The Former Education Minister and newly appointed Board Chairman of the Public Procurement Authority (PPA), Professor Christopher Ameyaw-Akumfi has expressed that Ghana’s democracy could be deepened only when the country has a literate population that can comprehend basic political issues to influence the voting patterns during elections.

At a ceremony to mark this year’s International Literacy Day at Techiman in the Bono East Region, the newly appointed Board Chairman of the PPA made this remark.

“How wonderful would it appear if we get to a level where democracy in this country provided us an opportunity to look at issues rather than to depend on GHC5 or GHC10 in deciding where to vote. We can achieve this only when we achieve some level of literacy.”
Prof. Ameyaw-Akumfi

The programme which was organised by the Non-Formal Education Division (NFPD) of the Ministry of Education was celebrated under the theme, ‘Complementary Education for Human Development in Covid-19 Era: The Role of Education’.

During the ceremony, Prof. Ameyaw-Akumfi lauded the Ministry of Education for bringing about the needed transformation to the Non-Formal Division. He also recounted the role the Department of Social Welfare and the Information Service Department play- in educating a large proportion of the population that had not acquired any formal education.

“It is important that we commend the Non-Formal Division together with the Education Ministry for the tremendous roles they play in educating the people who have not had the opportunity to be in school whilst they were young.”
Prof. Ameyaw-Akumfi

Again, the Former Education Minister acknowledged the efforts made by the previous management of the NFED in assisting a substantial percent of the youth on the streets who did not have formal education.

Impact of COVID-19

The newly appointed Board Chairman called on Ghanaians to acknowledge the impact of Covid-19 as a global pandemic and come out with more state-of-the-art initiatives to help alleviate its impact on the local economy.

“The theme for this occasion is drawing our attention to how Covid-19 has disrupted almost every activity of the human existence including principally education. We have to therefore, be quite innovative in finding ways of using virtual means of doing things to benefit ourselves and the community we live in”.
Prof. Ameyaw-Akumfi

Meanwhile, Prof. Ameyaw-Akumfi urged the all the people present at the programme to leverage on the free access to knowledge provided by Information, Communication and Technology (ICT) to develop themselves to be able to face the challenges that modernization pose to them.

Rev. John Ntim Fordjour 1 — Deputy Minister for Education, Rev. John Ntim Fordjour

Focus on literacy development

Last week, the Deputy Minister for Education, Rev. John Ntim Fordjour also advised that efforts should be directed towards improving literacy and learning poverty.

He noted that before the impact of COVID-19 in 2020, 63 percent of children at age 10 in low-income countries were unable to read and understand. However, with the presence of COVID, he believes that the figure may have increased.

Speaking on government efforts, the Deputy Education Minister indicated that one of the initiatives the ministry is rolling out to improve literacy is the Transition to English (T2E) Plus program, which is being implemented in partnership with the United States Agency for International Development (USAID).

Mr. Fordjour explained that the Ministry of Education is working “to implement the Transition to English (T2E) Plus program across 5,425 schools to improve learners’ reading performance among pupils from kindergarten 2 to primary 3.”