Working in vocational education and training (VET) in the Upper East Region in Ghana

The first breath of warm, humid air when disembarking from the airplane - tall palm trees -dusty streets - ‘Trotros’ - big traffic jams and honking horns. Everywhere you go a crowd of people and loud laughter. Arriving in Accra always feels a little like coming home to me. Wherever you go, you will receive cheerful smiles and be welcomed with a warm and cordial “Akwaaba – You are welcome” - and that typical snap at the end of every handshake.

Campaigning for education in a village called Chiana within the Kassena-Nankana District: convincing families that it is important to allow their adolescent daughters to continue education after the ninth year of basic education takes time and effort – and stamina, as it sometimes takes several attempts or is not successful at all in the end. 

I was 19 when I left Zurich to live and work in Kumasi for a year. It turned out to be one of the best decisions of my life so far. It lied the foundation of a path that would lead me back to Ghana for studies and work severally in the coming years. There were life-changing lessons I learned on this journey of learning, unlearning and relearning that I would have never learned through a book, a classroom or a degree.

Every third day is a market day in Navrongo. On those days, people from the various villages in the district travel to the bustling little town to buy goods which are not available or more expensive in the villages. 

Navrongo is a Small Town in a rural environment in the north-east of the country, not far from the border to Burkina Faso. The Upper East Region is an economic weak region where family structures traditionally are organized in patrilineal patterns. The sun is scorching hot for many months of the year and it rains during one long rainy season a year only. Days in Navrongo start early. By 4 am neighbors start sweeping their compound and mosques call for prayers. In front of your window pigs are grunting while pigeons are cooing. The reason why I trade in big city life of metropolises like Accra or Kumasi for this kind of Small Town life is the work at a vocational training center.

There is a legacy of African women playing significant roles in societal, political and economic leadership. In this part of the country though, due to the patrilineal traditions, women face a structural neglect in terms of economic performance, infrastructure and access to property, lack of education and lack of job opportunities. The average Northern Ghanaian woman spends 70% of her time on household chores.

On the weekends we offer free ICT classes for primary school girls. Even though ICT is an examination subject for the BECE, many schools in the region don’t have any computer lab and ICT ironically remains a theoretical subject.
Having a fully equipped computer lab and our own teaching and learning materials shows results: students with no or almost no experience with working on the computer master 50+ command buttons from four different tabs in the Word Program on their own after just eight lessons!

Depending on diverse livelihood strategies, there are large migration streams of single women from the north to the big cities in the south. These migration patterns are cyclical and most young women work in the ‘kayayei’-business on markets and lorry stations in urban areas. They are often confronted with unfair payment conditions, sexual harassments, precarious housing situations, exploitations or fraud. Not only the financial situation but also socio-cultural norms hinder girls in the north to go to school. Therefore, we decided to establish a vocational training center as an alternative to the labor migration and as an affordable opportunity for young women to change their situation in the long term.

With only 21 per cent of the population living in urban areas, the Upper East Region is the least urbanized in Ghana. The environment is marked by the annual long dry season called Harmattan which is characterized by dry and dusty winds and temperatures around 40 degrees. 

Have you married from this house?

Around June, the rain starts falling and farmers are blessed. But for students who commute a long distance, the rainy season is more than a challenge. Very often it rains during the hours of dawn. Cycling for 1.5 hours before starting school at 8.00 am means that shortly after 4.00am you are up, do your household chores, maybe eat a breakfast and by 6.00 am the latest you have strapped your books on the bicycle rack and off are you.

On the way from a village called Kajiolo to Navrongo – a distance of about 10km some of our students commute on bicycles on a daily basis.

Now, if it is heavily raining around 6.00 am, of course you will not do that. You will be staying at home, waiting for the rain to stop. Chances are high that you will not be on your way to town at all on such days as either it’s late when the rain stops or someone in the house has already found a task for you for the day. This results in many hours missed and is a challenge for both student and teacher. Therefore, the director of the training center allows students from far away villages to stay in rooms of his family house for free. Thanks to this, they no longer miss classes due to the rain and can fully concentrate on learning. Coming from small villages, moving to Navrongo independently because of education can be a little achievement of itself.

Going to school is still not an implicitness for all girls. Negative social and cultural perceptions about formal education, especially for girls, are a barrier to education. Many girls are expected to engage in extensive household chores, support their mothers’ petty trading work in the markets or care for younger siblings – rather than to attend school.

When the young women bump into family friends or former teachers, it’s not seldom that one of the first questions is “Have you married from this house?”. This question illustrates the mindset of many people in this region in a very good way. Assumptions like these – that the only reason a young woman would relocate to a District Capital is marriage but not equally possibly education or even a job are still prevalent. In many families, investing in girls’ education is still seen as a waste of resources.

Visiting a former student’s family in the village: most of our students come from traditional homes. The region is rich in indigenous architecture. The little entrances below the bench the family is sitting on are for their chicken.

The obstacle to education in rural Ghana for girls is not only the lack of schools and institutions, but mainly about ingrained prejudices towards girls. Uneducated parents often don’t value education for their daughters. Moreover, it is still common to count one’s blessing by the number of children a man has. In the region, there are a lot of teenage pregnancies and early-age marriages – which is inimical to the girl’s opportunities to access education or remain in education. But when girls stay in school, the cycle of poverty can be broken. Because the prevailing mindset doesn’t consider the education of young women as that important, we make it a point to remind our students from time to time and make sure that they are assured they have the potential, that it’s their right to aim for more in life and that we believe in them!

This insight into my work in VET in Ghana was written in 2017.?