Ghana's talent pipeline: who we train, who leaves

Is there a brain drain in Ghana? The quick answer

Yes, in one sense: trained health workers from Ghana are moving abroad in large numbers, and doctors at home are scarce. But the data supports a narrower claim than the one people usually make. We can count Ghana-educated nurses joining the UK register. We cannot count how many stay, how many come back, or how many Ghana trains in the first place.

This page puts the checkable numbers in one place, health workers first, then lawyers and engineers. "Official" means we read the figure in the publisher's own document. "Reported" means it comes from a speech, a news article or a website we could not open directly.

How many Ghanaian nurses are joining the UK register?

The UK Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC) keeps one register for nurses, midwives and nursing associates and publishes where new joiners were educated. In its 2026 annual data report, the NMC says 1,391 joiners were educated in Ghana in the year to March 2026. That makes Ghana the third largest international source. A year earlier the figure was 1,783.

The fall is real, but look at the other bars first. India's new joiners dropped from 9,249 to 4,215, and Nigeria's from 2,363 to 1,614. The NMC reports that 10,961 people educated outside the UK joined for the first time in 2025/26, 47% fewer than the 20,669 the year before. Ghana's drop of 22.0% was smaller than both, which is why it climbed to third place. The Philippines left the top three for the first time since 2015/16.

So the whole international flow slowed, and Ghana slowed less. The NMC does not say why, and the data cannot separate UK hiring, visa rules and Ghanaian decisions.

One caution. The NMC counts people who registered, not people arriving from Ghana. Someone educated in Ghana who worked in Saudi Arabia first and then registered in the UK is still a Ghana-educated joiner. The 1,391 covers the whole UK. The England-only edition lists Ghana at 984, down 13.3%, which is a different cut of the same register.

The NMC calls Ghana and Nigeria "red list" countries and says active recruitment from them is prohibited under the relevant codes of practice. It adds that nurses, midwives and nursing associates are free to decide for themselves where they practise. In other words, the joiners above are people who registered on their own account. Employers are not meant to be recruiting them.

How many Ghanaian nurses are in the UK?

New joiners are a flow. The register also holds a stock of everyone who is currently registered. In its March 2024 annual data report, the NMC listed Ghana as the fifth largest non-UK country of education, with 5,536 people on the register, up 44.2% on the year before.

The bars start at zero, so India's 62,413 makes Ghana's bar look small, which is a fair picture of scale. But Ghana's growth of 44.2% was the fastest of the five. We found no Ghana stock figure in the 2025 or 2026 reports, so do not read 5,536 as today's number.

Does the stock tell us how many Ghanaian nurses live in Britain? No. A registrant can be on the register while working elsewhere, and people leave the register each year. We have no Ghana-specific breakdown.

What would help is a count of nurses Ghana trains each year, to set beside these numbers. We could not find one published. Without it, any "share of Ghana's nurses who leave" is a guess. Our nursing programmes page lists training colleges, but a list of colleges is not a count of graduates.

What is the doctor to patient ratio in Ghana?

In Parliament on 12 March 2026, Thomas Winsum Anabah, the MP for Garu, said that according to the Ghana Medical and Dental Council there are about 12,886 registered medical doctors. In the same speech he gave the ratio as 2.66 doctors per 10,000 people and said the World Health Organization recommends at least 10 per 10,000. Another MP in the debate said the register held about 13,000.

This was a statement in a debate, so we label it reported. We could not find the Medical and Dental Council's own count.

Here is the problem. If Ghana has 12,886 doctors and about 34.4 million people (World Bank, 2024), the ratio is 3.74 per 10,000, not 2.66. A ratio of 2.66 with 12,886 doctors would mean a population near 48 million. Both numbers come from the same speech, and we cannot tell which is off.

What we can say is that under every version of the arithmetic, Ghana sits far below 10 doctors per 10,000 people. That is the benchmark the MP quoted; we did not check it against the WHO's own publication. The count also says nothing about where doctors work, and we found no regional doctor count. If you want to see what training exists in your own area, start with the regions page, or the pages for Greater Accra and Ashanti.

The Ghana Medical Association's president said in November 2022 that a survey of 360 practising doctors found about 90% had ever considered leaving the country. The report does not say who ran the survey or when. Considering leaving is not leaving.

We could not confirm a count of Ghana-trained doctors in the UK, so we leave it out.

What Ghana trains: lawyers, engineers and graduates nobody has classified

Nurses and doctors are one side of the pipeline. The other is what universities produce, and here the public numbers are thinner.

Are there more lawyers than engineers in Ghana?

Sir Sam Jonah, in remarks reported in October 2025, warned against a country that produces more lawyers than engineers. The coverage we read gave no counts from him to go with the warning. We tried to build the comparison and could not do it honestly.

The Ghana School of Law website lists 961 lawyers called to the Bar in 2025: 824 at the main call and 137 at the mini call. We could not open the page ourselves, so we treat it as reported.

For engineers, the reported numbers conflict. The provost of the KNUST College of Engineering put engineering graduates at about 6,500 a year in 2021, according to News Ghana. A 2025 news article citing the Ghana Institute of Engineers, as it names the body, says fewer than 1,000 engineering graduates enter the workforce each year on average. We could not find the underlying report.

