An Open Letter to GTEC: Ghana's Credential Crisis Is a Mirror - and an NQF Is the Frame | MySite

An Open Letter to GTEC: Ghana's Credential Crisis Is a Mirror - and an NQF Is the Frame

By Dr Ama Dake | Education Policy | June 2026

"We've had engagements with such individuals, but now we are moving towards naming, shaming, and legal enforcement." - Professor Abdulai Jinapor, Director-General, Ghana Tertiary Education Commission (GTEC), 2025

Dear Ghana Tertiary Education Commission,

I write to you not in criticism, but in solidarity - and with a proposal.

The campaign your Commission launched in 2025 to flush out fraudulent doctoral and professorial titles from Ghana's public life was necessary, courageous, and long overdue. When a presidential candidate cannot consistently state what subject his alleged PhD was written in - first claiming business management, then political science, in different televised interviews - something is profoundly broken. When a Deputy Minister of Health presents herself to the nation as a "Professor" by silently dropping the word "Adjunct" from an appointment letter, the problem is not merely one of vanity. It is a problem of systemic fraud - and it reaches into every office, boardroom, and parliamentary chamber where credentials are used to confer authority.

But here is the harder truth: GTEC is fighting a forest fire with a bucket.

The real question is not how to catch more fraudsters, it is how to build a system that makes fraud structurally impossible. That system has a name. It is called a National Qualifications Framework (NQF). Ghana's neighbours are building one. Ghana's sub-regional bloc, ECOWAS, has already called for it. The African Union has been constructing the continental architecture for it since 2019. And Ghana, a country that prides itself on being a leader in African governance and education, has yet to formally adopt one.

This is the conversation we need to have.

The Anatomy of a Crisis: A Nation of Invented Titles

Let us be precise about what happened in 2025, because the catalogue of cases is instructive in ways that go beyond political gossip.

Hassan Ayariga, the founder of the All Peoples Congress and former presidential candidate, received not one, not two, but four official letters from GTEC demanding proof of his claimed PhD. He appeared on live television to contest the Commission's authority. His story changed: was his doctorate in business management or political science? Was his thesis in political tolerance or political science? He could not say consistently. Yet for years, he was addressed, introduced, and reported on as "Dr. Ayariga", a title that shaped public perception of his intellectual standing during electoral campaigns.

Dr. Grace Ayensu-Danquah, Deputy Minister of Health and Member of Parliament, presented her legal team with a letter from the University of Utah confirming her appointment. The letter said "Adjunct Assistant Professor." She had been calling herself simply "Professor." GTEC's conclusion was precise: under Ghana's academic framework, an Adjunct Assistant Professor is equivalent to a part-time lecturer. One word, ‘adjunct’, was omitted. The title was inflated by a single deletion. And this, GTEC noted, was happening in the office of a person entrusted with the nation's health policy.

Rashid Tanko-Computer, CEO of the Ghana Investment Fund for Electronic Communications, claimed a PhD from Kingsnow University, an institution GTEC found to be unaccredited. Alfred Attuquaye Botchway presented credentials from the Universidad Empresarial de Costa Rica (UNEM), an institution with no recognition in Ghana and no affiliation to any Ghanaian university. His case was escalated to the National Intelligence Bureau. Two sitting Members of Parliament, Phillis Naa Koryoo Okunor of Awutu Senya East and Desmond De-Graft Paitoo of Gomoa East, received formal directives to drop their "Doctor" titles pending verification.

And at the University of Environment and Sustainable Development at Somanya, an internal auditor named Emmanuel Opoku Ware was found to have been working inside the walls of an academic institution itself, with fake qualifications.

The Vice Chancellors of Technical Universities of Ghana did not mince words:

"The cumulative effect of this trend is nothing short of catastrophic for the long-term integrity of Ghana's tertiary education system and its contribution to national development. "VCTU-G Chairman, Rev. Professor John Frank Eshun, 2025

The University Teachers Association of Ghana (UTAG) was equally direct, condemning the practice of "parading honorary doctorate degrees and fraudulent academic certificates, often from unaccredited and questionable institutions." Their declaration carries a weight that should settle into every policy corridor in Accra:

"Academic titles must be earned, not purchased, and their use must reflect the high standards of scholarship and service that they represent." UTAG, 2025

Why This Keeps Happening

Here is the uncomfortable truth that the naming-and-shaming campaign, for all its courage, cannot fully address: the fraud is easy because the verification is hard.

