For the third most powerful person inside the Flagstaff house, the raw power of her position was lost in her expressions.
The only thing powerful was the smell of her nicely scented office.
Mrs Frema Osei Opare responded to questions with the humility and respect of a beauty pageant contestant.
And when I asked that we roll back the years into her younger days, her eyes literally rolled back in anatomical response.
The setting was 1967. The things that were in short supply did not include jobs and graduate unemployment, was a paradox. “Things were a bit easy” she reflected. Fresh out of Sixth Form with career options as wide as her third-floor office.
Russian expats had returned to their country leaving holes for teaching roles across the country. She would pick one of these offers, accepting to teach at her alma mater St. Monica’s SHS in the Ashanti region while she was on holidays.
Over there, she taught General Science and had fun playing hockey. She would go on to the University of Ghana and graduate with a safe job as a Research Assistant.
Mrs.Osei reminisced the days when Ghana Commercial Bank would pull up an advert in the Daily Graphic floating job offers for all types of graduates.
Today, the bank offers loads of needy CVs to a greedy shredder.
Mrs Opare would go on to become a lecturer at the University of Ghana and found herself torn between leaving the safe sanctuary of secured tenure as a lecturer and a new opportunity at the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the UN on a two-year contract.
She had to choose the uncertainty of the new over the certainty of the old.
“I never came back”, she found herself enjoying the practical field of non-governmental organisations and organising women in fisheries project in Uganda, Ethiopia, Namibia and Congo.
“I have been lucky” she looked back a professional career spanning more than 20years.
The Chief of Staff recognised how times have so vastly changed. Banks don’t chase graduates. Graduates harass banks.
Some 50 years after her first job as a teacher, the employment landscape has changed considerably. Employers were willing to train a zoology graduate to become a marketing executive or branch manager.
But with 71,000 graduates hitting the job market every year, employers are spoilt for choice and opt for more specialised ready-for-the-job graduate than one needing on-the-job-training.
With the benefit of being a part of the world gone-by, the Chief of Staff stood over, gazed into the new and recognised “the world has moved on.”
‘What would you do if you were 22 years old again?’, a question flew in.
“Entrepreneurship”, Mrs Frema Opare laid down the answer like a court order. She said, “this world is for doers”. It is for those who don’t like to “sit and wait”.
She told the story of young Ghanaians who left Harvard to do groundnut farming here in the country and have never looked back. “They can’t even meet demand”, she said. Her niece, she said, finished KNUST degree program in Biochemistry.
And when that job proved elusive, she started a sewing business and began a part-time Masters.
She felt proud of her niece who now employs a handful to help meet business demand and when she completes her Masters, she hopes to be in a better employment position.
This is why for her, the most important contribution she can make in the lives of young people is to remove barriers to job creation and entrepreneurship.
She felt the responsibility of David who though barred from building a temple for God, made sure he procured all the necessary logistics for his son Solomon to do the work of his generation.
Today, denied the benefit of supple youth, she wants to provide the policies, programmes for Ghana’s sons and daughters to build a temple of opportunities and jobs.
The Chief of Staff explained that this is the government’s thinking when it rolled out one factory, one district and a $100m entrepreneurship program.
She stressed that a factory doesn’t have to be anything big. All big things are first mental and often small to start. A small processing machine is good enough.
Frema Opare rallied young Ghanaians to try something on their own recalling how she had to step into another new world of opportunities during her career as a lecturer.
The opportunities in the past are different from the ones here today, she said but the template for taking advantage remains the same.
“Believe in yourself”, she said and venture out. “There is always going to be a struggle” she conceded.
She said society often looks down on a man trying to roll up his sleeves to do something for himself.
She found these social pressure to conform, troubling and asked parents not to put too much pressure on their children to get a salaried work like the many or to buy a car early simply because lots of other young people have it.
She said parental attitudes can really stand in the way of entrepreneurship and urged guardians to give their wards a break.
“Let them try something on their own” she urged. Mrs Frema Opare is 69 years old but with the benefit of hindsight, recognising how everything has fallen into place, she is convinced that the path of an initiative is eventually rewarding if young people don’t give up and settle down.
The work of her government is to stand in the stands cheering her lungs out to urge the players on and in this endeavour, she expressed an eagerness to play her role as the Presidency’s number three cheerleader.
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