These cannot both describe the same thing. One may count every engineering programme, including diplomas. The other may count people entering the workforce. A third number is a licensing step: 122 new Professional Engineers inducted at one ceremony in August 2022, according to the Business and Financial Times (the Ghanaian Times reported 127).

Called to the Bar is the end of the law pipeline. Engineering graduation is nearer the start of the engineering one. Setting 961 against 6,500 or 1,000 compares the wrong things, so we do not say Ghana trains more lawyers than engineers. See our law programmes page and the technical universities page for where each path is taught.

What do graduates study, and why are so many unclassified?

The UNESCO Institute for Statistics, through the World Bank, publishes the share of tertiary graduates by field for Ghana from 2015 to 2019. It is the only national field breakdown we found, and it stops in 2019.

Among graduates the data classifies, humanities and arts fell from 16.1% in 2015 to 6.4% in 2019. Health went from 2.7% to 6.7%, after peaking at 9.0% in 2016. Engineering, manufacturing and construction rose from 5.9% to 7.6%, peaking at 9.0% in 2018. Social science, business and law moved from 9.0% to 6.3%.

Do not add these up and expect 100%. In 2019, all the fields the source reports (including science, agriculture and services, which we did not chart) add up to about 36% of graduates. The rest are unclassified. A share can also move because graduates in another field were reclassified, so we do not read a trend into a single year, and the series says nothing about the years since 2019. Our school and college register, universities page and private universities page cover institutions, not graduate counts by programme.

What this does and does not show

The numbers support three statements. Ghana-educated nurses, midwives and nursing associates are one of the largest international groups joining the UK register. Ghana has few doctors by any version of the ratio. And no public source lets you compare how many lawyers and engineers Ghana trains.

They do not show that Ghana lost 1,391 nurses, because some may return and some may have worked abroad first. They do not show where the nurses trained or whether hospitals were short of them. And they do not tell us what would keep a nurse at home. That needs surveys that follow health workers over time. PollsAfrica explains how household and workforce surveys are run, and a group of nurses followed from graduation is what is missing here.

What we left out and why

We did not use the World Bank series on physicians per 1,000 people for Ghana. It jumps between 2022 and 2023 in a way that looks like a change of source, not a change in doctors.

We did not use the World Bank series on nurses and midwives per 1,000 people. It shows 4.42 in 2018 and 2.64 in 2019, a break that no real change in staffing would explain.

We left out any claim that workers were "lost", the NMC percentage shares of joiners (we could not reconcile them with the totals), a General Medical Council count of Ghana-trained doctors, and any figures for Ghanaians in the United States, Canada or the Gulf. We did not look for them this session.

Frequently asked questions

Is there a brain drain in Ghana?

Health workers trained in Ghana are joining the UK register in large numbers, and doctors at home are few. But no public source counts how many leave for good, so we cannot measure the total drain.

How many Ghanaian nurses are in the UK?

The NMC reported 5,536 Ghana-educated people on its register at March 2024. We found no newer figure for the stock. In 2025/26, 1,391 Ghana-educated nurses, midwives and nursing associates joined.

Why did the number of Ghanaian nurses joining the UK fall?

The NMC reports a 22.0% fall, from 1,783 to 1,391. International joiners overall fell 47%, so the whole flow slowed. The NMC gives no reasons, and neither can we.

How many doctors are there in Ghana?

An MP told Parliament on 12 March 2026 that the Medical and Dental Council has about 12,886 registered doctors. Another MP said about 13,000. We could not find the council's own figure.

What is the doctor to patient ratio in Ghana?

Parliament was told 2.66 doctors per 10,000 people. Dividing 12,886 doctors by Ghana's population gives 3.74. Both are below the 10 per 10,000 the MP described as the WHO recommendation.

Are there more lawyers than engineers in Ghana?

We cannot say. The Ghana School of Law website lists 961 lawyers called to the Bar in 2025. Reported engineering numbers run from under 1,000 to about 6,500 a year and count different things.

Related reading

More from the series: why girls caught up with boys in school but not in STEM, how education budgets tightened and what the numbers say about universities and TVET. For the national picture, see Ghana education in numbers, our data hub, the education data resources, teachers data and girls and boys in school. We explain our checking in the methodology. The Academy has our other learning tools.

Sources

• Nursing and Midwifery Council (UK), annual data report 2026 (checked 13 October 2026)
• Nursing and Midwifery Council (UK), annual data report March 2024 (checked 13 October 2026)
• Nursing and Midwifery Council (UK), annual data report March 2025 (checked 13 October 2026)
• Nursing and Midwifery Council (UK), 2026 data report, England edition (checked 13 October 2026)
• Parliament of Ghana, floor record, 12 March 2026 (checked 13 October 2026)
• Ghana News Agency, GMA calls for a review of conditions of service, 7 November 2022 (checked 13 October 2026)
• Ghana School of Law, call to the Bar (checked 13 October 2026)
• News Ghana, Ghana must train sufficient engineers for attainment of the SDGs (checked 13 October 2026)
• News report on Sir Sam Jonah's remarks on lawyers and engineers, 27 October 2025 (checked 13 October 2026)
• Business and Financial Times, GhIE inducts 122 new professional engineers (checked 13 October 2026)
• Ghanaian Times, award public projects to professional engineers, GhIE (checked 13 October 2026)
• World Bank Open Data, tertiary graduates in humanities, Ghana (checked 13 October 2026)
• World Bank Open Data, population, Ghana (checked 13 October 2026)