When there is no single, authoritative, publicly searchable national register of qualifications, one that maps every recognised credential to a defined level, with published standards, then the burden of verification falls on each institution, each employer, and each regulator independently. The system runs on trust, and trust, as 2025 demonstrated, is routinely abused. An individual can acquire a certificate from an institution in Costa Rica or an online entity styled as a "university." They can present this paper in Ghana, where no centralised register exists to immediately flag it as unrecognised. They can add the title "Dr." to their name on social media, on official letterheads, in parliamentary bios, and in public introductions. The deception compounds over time. The title becomes part of their identity. And by the time GTEC writes its first letter, let alone its fourth, the fraudulent credential has already opened doors, influenced appointments, and shaped public trust.

Education analysts have described this bluntly as "an unhealthy obsession with prestige over merit." But the obsession is only possible because the system creates no automatic resistance to it. There is no public map of what a qualification is worth, where it was earned, and whether the issuing institution is recognised. Without that map, every credential claim is, functionally, an honour system.

The Solution Ghana Already Knows About, But Has Not Adopted: What Is a National Qualifications Framework?

A National Qualifications Framework is not a bureaucratic invention. It is a principled answer to a profound question: how do we know what someone's qualification is actually worth, independent of who issued it, where it was studied, or who is evaluating it?

At its core, an NQF is a structured, publicly authoritative classification system. Every recognised qualification in a country is placed on a hierarchy of levels, typically eight to ten, according to what the holder of that qualification can demonstrate: the depth of their knowledge, the complexity of problems they can solve, the degree of autonomy they can exercise, and the breadth of responsibility they can bear. These are called level descriptors, and they define each rung of the ladder not in terms of years spent or institution attended, but in terms of learning outcomes, what you know and can do. The philosophical shift is radical. Before such frameworks existed, the equivalence question was essentially: "Is your institution comparable to ours?" After an NQF, the question becomes: "Does the holder of this qualification meet the level descriptors for this level?"

The credential is assessed against published, non-negotiable standards, not against the evaluator's impression of the applicant's country of study, institutional name, or personal connections. This is precisely why it matters for Ghana right now. South Africa's qualifications authority, SAQA, made its guiding principle explicit: "Applications are considered and processed without prejudice. No discrimination is made on the grounds of gender, race, colour, disability, language, religion, political or other opinion, national, ethnic or social origin, association with a national minority, property, birth or other status. The only consideration is the merit of the qualification for which the evaluation is sought." SAQA Policy and Criteria for Evaluating Foreign Qualifications

One sentence. The entire promise of an NQF, distilled: the only consideration is the merit of the qualification.

The Levels, The Descriptors, and The Lock

Here is how the architecture works, and why it closes the loopholes that Ghana's fraudsters currently exploit.

An NQF assigns every recognised qualification to a numbered level. In South Africa's ten-level NQF, a Matric certificate sits at Level 4. A three-year bachelor's degree sits at Level 7. An honours degree at Level 8. A master's at Level 9. A PhD at Level 10. Each level has a published descriptor, a detailed statement of what any holder of a qualification at that level must be able to demonstrate across categories that include: scope of knowledge, problem-solving ability, method and procedure, ethics and professional practice, and accountability. Crucially, professorship is a rank, not a qualification level. It is earned through a process of academic appointment and promotion within a recognised institution, not by receiving a certificate from an unaccredited entity in Costa Rica. An NQF with a properly maintained register would make this distinction visible to any employer, any appointment committee, any parliamentary vetting body, and any journalist. The question "does this person hold a recognised PhD?" would be answerable in seconds, not through months of letter-writing.

The framework also draws a hard line between earned qualifications and honorary ones. Under a functioning NQF, an honorary doctorate is not placed on the register as an academic qualification at Level 10, because it was not earned through the academic process that Level 10 describes. Holders of honorary doctorates may be celebrated and recognised. But they may not claim the academic standing that the Level 10 descriptor confers. The distinction is built into the architecture. This is what GTEC is trying to enforce through letters, press conferences and live television debates. An NQF would enforce it automatically.

What Africa Is Already Doing, and Ghana Is Missing

The Continental Architecture Is Being Built Around Ghana

Ghana cannot afford to treat this as a distant, theoretical ambition. The qualifications infrastructure of the African continent is being assembled right now, at three levels, and Ghana's participation at the national level is the prerequisite for meaningful integration at every level above it.

