Often, I hear people say the bane of Ghana is ineffective leadership, and I agree. For a very long time after the first republic, the country has had a long stint of visionless leadership. Some may argue that the periods leading to and the early parts of the fourth republic had some purpose, but on a broad scale, we have dealt ourselves a bad hand for a long time.
They say children are the future, but most of our children have no future.
When a video emerged from the dining halls of Keta Senior High School, I was shocked at people’s shock. I guess it was just a display of our classic hypocritical tendencies.
We like to pretend because 11 years before that video, we ate the same in school. Protein was almost always non-existent except on the days we had our treat, Jolof rice with fried fish.
I remember my first time at a traditional hall at the University of Ghana. My first impression of the venue was that the place was a dining hall. Obviously, it wasn’t being used for that purpose anymore.
My thoughts were confirmed when I later found out that most of the people who are now at the helm of affairs were fed three good meals a day during their time at the university. According to some accounts, they even had buffet nights and had a reason to protest because they were fed too much chicken.
The people who managed the affairs of the country then knew the importance of nutrition as a complement to education. Though the nature of their crops sometimes makes you wonder, but I think we all know the fact.
I have always wondered why it was so difficult for successive governments to implement the public policy of school feeding. Provide one decent hot meal for children in schools. Then I came across a piece of information indicating that we didn’t birth this program. This was an initiative from one of the so-called developmental agencies for the vulnerable.
This means, as a nation, after our leaders have been fed good meals at the university, we still couldn’t identify the essence of providing nutrition to young pupils. So how can we see value in sustaining the program?
You may say the actual concept of the School Feeding Program was birthed locally out of the Comprehensive African Agricultural Development Programme (CAADP) but as I see it, it started as an initiative that could provide free money and remained an avenue to squander money.
According to the AU-NEPAD, the supposed school feeding program, CAADP Pillar III, is a deliberate attempt to ensure that the agricultural growth agenda targets the chronically poor and vulnerable directly rather than through indirect and hoped for trickle down effects typical of past development policies and programmes. CAADP Pillar III focuses on the chronically food-insecure and on populations who are vulnerable to and affected by various crises and emergencies.
Does that mean our public education is in crisis? Do we have our schools filled with chronically food-insecure children?
And if that’s the case, do we think hitchhiking on third-party programs is the optimum solution?
Recently, the caterers asked that the fee for feeding pupils be increased from GHc 0.97p to GHc 3.00. Yes, the government of Ghana thinks $0.12 [could be less now due to the depreciation of the cedi] is adequate to feed a child of school-going age. Ironically, the government claims they aim to reduce short-term hunger and malnutrition among kindergarten and primary school children with this program.
Our top-bottom approach to most developmental initiatives usually renders them useless. But because we are addicted to the aesthetics and the “cheap political points” they offer, we refuse to reevaluate.
It has been universally accepted that the basic needs of humans are food, clothing, shelter, and good health care. Most citizens only aspire to attain these basic needs. Governments that help citizens to obtain these basic needs further broaden the scope and advance their basic aspirations.
The Minister of Education lamented that trips across several schools in the country revealed that Ghanaian school children were not assertive.
He sorts to blame the curriculum for this predicament, but that is just an aspect of the problem. You can have the most robust education curriculum and not produce assertive and critical-thinking students if the conditions under which the curriculum is instilled are not enabling.
In most of our public schools, from the basic to the highest level, the food is not nutritious, the classrooms are dilapidated, and the washrooms are disgusting. We usually run concentration camps in the name of boarding schools in this country. This won’t make people assertive.
We can say this generation is doomed, mainly due to our actions and inactions, but if we want to better the odds for the next generation, we must snap out of our ostrich habits, confront reality and work at changing our fortunes.
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I met Ali in high school, and he played for the school team. Now, as a trained teacher, he is focused on introducing and teaching the game of basketball to children of diverse backgrounds and instilling in them a sense of responsibility, discipline, and the culture of nature conservation.
As the Communications Officer for one of the oldest, if not the oldest, Bilateral Trade Associations in Ghana, I gained significant exposure.
This sector has been the engine of growth and has sustained this country through its turbulent years.
At independence Ghana held a beacon, signalling that the continent was fully aware and ready to seize its destiny for progress and self-actualization. We’ve built America and financed Europe out of poverty; we are now poised to reclaim Africa and restore dignity to take a seat at the table.
We have generated an obscene amount of wealth which means we now work more than we ever had to but at the same time, more of us sink further into poverty.
3 Comments
A rather dire and unfortunate situation, but Brilliantly put!
Thank you.
Hmmmm.a fear for the future.