Professor Yaw Adu-Gyamfi, a specialist in Anaesthesiology and Critical Care, has voiced deep concerns about Ghana’s ongoing failure to fully utilise its most skilled professionals—blaming the issue on poor leadership and excessive politicisation of key institutions.
Speaking on JoyNews’ The Sages, Prof. Adu-Gyamfi criticised the country’s continued dependence on foreign contractors, despite having trained numerous qualified Ghanaians over the decades.
“We’re not doing well in this area,” he said. “We waste a lot of our human resources. At Independence, we had under 1,000 doctors. But even more worrying is how little we thought about creating broader employment beyond the civil service. And then we force people out of service early through rigid pension policies.”
He argued that retirement policies often rob the country of experienced professionals who still have much to offer, particularly in technical fields like civil engineering and architecture.
“These are professions where skills deepen with experience. Yet we retire people at 60 and let their knowledge go to waste. Retirement itself isn’t the issue—it’s that we don’t have systems to retain these professionals in other useful capacities.”
Prof. Adu-Gyamfi also criticised Ghana’s ongoing use of foreign companies for large infrastructure projects, despite decades of engineering education at institutions like KNUST and the University of Ghana.
“We’re still importing contractors for roads and coastal protection while our coastline erodes. Meanwhile, Amsterdam, which is below sea level, was reclaimed centuries ago with far less technology than we have today. We have the granite and the minds—we just don’t empower them.”
He emphasized that the root of the problem lies in poor leadership and a failure to value institutional experience.
“We discard our professionals when they retire, losing all the knowledge they’ve built. That’s a major loss. We need to reform our systems so that this expertise is retained and reused.”
Prof. Adu-Gyamfi further condemned the politicisation of public service appointments, saying it sidelines qualified individuals purely for political reasons.
“This over-politicisation is hurting us. Competent people are removed simply because they belong to a different political camp. That’s unacceptable. We must keep people who have ideas and vision, regardless of their political background.”
He concluded with a strong call for reforms in leadership, governance, and political culture to better harness Ghana’s human capital.