ECOWAS, Ghana's own sub-regional community, adopted a convention as far back as 2003 on the recognition and equivalence of qualifications. The principle is clear: if a certificate is recognised in the home country, it should be recognised across the community. ECOWAS has gone further, recommending that Bachelor's, Master's, and Doctorate degrees within the community be standardised in terms of entry requirements, credit load, graduation requirements, and grading systems. Countries like Senegal, Nigeria, and Cape Verde are actively developing their national frameworks within this regional logic. Ghana, a founding voice of West African integration, has yet to operationalise an NQF that can plug into this system. To the south, the Southern African Development Community Qualifications Framework (SADCQF) is operational. South Africa, Botswana, Namibia, Mauritius, Zambia, Mozambique, and Seychelles are aligned to it. To the east, the East African Qualifications Framework for Higher Education (EAQFHE) links Rwanda, Kenya, and their neighbours. Rwanda, a country that emerged from catastrophic collapse barely three decades ago, approved a new, integrated national qualifications framework in 2021.

And above all of these sits the African Continental Qualifications Framework (ACQF), the largest Regional Qualifications Framework ever created, intending to coordinate qualifications from 55 African countries and 8 regional communities. It is underpinned by the African Union's Agenda 2063 and the AU's Free Movement Protocol, which specifies that member states shall establish a continental qualifications framework to encourage and promote the free movement of persons. The ACQF has been developed with the African Union Commission, the European Union, GIZ, and the European Training Foundation. It is ready to receive national frameworks and align them to continental-level descriptors. Ghana is a member of all of these bodies. But without a functioning NQF of its own, Ghana cannot connect to any of them in a meaningful way. It cannot tell the ECOWAS system what a Ghanaian certificate is worth. It cannot tell the ACQF how Ghanaian qualifications map to continental levels. It cannot protect its own citizens from fake foreign credentials, because it has no authoritative map of what a genuine credential at each level looks like.

The architecture is being built. The question is whether Ghana will have a seat at the table, or whether it will remain in a position of having to write four letters to a former presidential candidate asking him to prove that his PhD exists.

What a Ghanaian NQF Would Actually Do: From Reactive to Preventive

Consider, concretely, what would have been different in 2025 if Ghana had a functioning, publicly searchable NQF with a national qualifications register.

When Rashid Tanko-Computer claimed a PhD from Kingsnow University, any vetting committee, whether for his CEO appointment or any future public office, could have searched the register. Kingsnow University would not appear on the list of recognised institutions. The credential would flag automatically. No letter would need to be written. When Alfred Attuquaye Botchway presented certificates from UNEM in Costa Rica, any employer conducting due diligence could have confirmed in moments that UNEM holds no recognition in Ghana and that its certificates do not appear on the national register. The National Intelligence Bureau would not need to be called. A bank would not need to be embarrassed by its director being investigated by a state security agency.

When Hassan Ayariga claimed a PhD, any citizen, any journalist could look up his name on a public qualifications register and see whether a verified doctorate is recorded against it. If it is there, GTEC would have no grounds for inquiry. If it is not there, the burden of proof would already be established before the first letter was sent. When Grace Ayensu-Danquah's team submitted a letter from the University of Utah, a qualifications framework with clear level descriptors and definitions of academic rank would provide the standard against which "Adjunct Assistant Professor" and "Professor" could be assessed, not as a matter of GTEC's opinion, but as a matter of published, contestable, legally binding definition.

What the Framework Would Contain

A Ghanaian NQF would need, at a minimum:

A national qualifications register - a publicly searchable, continuously updated database of all qualifications recognised within Ghana, mapped to NQF levels, with the name of the awarding institution and its accreditation status.

A register of recognised institutions - every university, polytechnic, technical institute, and professional body authorised to award qualifications in Ghana, with its accreditation history and status. Kingsnow University and UNEM would not appear on this list.

Published level descriptors - clear, publicly available statements of what the holder of a qualification at each level (say, Levels 1 through 10, matching the South African model) must know, be able to do, and take responsibility for. These descriptors would define, unambiguously, what a PhD (Level 10) means in terms of demonstrated competence, and what it does not mean. They would similarly define what professorship is: an academic rank conferred by appointment, not a certificate level on the NQF.

A foreign qualifications evaluation function - modelled on SAQA's Centre for the Evaluation of Educational Qualifications (CEEQ), this office would locate foreign qualifications within the Ghanaian NQF using outcome-based comparison. It would answer, objectively, whether a qualification from Costa Rica, the United States, or anywhere else is equivalent to a Ghanaian qualification at a given level.

Recognition of Prior Learning (RPL) - a mechanism to allow individuals who have learned through experience, informal training, or non-traditional pathways to have their competencies formally assessed and placed on the NQF. This makes the system inclusive, not merely elite, ensuring that artisans, technicians, and self-taught practitioners can earn formal recognition.

