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General News of Sunday, 3 October 2010

Source: Danquah Institute

Gabby: Youth Need Education, Skills And Jobs

, Not A National Youth Policy

The Executive Director of the Danquah Institute, Gabby Asare Otchere-Darko, has criticized what he calls “a hopeless national obsession with a Youth Policy, which hitherto its absence for a long time served as a topic of agitation for youth groups and a convenient excuse for how we have failed in preparing the vast majority of Ghanaian youths for the future.”

According to him, “Sadly, Ghana remains hooked on form and not substance. Yet, everything a society does is about the youth. Even pension schemes are set up to provide for the youth in their old age. We should just stop wasting time and get on with the real task of building a society of opportunities, which means recognizing that the foundation of our nation is the education of its youth.”

Also, Mr Otchere-Darko expressed anxiety with the decision of Government to reduce the Senior High School back to three years instead of four years.

“The average kid may spend more than half of her waking hours up until the age of 18 outside of school. What they do with that time may have a far critical impact on what becomes of them in the future than the shorter period that they spend in school. It can be a very, very expensive leisure time for both parents and society,” he warned.

Speaking at the University of Cape Coast last Saturday as the guest speaker to climax the celebration of the SRC Week, he said, “All that the youth of this country want are access to quality education, skills and jobs. Our focus must rather be in providing these rather than youth leaders and successive governments creating the impression that it requires a single policy document to make it happen.”

On August 10, 2010, the Mills-Mahama administration finally launched a National Youth Policy. But the executive head of the Danquah Institute is not convinced. “In a few weeks time, the 2011 budget will be read by the Finance Minister”, brandishing the beads around his right wrist, Mr Otchere-Darko said, “I can bet my favourite beads on it that there will be nothing in this year’s budget that will convince you and I that the Youth Policy that has been launched has made any meaningful impact on resource allocation.” The National Youth Policy has as its theme “Towards an empowered youth, impacting positively on national development”.

It is intended to provide guidelines for all stakeholders involved in the implementation of policies, programmes and projects for the development of the youth.

Mr Otchere-Darko says all the objectives provided in the youth policy can be found in the 1992 Constitution, specifically Chapters 5 and 6. “Even the Constitution, which is justiciable, has, thus far, not pushed us to deliver for the youth. How much more a policy document that has no legislative backing?” he said. He said that more than half of the Junior High School leavers this year could not achieve a pass mark and are therefore fated to a grim, dreary future of uncertainties. “What this tells us is that we continue to build a future where more than half of that society has been consigned to failure. Our focus must be on education -- not on a useless document called a national youth policy,” he said.

The head of the think tank, which shares ideology with the opposition New Patriotic Party criticized both the ruling National Democratic Congress and the NPP for wasting the youth’s time on the policy thing. He said, “What we need to do as a nation is to simply create a society of opportunities for every child to grow and have the freedom to use her God-given talents and acquired skills to make something positive with her life.”

He told the University students to see themselves as the most privileged class of Ghana’s youth. And, that, “You should not see Knowledge as the ultimate aim of education. It is not. Action is. You educate yourselves to use the knowledge acquired to take action. Constructive action.”

The fact, he said, is that a child’s chances of success in school and life are largely determined by her family circumstances than on any other factor and to ignore this fact is to perpetuate poverty.

“So, for a country whose youth development is arrested by mass poverty, the focus must be on how to create a society of opportunities where you don't need fancy highbrow traditions or money to really learn. Where, all you need are young people with the desire to better themselves.”

He said, “My own father came from a very poor background. His mother died before secondary school and his father abandoned him and his big sister. He knew only education could free him from inherited poverty. But, the state played its role, too, by offering him the scholarship to go as far as becoming an orthopaedic surgeon.” He commended the introduction of kindergarten as part of the formal education structure because studies have shown that from the age of 3, kids with professional parents are already a full year ahead of their poorer peers.

He advised the university students to focus on ideas that work, citing how China and India have in recent years witnessed tremendous economic growth which now threatens the old economic order, “since the two countries abandoned socialist experiments to embrace capitalism.”

Mr Otchere-Darko said, Ghana’s problem, especially from the 1980s, was to plunge selflessly into an economic liberalization process, without local capacity, which only ended up turning the country into a dumping site for things manufactured elsewhere.

“If we are not careful very soon the Chinese would be manufacturing Ghanaian babies in China and Ghanaian traders would go there to buy and import them here,” he said, exaggeratingly, to highlight the dangers ahead.

“I have a very simple definition of capitalism: the capacity and ability to create or capitalize on opportunities. We can only do so by looking selfishly within at what is in our national interest and be focused on seeing that manifested.”

He added, “We do so by not focusing on the size of the cake and whether there’s enough to go around. But, rather, by expanding the fields of wheat cultivation so that more can be grown and harvested, for more flour to not only make more cakes but other flour-based products, as well.”

Expounding on the philosophy of the Danquah Institute, Mr Otchere-Darko said, “We adhere to the doctrine that the duty of the state is to guarantee to every individual substantive freedoms to make them active agents in their own individual development and by so doing we will achieve a wealthy, healthy society. The sum total of productive and responsible individuals makes up a great society.” He added, “At the core of our earthly quest is to create a vibrant, healthy, wealthy and happy societies, and not by handouts but through our own handy work. If you let another man feed you he would determine for you what you eat.”

He warned Ghanaians against basing expectations of economic salvation from the oil find. Reports have shown that resource rich countries regularly fair worse than non-resource rich countries which focus on human capital, he noted.

Direct Government revenue from the oil, he estimated, may not be more than $25 billion over the next 25-30 years, which may be the life span of the Jubilee wells.

“But, the oil can help us build a strong, quality resource pool of human capital and make our economy truly dynamic.”

He said, our national motto is ‘Freedom and Justice’, but we should also heed to a 19th century US president, James Garfield, who said in 1880, “Next in importance to freedom and justice is popular education, without which neither freedom nor justice can be permanently maintained.”

Quoting another US politician, Claiborne Pell, of the 20th century, Mr Otchere-Darko said Ghanaians should also know that “the strength of the United States is not the gold at Fort Knox or the weapons of mass destruction that [they] have, but the sum total of the education and the character of [their] people.”

Education is the key, he said, the trick is to balance that with a creative and aggressive expansion of the economy in order to find the money to fund the future preparation of the youth. It is said that a society cannot always build the future for its youth, but it can build its youth for the future.”

For example, “In 2000, when the size of the economy was $3.9 billion, the NDC spent $176 million on education. By 2007, because of revenue from the GetFund and a massively expanded economy, the NPP was able to spend $1.4 billion on education.”

He said, the fact that the average professor in Ghana may earn more money in ten years than Michael Essien earns in a whole week should not encourage the students, “because a footballer may break his leg and that would be the end. You break your leg, your head of knowledge would see you through your productive actions.”

Hon. Ebo Barton Oduro, Deputy Attorney General and MP for Cape Coast, Mustapha Hamid, and Shamima Muslim, of Metro TV and Citi FM, were also in attendance.