Upper East Region has 565 out of 28,859 Ph.D holders in Ghana – GSS

The Upper East Region, according to the latest Population and Housing Census by the Ghana Statistical Service, has a total of 565 PhD holders.

It is expected that this number may have increased or decreased just a little considering the fact that some persons were in the process of acquiring PhD when the census was done, while some may have died after the census was done.

According to the GSS 2021 PHC the Greater Accra Region has the highest with a total of 11454 PhD holders as at 2021. Second is Ashanti Region with 5157, the Central region had 3788, while Northern Region also had 1663.

Occupying the fifth position is Eastern Region with 1485, followed by the Western region 1448 (which ends the regions with 1000s).

The Volta region leads the regions with the 100s and occupies the 7th position on the national chart, with 975 PhD holders, followed by the Bono Region with 774. Upper East Region is at the 9th position with 565, closely followed by the Upper West Region at the 10th position with 516 PhD holders.

Bono has 293, Western North 204, Ahafo 181, Oti 162, North East region has 103 and Savannah region has 91 PHD holders, which includes Dr. Afisah Zakariah who was awarded for being the Best Chief Director at the just ended Civil Service Awards.

There is an ongoing social media discussion over the importance of PhD in the development of regions and communities, considering the number of PhD holders in various fields, including Health, Education, Economics, Psychology, and Agriculture and yet Ghana does not seem to be scoring excellently in all these areas.

It is not clear why the Ghana Statistical Services seeks to achieve this information, for some persons in academia, it is a wake-up call to universities and colleges of education in regions with low numbers to produce more PhD holders to lessen the burden of attracting lecturers and specialists to teach and render specialized services.

Source: A1radioonline.com|101.1 MHz|Ghana