A Call to Action: To GTEC - Transform the Campaign into Architecture

Your 2025 campaign demonstrated two things: that the political will to act exists, and that letter-writing alone is insufficient. You cannot name-and-shame your way to a credible qualifications system. You can only build one. I call on GTEC to lead the development of a Ghana National Qualifications Framework, not as an academic exercise, but as a live, operational, legally grounded system, with the following milestones:

Immediate: Establish a publicly searchable national register of all currently recognised qualifications and accredited institutions, linked to GTEC's existing database. This alone would prevent the majority of the cases documented in 2025.
Short-term: Convene a national stakeholder process, involving universities, UTAG, the Vice Chancellors' forums, professional bodies, employers, TVET institutions, and civil society, to develop Ghana's NQF levels and level descriptors. South Africa, Kenya, Rwanda, and Mauritius have all done this. Ghana can learn from their experience without repeating their early mistakes.
Medium-term: Formally align Ghana's NQF to the ECOWAS qualifications framework and initiate the referencing process to the ACQF. This would give Ghanaian qualifications continental legibility and protect Ghanaian workers seeking recognition in other African countries.
Legislative: Strengthen the Education Regulatory Bodies Act, 2020 (Act 1023) to explicitly criminalise the fraudulent use of unearned academic titles, and to mandate the use of the national qualifications register for all public sector appointments, promotions, and vetting processes. As one Ghanaian commentator rightly asked: why not simply make it a criminal offence to use the title "Dr." when it is an honorary degree? The answer is: there is no good reason not to.

To Parliament: Make Credential Verification Mandatory

The 2025 cases included two sitting Members of Parliament. This is not a footnote, it is a signal that title fraud has penetrated the nation's highest deliberative body. Parliament should legislate mandatory, publicly verifiable credential disclosure for all persons holding or seeking public office, with results published on a national register. The electorate has a right to know whether the people making laws on their behalf hold the academic credentials they claim.

To Ghanaian Employers and Universities: Stop Trusting Paper

Until Ghana's NQF is operational, every institution that appoints, promotes, or vets individuals based on academic credentials must do the work that the system has not yet automated. Call the awarding institution. Write to the relevant national qualifications authority in the country of award. Search international databases of accredited universities. The Business and Financial Times put it plainly:

"The infiltration of fake and substandard PhDs has wider implications for education and national development. A genuine doctoral programme is designed to train the mind to question, analyse, and solve problems. It demands discipline, patience, and originality."

A fake PhD does not just misrepresent one person. It displaces someone who earned theirs honestly. It places unqualified decision-making in positions where qualified reasoning is required. And in a health ministry, an audit service, a financial institution, or a parliamentary committee, the consequences are not merely reputational, they are material.

Conclusion: The Map Ghana Needs

There is a Ghanaian proverb that says: "The ruin of a nation begins in the homes of its people." In the context of education, we might adapt it: the ruin of a nation's credentials begins in the silence of its systems. GTEC's 2025 campaign was not a ruin, it was a reckoning. It proved that Ghanaians, their academic institutions, and their civil society are ready to demand that titles mean something. The Vice Chancellors said so. UTAG said so. Social media said so. Even commentators urging compassion for those who had carried honorary titles for decades were not defending the fraud, they were asking for a humane transition to a better system.

That better system is the National Qualifications Framework. It is not a foreign imposition. It is a tool that Ghana's own ECOWAS community has endorsed, that Ghana's continental body is constructing, and that Ghana's neighbours, including Rwanda, which rebuilt its entire education system from rubble, have already put in place.

What an NQF ultimately offers is not a bureaucratic constraint. It is a promise: that in Ghana, a credential means what it says it means; that the word "Doctor" maps to a defined, publicly verifiable level of demonstrated knowledge and original contribution; that the word "Professor" describes a journey through academic appointment, not a certificate bought from a website; and that the hard work of learning the years in libraries, the failed experiments, the defended dissertations, the peer-reviewed papers is protected from being cheapened by those who would shortcut it with a printer and a plausible-sounding institution name.

Ghana does not need more letters. Ghana needs the map.

And GTEC, with the mandate, the institutional standing, the public backing of the universities, and the political moment, is the body best positioned to draw it.

Key References

Education Regulatory Bodies Act, 2020 (Act 1023), Republic of Ghana
GTEC directives and correspondence, April–November 2025
UTAG Statement of Support for GTEC, July 2025
VCTU-G Statement, July 2025
SAQA Policy and Criteria for Evaluating Foreign Qualifications (South Africa)
African Continental Qualifications Framework (ACQF) Guidelines, 2022
ECOWAS Convention on the Recognition and Equivalence of Qualifications, 2003
Allais, S. (2007). Why the South African NQF Failed. European Journal of Education, 42(4)
Cedefop (2018). Analysis and Overview of NQF Level Descriptors in European Countries