programmes abroad, Eduwatch argued, raises accountability concerns, particularly as many of the scholarships effectively serve as exit pathways out of Ghana. It said substantial public funds are being channelled into high-cost interventions that offer limited value for money and weak developmental justification under current economic conditions.
In 2025, Eduwatch called for the localisation of all existing scholarships in the UK and USA through a structured transition of beneficiaries to equivalent programmes in Ghanaian public universities. The organisation said the proposal was not implemented, leading to a further build-up of arrears and avoidable fiscal exposure.
The group expressed concern that allowing students to remain overseas while arrears continue to accumulate is economically imprudent. It said the practice exposes Ghana to unnecessary foreign currency liabilities, places an avoidable burden on taxpayers and diverts scarce resources from strengthening domestic tertiary institutions that already have the capacity to deliver comparable programmes.
Eduwatch is therefore urging the government, through the Office of the Chief of Staff and in collaboration with the Ministry of Education and the Scholarships Authority, to take urgent policy and administrative action. Its recommendations include facilitating the continuation of existing UK and US scholarship programmes in local public institutions, cancelling all foreign undergraduate scholarships under the University of Memphis agreement, and halting the further accumulation of arrears to foreign universities.
The organisation said the proposed measures are necessary to ensure fiscal responsibility, value for money and policy coherence, while simultaneously strengthening Ghana’s public tertiary education system in line with national development priorities.