Former Minister for Tourism, Arts and Culture, Catherine Afeku, has renewed calls for the establishment of a top-tier hotel and hospitality management training school in Ghana, warning that the absence of a dedicated national institution is undermining the growth of the tourism sector.

Ms Afeku criticised the country’s reliance on temporary and informal hospitality training programmes, describing them as inadequate for building a competitive tourism industry.

“If you put a hotel training school, you don’t have one. These ad hoc training schools are not what we need,” she said. “What Ghana needs is a top-notch management training school, and it should be located in the Volta Region.”

Although she acknowledged that the Volta Region is not a political stronghold of the New Patriotic Party (NPP), Ms Afeku argued that national development must be driven by economic logic rather than partisan considerations.

“I don’t mean to highlight one region, but I have the experience, and I know that if government invests a billion dollars or more into tourism development in the Volta Region, Ghana can make up to ten billion dollars in tourism revenue,” she stated.

Speaking on JoyNews’ NewsDesk on Friday, December 19, she highlighted the region’s diverse tourism assets, including the Volta Lake, the Atlantic coastline and pristine beaches in towns such as Denu and Keta, as well as forests, mountains and vibrant local communities.

“In the Volta Region, you have the lake, you have the sea, and the beaches are clean. You have the forests, the mountains and the people,” she said.

Ms Afeku explained that establishing a world-class hospitality management institution in the region would not only serve Ghana but also attract students from neighbouring Francophone countries, positioning the country as a regional hub for tourism and hospitality training.

According to the former minister, tourism remains one of the few sectors capable of addressing Ghana’s unemployment challenge at scale.

She noted that a well-trained workforce in hospitality and tourism could be exported, generating jobs and foreign exchange for the country.

“The good thing about this industry is that once you train a skilled labour pool, you can export it,” she said.

“Tourism is an industry that can take care of Ghana’s unemployment quagmire, but we are still not seeing it treated as a priority sector.”

Ms Afeku also referenced her support for New Patriotic Party flagbearer hopeful Kennedy Ohene Agyapong, whom she said speaks passionately about tourism due to his understanding of the sector’s transformative potential.