Market Intelligence Brief: Ghana 2024

Ghana is a West African country, known for its natural resource wealth and young and fast-growing population. The country is the UK’s second largest source of international students in the Sub-Saharan Africa region, behind only Nigeria, with the last few years seeing a substantial increase in student numbers.

Acknowledging the importance of educating its youth in order to benefit from a ‘demographic divided’ in future, the government of Ghana has prioritised education within its budget over recent years. This has helped the country make significant progress in improving access to education, with gross enrolment at the primary and secondary levels reaching 98 per cent and 75 per cent respectively in 2021. However, significant problems within the education system persist in the form of critical shortages of trained teachers, classroom facilities, and learning materials, particularly in rural regions.

Ghana has also seen a significant expansion at the higher education level in recent years, with UNESCO data showing that tertiary enrolments more than doubled from 286,000 in 2011 to 581,000 enrolments by 2021. Private HEIs have seen particularly strong growth over the last two decades. As with basic education, this surging demand has caused challenges, and it is becoming increasingly difficult for the Ghanaian system to effectively provide mass education while maintaining quality standards.

The volume of outbound students from Ghana has increased every year since 2008, doubling from 9,000 to 20,000 over this period. This has been driven by economic growth and unmet demand for high-quality provision, particularly at the postgraduate level. The US and the UK have historically been the most popular study destinations for outbound students, while pre-pandemic data shows that China also hosted a substantial number of Ghanaian students.

The UK has seen particularly strong growth in student mobility from Ghana in recent years, with the reintroduction of the Graduate Route from summer 2021 a key driving force behind the increase. However, UK TNE and distance learning in the country is experiencing a slow downward trend, and mobility is likely to be affected by recent changes to the UK’s visa policy as Ghanaians are more likely than most other international students to bring dependents to the UK. While the strong demographic outlook and domestic capacity constraints make Ghana a strong candidate for transnational education provision, the lack of a clear national TNE strategy and regulatory framework need to be addressed in order to entice more international universities into the market.

This 25-page report gives an overview of Ghana’s education system and the wider demographic, economic and political context, with a focus on international education trends in the country - including both student mobility and transnational education. It aims to provide useful information to UK education institutions and other stakeholders considering partnerships with counterparts in Ghana, and to support further cooperation and engagement between the two countries.