Registrar of the Ghana Scholarships Secretariat (SCHOLSEC), Alex Kwaku Asafo-Agyei, has defended the government’s decision to shift focus from international to local scholarships.

He cited an overwhelming external debt burden and the need to reinvest in Ghana’s tertiary institutions.

“At some point, we must take our decisions and that is how we concluded that we need to prioritise our local institutions,” he said.

“We owe UK institutions to the tune of about £40 million, that’s nearly GH¢1 billion. If we owed this amount to our local institutions instead, they’d be able to expand infrastructure and acquire the very equipment we claim they lack and for which reason we choose to study abroad.”

His comments came at the official launch of the 2025 Local Tertiary Scholarships Programme in Accra, where 5,000 fully funded awards were announced for the 2025/2026 academic year.

The initiative, according to Mr. Asafo-Agyei, aligns with President John Dramani Mahama’s vision of a fair and inclusive education system that empowers Ghana’s youth and strengthens national institutions.

Of the 5,000 scholarships, 2,000 awards will be provided to brilliant but needy students, selected and administered through tertiary institutions with Scholarship Secretariat oversight and 3,000 awards granted through a competitive national application process open to all qualified candidates.