#FixTheCountry and The way foreward

Fixing the country goes beyond political parties and government. We need a holistic approach to fixing the country. A government or an individual can not fix the country. I would want to address some aspects of the economy, starting with our educational institutions.

1. Educational Sectors: All educational systems in Ghana and the whole of Africa have failed as a continent. These are some questions worth disturbing enough; What makes a school dropout in the second year be successful by designing a Bolt App for the world while a four-year university graduate becomes stranded? What secrets are thought in some institutions outside Africa that we are not teaching our students in Ghana and Africa? What makes some Ghanaian students travel abroad and become more successful academically and practice what they learnt. They had trailing papers prior to their trip, and to make matters worse, they completed with “Pass Class. Education is the bloodline of every country and every economy is driven by human capacity, both strength and intellect. We have all the academic titles you can imagine in Ghana and Africa as a continent, but we fail to address the issues of the continent.  Lecturers and teachers are not demonstrating anything practical for students to follow. All graduating university students only think of being employed and nothing more. We are all locked in a box based on what we are taught in universities which yields nothing. With all the degrees, we have good rainfall in Ghana and it goes to waste. We have lots of recycling waste and none yields any results in Ghana. We have better raw materials, natural resources, and favourable climatic conditions and we still can not utilize them because nothing comes out of our educational systems except to be employed.

#FixTheCountry #FixTheEducationalSyetms #LecturerFixYourself #TeacherFixYourself

2. High Unemployment Rate: The unemployment rate is rising because our leaders, in general, have failed us; All religious leaders have failed us. All our political leaders are failures and must bow their heads in shame with disappointment. All our educational leaders must bow their heads in shame, including lecturers and teachers alike. All our students’ complete school only to be employed by the service sector. How can engineering students complete a whole three to a four-year degree without a single practical? We are witnessing graduating students with “first-class” each year but can not solve any real-life problems in their field of studies unless they travel outside to be more useful or, better still, go through another cycle of education to be more successful outside the continents. Every three to four years, students graduate from our tertiary education, more stranded at completion than when they began their tertiary education. Can’t we, as leaders, educational institutions, and the government, group some of these students, including graduates from tertiary institutions, into a more rewarding regional assignment with the possibility of long-term employment? Some universities, including Coventry University, give students opportunities, including employment to train them as data scientists in their labs. These students with exposure to real-life situations in data science come out to be extremely successful. We have a lot of IT projects and engineering projects we have not utilized in Ghana and Africa as a continent. These are some of the projects that can be looked at regionally: a) Assign all 16 regions digitization to tertiary institutions, including students in respective fields, without a single funding source; upon completion of this digitization exercise, some of these students will be automatically employed because there will be the need for data centre administrators and staff in all regions, as well as data entry staffs, will be required; b) Assign energy production and task the tertiary institution if you can not create something new, emulate experiences from other continents. We only depend on hydro energy as the main source of electricity with other supporting plants. Assigned other tasks such as tiles with electricity power supply functionality as part of smart city development. We have other waste in the system; can this waste be recycled and still produce some form of energy from it? c) Assign some of the engineers and other experts to harvesting rainfall as safe water yields and channelling this water to where it is most needed, especially since the UN supports water supply projects. Funding and other support can be acquired as a nation to make sure every district as a rain harvester plants to supply good drinking water for such district, leading to a reduction in the unemployment rate; d) Ghana can be noted for good solar energy if we know how to use the sun. Task the institutions, including students, with energy efficiency using the sun. A good solar system with high efficiency with sustainability and maintenance culture. Ghana has been importing simple things such as street lights from other countries. Why not entrust some of our higher educational institutions with these tasks, exploring and building some of these street lighting systems from the ground up, with the goal of having a manufacturing plant to supply to other parts of the world by the time they finish, resulting in employment for some of the graduates? We have over 1000 projects our graduates can be engaged in as a country to bring quicker development, leading to reducing the unemployment rate and also to engaging our tertiary institutions to be more productive.

#FixTheCountry #FixTheEducation #FixTheUnemployment

3. Conflicting Role of Member of Parliament and Minister: A member of parliament works and is more visible in a region than a regional minister. I do not understand and do not know why and how these fundamental principles of our constitution get missed out. In summary, (a) Under Article 93 (2) of the Constitution, the legislative power of Ghana is vested in Parliament and is exercised in accordance with the Constitution. No person or body other than Parliament has the power to pass any measure with the force of law except by or under the authority conferred by an Act of Parliament. The legislative function entails passing Bills and scrutinizing statutory instruments to determine whether they should be annulled or allowed to take effect through the passage of time. Law-making is considered to be the most important function of Parliament. The same MP’s who are supposed to be formulating laws are the same people our constitution mandates to hold ministerial positions based on the following: Article 78 (1) Ministers of State shall be appointed by the President with the prior approval of Parliament from among members of Parliament or persons qualified to be elected as members of Parliament, except that the majority of Ministers of State shall be appointed from among members of Parliament. and Article 79 (2) A person shall not be appointed a Deputy Minister unless he is a Member of Parliament or is qualified to be elected as a member of Parliament. Why not split these functions for clarity and let us task these ministers through electoral processes with regional developments? A failure on the side of a minister has got nothing to do with someone who is formulating laws for the growth of the country. Every minister has a role and must be tasked with responsibility and failure to achieve the expected goals of the citizens must be voted out through electoral processes. The constitution needs a lot of fixing and those tasked with fixing the constitution have doubled with other responsibilities, leading to low productivity as a law formulating body.

#FixTheCountry #FixTheConstitution #MinisterFixTheRegion #MinisterFixTheSectors #MPFixTheLaw

In fixing the country, we need a holistic approach to fixing the country from the top-to-bottom and bottom-to-top. With limited resources and low-income earners as parents within the country, an individual can do little or nothing at all in the Ghanaian situation #FixingTheCountry. Resources must be channelled to the right places for the right results for faster economic growth and development in every aspect of our life.

By Richmond Sarpong

Center for Online Teaching and Learning (COLT),

Ghana Communication Technology University

Accra.