Youth development policy in Ghana has provoked a vigorous political showdown as Hon. Vincent Ekow Assafuah blames President John Dramani Mahama’s administration for systematically neglecting young people in light of the lack of funding for the National Youth Authority (NYA) and the Youth Employment Agency (YEA) by the 2026 budget. Basing an attack on the issue’s routineity on the budget, the Old Tafo MP described the issue not as an adjustment to the balance sheet but as what he termed a “calculated neglect” of the future workforce.
Young people feel frustration as a burgeoning problem of confidence in leadership: promises of empowerment turn to what he named “policy abandonment,” he said. He makes the point that under the National Youth Authority Act, 2016 (Act 939), as reflected in the NYA’s mandate to coordinate youth programmes throughout his country, and have received no allocation from the DACF in 2026 despite a provision of clear legislation in the National Youth Authority Act; 2016 (Act 939).
This omission has been said, according to Assafuah, to cripple the institution, making it feel like a shell without substance, he maintained. He highlighted the difference between the present and the previous years, explaining that since 2017, the Authority had sustained ongoing financing between 2017 and 2025 that has kept training programs and youth centres, youth workshops and district workings at the Center in operation. That continuity, he said, is now abruptly being slashed, with the allocation in 2026 amounting to zero an outcome he calls “a complete policy reversal.”
Although official figures from the government point to GH₵180 million allocated for youth-oriented programs in the 2026 budget, Assafuah denounced them as deceptive. GH₵150 million is instead pinned in the National Apprenticeship Programme, which means only GH₵30 million is available for the Authority’s core operations funds he cautioned that could never materialise. “You cannot say you’re making programs for the youth while starving the very institution they are supposed to implement them,” he said, noting that, “they said they’d provide opportunity, and what we’re seeing now is abandonment.”
The MP also challenged the rationale of public spending, maintaining that the amount of money devoted to DACF has grown and that the NYA not doing much, especially the ratio of GH₵7.51 billion in 2025 to GH₵8.77 billion in 2026. He described this as a brazen contradiction which leaves behind such misallocated national priorities he holds a strong sense of ownership in. The director also pointed out that a whole series of expenditures, including GH₵10 million for two separate initiatives and GH₵131 million of operations within the DACF also point to a disturbing preference for bureaucracy versus direct investment in youths’ development, in his budget analysis.
Hon. Ekow Assafuah said the effects are already being felt throughout the country. Youth centres are incomplete, district offices are suffering, and programmes are stalled, leaving youth without the support networks they require. And so the true cost of the funding shortfall will be borne by young Ghanaians, whose prospects are consistently disappearing. He also called for answers to what he referred to as “unavoidable national questions,” including the status of a statutory 5 percent DACF allocation to youth and the fact that budgeted funds are not being converted into real expenditures. The MP ended with his call for urgent intervention suggesting that government should restore NYA funding, release operational resources, and deepen the transparency mechanisms to ensure accountability.
Editor:
Obiri-Yeboah
