Ghana needs to redouble her efforts at ensuring that youth and adult literacy is increased by fifty per cent by 2015, the benchmark of the Education for All (EFA) Goal 4, a goal which Ghana's government has committed to.
Education analysts argue that literacy is continuously critical to shape the evolving complexities of cultures, economies and societies, looking at the magnitude of the literacy challenges facing Ghana as a developing nation.
UNESCO statistics show that there are 774 million illiterate adults worldwide and about 64 percent of this number is made up of women, with majority of illiterate adults found in less developed countries.
In Ghana about 42 percent of the population is illiterate and about 50 percent of Ghanaian women are illiterate, compared with 33 percent of men.The Greater Accra Region has 21 percent illiterate population while Ashanti Region has 40 percent.
The Brong Ahafo Region has 54 percent while the three Northern regions have an illiterate population of 76 percent.Speaking at the 9th annual Pamoja Ghana forum on "Youth and Adult Literacy " A Fundamental Human Rights", at Amrahia, near Adenta in Accra, The Country Director of ActionAid Ghana, Mrs. Adowa Kwateng- Kluvitse noted that a great deal of attention has been paid to other EFA goals with little focus on adult education, which is a key component of lifelong learning.
She stated that whether formal or otherwise, adults need to develop their abilities, enrich their knowledge and improve their technical and professional qualifications or have a new direction to meet their own needs and those of society.
"Literacy is a fundamental human right in as much as it helps improve lives and helps people live a life of dignity. There is the need to fight illiteracy and its attendant problems of ignorance, disease, poverty and under-development," she stressed.
The aim of the UN Literacy Decade (2003-2012) is to extend the use of literacy skills to those who do not currently have access to it. The UN's concern is that adults and all people everywhere should be able to use literacy skills to communicate within their own community, in the wider society and beyond.
Pamoja, a Swahili word that means "come let us work together", facilitates the coming together of people to identify the challenges facing them and critically analyze them to come up with practical solutions for sustainable development.
Pamoja Ghana uses the Regenerated Freirean Literacy through Empowering Community Techniques (REFLECT), a structured participatory learning process that uses Participatory Rural Appraisal (PRA) tools like maps, calendars, matrices and diagrams, in discussing issues that hinder development.
REFLECT therefore, is considered a right-based innovative approach to adult learning and social development. REFLECT designed to solve illiteracy and its attendant problems for development, was developed by Action Aid International.
In Ghana Action Aid International, facilitated Reflect activities until August 2005, when Pamoja took over. Representatives from twenty-eight member organization s of Pamoja network in eight out of the ten administrative regions in Ghana participated in the three day forum.
At such forums they review their activities, assess and evaluate their work for the past year to identify their strengths and weaknesses, and also discuss current issues that promote or hinder their work.
They also develop new strategies for the way forward. Mrs. Josephine Kufuor Duah of the Ghana Education Service (GES) announced that a Complementary Basic Education programme is being considered to reach children between the ages of seven to seventeen who have dropped out of school. She said that currently a concept paper has been circulated and special teachers would be trained to handle children with such special needs.
"It is very flexible. They will be managed in such a way that they could be included in the mainstream education. Some children have passed through it (organized by some NGO in the Northern regions) and are now in the university." Prof. Yaw Oheneba Sakyi, Director of the Institute of Adult Education of the University of Ghana revealed that the institute has been renamed the Institute of Continuing and Distance Education to reflect its activities.
According to him, education is lifelong and that through the institute many Ghanaian youth and adult will be able to reach their potential.
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