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The Executive Director of China Europe International Business School (CEIBS), Prof. Matthew Tsamenyi, has said Ghana is currently suffering from graduate unemployment because academia has over the years failed to think outside the box to develop strategies to mitigate the problem.

According to him, there is a vast gap between academia and multinational companies, which has affected the development of the required skills set needed by these industry players to move the business world.

Prof. Tsamenyi said anytime he chatted with Chief Executive Officers (CEOs), business owners and other key players of multinational companies, they always complained of the kind of products from the various universities.

Speaking to the DAILY HERITAGE in an interview last Friday on the sidelines of Small and Medium Enterprises (SME’s) Vodafone Masterclass launch, he said for Ghana to solve graduate unemployment in the country, there was the need to partner with the private sector and multinational companies to develop more practical skills and produce graduates who are more entrepreneurial oriented.

“There should be a total overhaul to design a new educational curriculum from the current textbook approach to a new skills-developed and practical base education where graduates will not be completing school and waiting on the government to give them jobs,” Prof. Tsamenyi stated.

He said until the curriculum was changed and a strong partnership between tertiary institutions and multinational companies bridged to build skills of graduates, the problem would continue to exist.

Prof. Tsamenyi added that for SMEs to develop, they must have a link with multinational companies and that could only be done when they enjoy support from the so-called big companies to scale up their client base.

He advised international companies to support academia to develop so that they could do more research and understand the need of their customers to move the economy forward.

Prof. Tsamenyi said CEIBS was established to ensure that they would develop and shape the entrepreneurial skills of SMEs, CEOs and the business world to match international standards.