Aspiring New Patriotic Party (NPP) flag bearer Dr. Yaw Osei Adutwum has declared that STEM is the game-changer in Ghana’s fight against poverty and his central reason for seeking to lead the country.

Speaking on Joy News’ PM Express on September 16, he said his quest to become president is driven by a vision to overturn the status quo and chart a new path through education and innovation.

“President of Ghana means that you have a mindset that tells you that things can be better than what I’ve inherited or what I see today,” he said.

“If I ask anybody, what’s the greatest challenge facing Ghana on the street, a number of them will talk about the cost of living, issues, things are very difficult.

"At the end of the day, I conclude that the greatest threat facing this nation is poverty, and that we have to be frontal with it.”

The former Education Minister argued that poverty is the enemy Ghana must confront with fresh thinking.

“We have to have a mindset that says we need to turn things upside down and ask ourselves some serious questions.

"Why is it that we built factories in the 1960s, but they are gone. Why is it that we started so well, and countries like Singapore come here and they marvel at the pace of transformation of Ghana?

"In fact, some economists thought that Ghana will be the first black nation to become developed. What went wrong? What did we miss?”

Dr. Adutwum pointed to Singapore’s example under Lee Kuan Yew as evidence that education, particularly in science and technology, is the true foundation of transformation.

“When Lee Kuan Yew came to Ghana and visited us in 1963, he was amazed as to the Ghanaian transformation that was taking place at the time.

"In fact, it is on record that he wrote in his diary that he’s seen something in Africa and Ghana has gold, diamond, cocoa, other resources that he doesn’t have, but he was going to focus on human capital development.”

According to him, Singapore’s focus on STEM education was the turning point.

“It is also said that he mentioned the fact that he didn’t understand why a developing country will have such a great university, but the university was being headed by a non-scientist.

"So in his mind, he knew clearly that education was what was going to change Singapore, but not just any education, STEM education at the foundation, built on it with engineering innovation. Then, before you know it, you have a country that is emerging out of poverty.”

Dr. Adutwum insisted that Ghana must adopt the same formula.

“Essentially, my quest to become, first the flag bearer of the NPP and then to become the president of Ghana is for us to do what we have never done, for us to directly look at poverty and say, what kind of education system should we create that will enable us to become innovators, critical thinkers, collaborators, effective communicators, what is called the four CS, so that we can begin to tackle our issues around it through a different prism.

"We need to be able to look at age-old problems with a new set of eyes and devise solutions that we’ve never seen before.”