Population (approx.)18 millionLiteracy StatisticsOverall: 64.5%Male: 75.9%Female: 53.5%GNP Per Capita (US Dollars)$1,790Source: The World Bank Development Indicators, 1996; CIA World Fact Book 1997 |
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Country Report presented by Isabella Ama Buagbe
As part of the economic reform measures of 1988, the government of Ghana initiated a functional literacy program. As a result of the success of the pilot phase of the program, it was expanded nationwide in 1991. The Non-Formal Education Division (NFED) of the Ministry of Education was established and charged with the responsibility for the program with the aim of reducing the illiteracy rate within a decade and helping the 5.6 million illiterates become functionally literate by the year 2000.
The objectives of the national functional literacy program are:
- to enable participants to better meet their personal and social needs by enhancing their ability to cope with day-to-day life issues in a literate community;
- to equip learners with knowledge, attitudes, and skills to enhance their quality of life;
- to enable learners to improve upon their occupational skills through functional literacy; and
- to develop the reading interests of learners and establish an attitude of reading for pleasure through the provision of follow-up reading materials.
This program is primarily aimed at the poorest Ghanaians, especially women and those living in rural areas.
The program has several components including literacy classes, development activities, income-generation activities, monitoring and evaluation, radio programs, and post-literacy. Literacy classes are taught by volunteer facilitators in 15 local languages. Primers include topics such as civic awareness, health, life skills, and occupational skills, and lessons are based on daily life concerns such as family planning, animal rearing, child care, and drinking water.
Each theme in the primer leads to information about a development activity. Classes participate in such practical projects as providing clean drinking water, tree growing, clean-up campaigns, and rehabilitation of school facilities. Often, other members of the community join in these activities.
As part of the literacy program, each literacy class is encouraged to identify an income-generating activity and establish a viable micro-project. Approximately 50% of the classes held so far are involved in income-generating activities and several prominent projects have been established in oil extraction, gari making, bee-keeping, Kente weaving, and pottery.
An additional component of the program is radio broadcasts to reinforce lessons taught in the classroom and also to provide a means for reaching a greater number of learners. All projects are monitored and supervised on a zone, district, regional and headquarters level.
So far, NFED has established 48,000 classes for 1.3 million learners most of whom are women from rural communities. In addition to the success in teaching reading, writing, and numeracy, many of the learners have improved their lives and economic welfare and become more aware of civic issues. Another positive outcome of the program is that enrollment in formal schools in areas where the programs have been implemented has increased considerably, suggesting an overall increase in the awareness of the benefits of education.
INTERNATIONAL LITERACY
INSTITUTE