Accra, Dec 09, GNA – Ninety-one thousand, Seven hundred and twenty three Ghanaians were awarded scholarships by the Scholarship Secretariat and the Ghana Education Trust Fund (GETfund) from 2012 to 2020 to pursue various academic programmes.
Dr Yaw Osei Adutwum, the Minister of Education, who revealed this said the Government had over the years granted scholarship opportunities to citizens at various academic levels, saying the Scholarship Secretariat from 2012-2020 had awarded a total of 88,140 scholarships, which was made up of 6,517 foreign and 81,623 local scholarships.
Concerning the GETFund, Dr Adutwum said the institution awarded a total number of 6,073 scholarships from 2012 to 2020.
Dr Adutwum made the revelation on the floor of Parliament in response to a question posed by Mr Kofi Okyere-Agyekum, Member of Parliament for Fanteakwa South, on the number of scholarships given to Ghanaians from January 2012 to December, 2020.
The Minister said the yearly breakdown of the number of scholarships granted to Ghanaians by the Scholarship Secretariat within the period were as follows; 2012/2013 , 673 foreign tertiary scholarships and 4,651 local scholarships.
For the 2013/2014 academic year the Scholarship Secretariat awarded 445 foreign tertiary scholarships and 4,822 local scholarships.
Whilst for the period 2014/2015, there were 485 foreign tertiary scholarships and 5,462 local scholarships.
During the 2015/2016 academic year the Scholarship Secretariat awarded 581 foreign scholarships and 5,746 local scholarships.
In 2016/2017 the Secretariat awarded 692 foreign scholarships and 6,432 local scholarships; whereas in the 2017/2018, the Scholarship Secretariat gave 751 foreign scholarships and 11,480 local scholarships.
Within 2018/2019, there were 1,511 foreign scholarships and 13,980 local scholarships, whilst during the 2019/2020 academic year the Scholarship Secretariat awarded 1,379 foreign scholarships and 29,000 local scholarships.
Touching on the GETFund, Dr Adutwum noted that from 2012 to 2016, 2,490 Ghanaians benefitted from the GETFund Scholarship; while 3,583 scholarships were awarded by the GETFund from 2017 to 2020, which was made up of 679 foreign scholarships and 2,904 local scholarships.
The Minister gave the breakdown for scholarships awarded by the GETFund from 2017 to 2020 as follows; for 2017/2018 there 104 foreign scholarships and 335 local scholarships.
Dr Adutwum said in the 2018/2019 academic year the GETFund granted 206 foreign tertiary scholarships and 812 local tertiary scholarships; whereas for the 2019/2020 academic year, it awarded 369 foreign tertiary scholarships and 1,757 local tertiary scholarships.
