A stakeholder discussion on the execution of the government’s No-Fees-Stress Initiative, an intervention proposed by President John Dramani Mahama as part of his Resetting Ghana Agenda, has been initiated by Ghana’s Minister for Education, Haruna Iddrisu.
The project aims to gradually lower the financial obstacles that keep some Ghanaian students from pursuing higher education, according to the Education Minister.
According to Mr. Iddrisu’s Facebook statement, many Ghanaian families have historically experienced mixed emotions upon being accepted into a postsecondary institution. The thrill of academic success is frequently accompanied by worries about how to pay for tuition and other educational costs.
According to him, the No-Fees-Stress Initiative aims to solve this issue by preventing the expense of postsecondary education from becoming an impassable barrier to students’ goals. The initiative, he clarified, combines four complimentary measures.
The first is the No Academic Fees Policy for first-year students, which aims to relieve newly admitted students of the immediate pressure of paying academic fees.
The second is Free Tertiary Education for Persons with Disabilities, which is intended to make sure that a person’s handicap does not prevent them from pursuing higher education.
Students Loan Plus, which offers extra financial assistance to students to help cover the larger costs of postsecondary education, is another component of the strategy.
In order to make student financing more accessible and affordable, the fourth intervention is an upgraded Traditional Student Loan, which offers larger loan amounts coupled with noticeably lower interest rates.
According to Mr. Iddrisu, the stakeholder dialog offers a chance to evaluate the initiative’s execution, hear about the experiences of students and higher education institutions, pinpoint obstacles, and bolster interventions as needed.
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He pointed out that President Mahama first pledged to lessen the financial burden of postsecondary education on Ghanaian students and their families in the 2024 NDC Resetting Ghana Manifesto.
The Minister added that on July 4, 2025, the No-Fees-Stress Initiative was launched, putting that vow into practice.
He emphasized that the government, higher education institutions, parents, students, student finance organizations, development partners, and other stakeholders must all work together for the program to succeed.
“Our shared objective must remain clear: to ensure that no Ghanaian student is denied the opportunity to pursue tertiary education simply because of financial constraints,” Mr Iddrisu stated.