Rejoinder: I built a house in Ghana within two years, I will choose Finland over U.S – Finland-based Ghanaian

I have read with great interest Mr. Eric Nyamekye's interview on SVTV Africa with DJ Nyaami with the above title, published on Ghanaweb and on other media blogs on the 16th of June, 2022.

What Mr. Eric Nyamekye said in the interview was not far from the truth. However, a couple of issues need to be addressed because, a misleading impression was created that does not entirely reflect the reality on the ground.

I have lived in Finland for almost 15 years. I have done and continue to do both menial and professional jobs to survive and to raise money for my long-term goal of becoming a Technology Entrepreneur.

I have studied from Bachelor level to the PhD level in English in Finnish Universities, and also hold Finnish Teacher Post Graduate Certificate in Pedagogy and Education Science. I work currently as a Finnish Cultural Foundation Post-Docs in Companies fellow, as an Artificial Intelligence Scientist in a Finnish Energy Start-up Company. On part-time basis, I also work both in factories and as an adjunct lecturer for Sustainability Engineering and Business in a Finnish University of Applied Sciences. I lecture only in English.

Despite living in Finland for all these years, I don’t speak the language, except few sentences, but that hasn’t stopped me from finding work. It is true that speaking Finnish language plays an important role in acquiring a professional job, but it doesn’t give you the job automatically. It is also incorrect, that a certificate in English from a Finnish university or from a foreign university will give you nothing but a cleaning job.

Ruling out the fact that Finns and other white people are sometimes favoured in some professional jobs, Mr. Nyamekye failed to address the most important reason why we have challenges in getting professional jobs. It seems that for majority of us, the most important thing about living abroad is to "chase" money by all means. It may be because of the need to show off to people back home, how well we are doing abroad, or maybe, due to their so-called competition with peers’ back home which may include the president and CEOs in Ghana. For many, building a house or houses back home is the only sign of being successful abroad whether you are ever going to live in it or not.

In the process, they forget what after that? Due to the urge to make as much money as fast as possible, some educated Africans, unfortunately, haven't considered the importance of building a career. Instead, they rather contend with working in jobs which are the easiest to get like cleaning, for example. That leads to situations where it is sometimes the only experience they have on their CV. How do you compete with for example, a Finnish Mechanical Engineer with 14 years of relevant experience, despite your Mechanical Engineering degree if your only experience is from cleaning?

Finns generally are highly educated and skilled. As an immigrant, you need to be equally or even more skilled when competing for the same job with a Finn. The Finnish society begins exposing their citizens to jobs when they are as young as 15 years of age, during school holidays.

You may have the same level of education as a Finn, but your experience may not be equivalent to competing with them. Another problem is that; some people pursue courses that have limited employment opportunities. For example, someone coming from Ghana with political science or library studies or someone who pursues a PhD e.g. in religious studies may end up in cleaning or other unrelated jobs because of the limited job opportunities in those fields.

On the other hand, if you have an IT or healthcare degree your chances of landing a job are a lot higher because the demand for the workforce on these fields is much higher. That is why I encourage immigrants here to look into available options and compare them to the current job markets. If you choose for instance nursing, and learn Finnish language alongside, you will land a permanent job, even before you graduate. The issue of employment is not about the language in which one acquired their certificate as claimed by Mr. Nyamekye, but the experience and the job prospects for one's area of specialization.

Finland is a good place to live, and Ghanaians could consider it as an option alongside the UK and US. Having said that, leaving a career or a professional job to come here depends on your goals. The history of migration to Finland is still young and can’t be compared to UK and the USA where people have migrated to for many decades. So one should expect limitations in the Finnish system in terms of professional jobs when migrating to Finland.

It is quite likely that you won’t land the same job you left back home. Instead, you most likely have to start from the beginning and find your way out. In spite of these limitations, Finland has managed to build a society that has equal opportunities and, even immigrants benefit equally from the system. I am one of the beneficiaries. I will always remain grateful to the country for changing the life of the son of a poor mother from a small town in the Eastern Region of Ghana. I attended Akwatia Technical Institute. As a technical school graduate, my future was going to be defined and surely limited as an electrician despite my capability. Everyone would attest that it would've been very challenging for me to progress to the level of PhD with that background if I had remained in Ghana.

In Finland, you can easily change your career path at any point along your way. You can enter university both from vocational and secondary school. Education was my sole motivation in relocating to Finland, where education at all levels is free for its residents.

Let me emphasize, that there is nothing wrong with working as a cleaner. Finnish society is built on trust, honesty, hard work, education, and respect for all irrespective of who you are or the job you do. Finnish people take pride in whatever they do, and do not despise people for what they do. That is why you may find a degree holder doing cleaning as a side or full-time job whilst looking for a professional job. It is not shameful in Finland because all professions are respected. Cleaning is a job as any other and you can study to earn a certificate in a vocational school for it.

I agree with what Mr. Nyamekye said about salaries. The salary for cleaning is quite good, but 11-12 euros per hour will not make you live in Finland like the CEO or president of Ghana. To get such money, you need to do 2-3 cleaning jobs which means sacrificing your sleep and leisure time. It’s wrong for hardworking Ghanaians to think that those doing cleaning work or menial jobs here are living better than the president and CEOs in Ghana. Mr. Nyamekye is not the first person I've heard making such a claim. They may feel that they earn more than CEO’s and other professionals in Ghana, but it seems they are deceiving themselves.

It’s just an unreasonable scorning of hardworking Ghanaians back home, in other to feel self-important. We cannot draw such a correlation on earnings, comparing profiles one on one. The hard truth is that people in Ghana also have respectable careers, are happy, have a leisure time with family, and have money to live a comfortable life. Can Mr. Nyamekye honestly say that he enjoys life the same way here in Finland? Who would honestly like to work 16-18 hrs. cleaning, for 3000 - 4000 Euros, if you have an opportunity to earn the same money with one job and have enough sleep and time to spend with your family? If one is able to live a comfortable life with one job, then it comes down to working smarter and not harder, contrary to how Mr. Nyamekye encouraged Ghanaians to leave Ghana and come here by all means to work harder. Life here is not as rosy as Mr. Nyamekye claims. I agree that life abroad can give us opportunities but not without sacrifice as we all who live here know.