The Nation Builder’s Corps (NABCO) program will end on September 1, 2022, according to Finance Minister Ken Ofori-Atta.
On Monday, July 25, he made this statement when delivering the mid-year budget review to Parliament.
“Mr. Speaker, our iconic National Builder’s Corps (NaBCo) programme, which was initially to run for three years and extended for an additional year, will be completed by 1st September 2022. The Programme- which engaged 100,000 young graduates, has prepared thousands of them for the world of work. So far we have invested approximately GH¢2.2 billion,” he said.
“As they exit, the current cohort on the programme are encouraged to take advantage of the YouStart initiative and other existing programmes in our drive to Build an Entrepreneurial Nation,” he added.
On May 1, 2018, President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo launched the NABCO program.
When the program was first introduced, Mr. Akufo-Addo expressed confidence that by the time NABCO students graduated, “the requisite work readiness skills and experience, often deemed a barrier to their employment as fresh graduates, would have been resolved.”
“NABCO will be the vehicle to deliver one hundred thousand (100,000) jobs in seven (7) prioritised areas, defined as the following modules: Educate Ghana; Heal Ghana; Feed Ghana; Revenue Ghana; Digitise Ghana; Enterprise Ghana; and Civic Ghana,” Mr. Akufo-Addo remarked at the time.
President Akufo-Addo outlined the justification for the Corps’ creation by pointing out that Ghanaians have been tragically affected for far too long by the terrible reality of youth unemployment.
The problem, he claimed, was exacerbated by the International Monetary Fund’s prohibition on public sector hiring, which the Mahama government had engaged into at the time and which he inherited.
“I gave an indication that a new employment scheme will be launched to tackle the issue of the growing numbers of graduates exiting our tertiary institutions with no job placements in sight,” he said.
