TENI to the Rescue of 48,000 children in the Northern, Upper East and Upper West Regions of Ghana.

 

Happy School Children

Forty eight thousand school children in three districts of the Northern, Upper East and Upper West Regions of Ghana are to benefit from a 4.5 million pound innovation package in education.

The ten year innovation project, dubbed ‘Tackling Educational Needs Inclusively’ (TENI) is being funded by Comic Relief and the Volunteer Services Organisation (VSO). It would be implemented on a pilot basis in the Talensi Nabdam District in the Upper East Region, the Jirapa District in the Upper West Region and the West Mamprusi District in the Northern Region under the first phase which covers a five year period from 2009 to 2013.

The project involves a holistic approach to education in response to a myriad of problems militating against education in the three regions. These include low enrolment levels, low academic performance of school children in schools and a high dropout rate.

The Annual Education Sector Report for the 2008-2009 academic year indicates that 58.5 percent of candidates who wrote the Basic Education Certificate Examination (BECE) in the Northern Region failed in Mathematics while 60.3 percent failed in English. In addition, only 10 percent of Children who reach primary six can read with understanding.

Besides, not all who enroll in primary one stay in school long enough to write their BECE; girls have a completion rate of 52 percent while boys have a completion rate of 67 percent at the JHS level.

TENI would attempt to tackle some of the root causes of low enrolment, poor performance and a high dropout rate in schools such as poverty barriers, socio-cultural beliefs, school environment and quality teaching. Due to the linkages that exist between the livelihoods of women and their ability to educate their children, the socio-economic status of women will be strengthened by linking them with various livelihood interventions. This will pave the way for them to support their children’s education by enrolling them in schools and providing them with what they need to perform well and remain in school until they attain a career.  

The project will also attempt to revamp the educational sector in beneficiary communities by building the capacity of 2000 teachers, including 500 national volunteer teachers, to support children to learn and to mentor them. In addition, the capacity 237 head teachers and circuit supervisors will be enhanced to support and mentor teachers in 80 percent of basic schools in the three participating districts.

TENI will also build up the management capacity of the various district directorates of education to enable them to carry out their supervisory and monitoring roles of educational institutions more effectively so as to address school and community based barriers to the education of girls and children with disabilities.  

At the community level, community leaders will be sensitized to appreciate education and adopt the necessary steps to promote education in their various communities. Additionally, the capacity of district assemblies will be strengthened to coordinate educational activities in their respective districts.        

Launching the first phase of the project at Walewale, Mr John Dramani Mahama, Vice President, urged parents and communities in

Ghana's Vice-President, John Dramani Mahama

 the catchment area to embrace and support the project, the VSO and her implementing partners by carrying out their expected roles.

“Communities should take an interest and participate in the running of their schools. Often communities stand aloof and think that schools are the responsibility of government, the district assemblies and teachers. Yet experience indicates that where communities have participated in the running of schools, it has led to an improvement in the quality of education”, he said

Mr. Mahama declared that government welcomes the complementary role played by Non-governmental organizations in development; especially in deprived communities and the VSO has been a true partner in education for over 50 years. “Your high quality international volunteers have been instrumental in improving quality teaching and learning which has culminated in the designing of TENI”, he said.  

The Vice President said Since TENI is based on the belief that change can only come from within the individual and the communities; it fits into the vision of the governments new educational plans. Government would therefore provide the needed policies and environment to ensure its success.     

He regretted that most people fail to give their children’s education the priority that it deserves because they cannot fathom the value associated with education. Hence, in the face of limited resources, education is often sacrificed for less rewarding activities due to ignorance.

“We have men who think they are entitled to a bottle of beer a day and would prefer to do that rather than save to pay their children’s school fees and we have women who would rather buy wax prints, an array of cooking utensils and pyrex bowls stocked up to the ceiling of their rooms than save towards their children’s education”, he said.

Children in school

However, quality education remains the bedrock for eliminating poverty and sustaining development since it has a liberating influence on the minds of its beneficiaries, therefore bringing them into the mainstream of development. Most parents today have no excuse anymore for not sending their children to school because of the capitation grant and other strategies such as the provision of free school uniforms and free exercise books aimed at making education more affordable to the poor and deprived.

 Mr. Mahama said there was the need for all to bear in mind that the task of providing quality and timely education for all children by 2015, which is one of the millennium goals, is a huge task whose responsibility falls not only on government but also on teachers, communities and the district assemblies..

In this regard, the fate of over 800, 000 Ghanaian children of school going age who are not in school as a result of ignorance, lack of infrastructure, outdated customary beliefs and practices, refusal of teachers to accept postings to deprived areas,  among several  others should be a worry for all 

He decried the fact that most young girls abandon their education to engage in Kayaye in the south in search of money. These girls, he said, are normally lured and attracted by the glittering things that those who have already engaged in kayaye bring back to show off in their communities.

Section of chiefs and elders at the launching

 They are however not aware of the deplorable conditions under which these girls live in the city, which is undignified and humiliating. Some sleep outside in the open air while others beg to sleep in kiosks and other structures not meant for accommodating human beings. “I will prefer my poverty in dignity than wealth in humiliation”, Mr. Mahama told the crowd of pupils, teachers, education officers and chiefs who had gathered to witness the occasion.

District Assemblies adopt SEA’s in Medium Term Development Plans in Ghana

The National Development Planning Committee (NDPC) of the Ministry of Finance and Economic Planning has made it mandatory for all Medium Term Development Plans submitted by all the 138 district assemblies in Ghana to include an environmental component.

Medium Term Development Plans that do not include an environmental component are not funded by the NDPC. This forms part of efforts to check environmental degradation by ensuring that district assemblies adopt development strategies that are environmentally friendly.

Consequently, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has provided capacity building training programmes for all district assemblies in the Northern Region on how to input Strategic Environmental Assessment (SEA) needs into their Medium Term Development Plans.

Briefing ‘The Advocate’, Mr. Abu Iddrissu, Acting Northern Regional Director of the EPA, said “because their annual budgetary allocation is tied to the SEA, all the district assemblies in the Northern Region have developed Medium Term Development Plans based on SEA tools without which they would not get some part of their funding.”

He said the capacity building training programmes were undertaken as part of the EPA’s Strategic District Environment Programme as well as their Comprehensive District Outreach Programme under which they visit district assemblies to discuss environmental issues with them.

Under the two programmes, the EPA also undertakes integrated district visits where they visit five core environmentally sensitive communities in each district. The visits are normally carried out in conjunction with members of the District Environmental Management Committee.

The EPA then designs appropriate actions in response to environmental problems encountered in those communities which most often are also captured in their community action plans. The EPA also draws the attention of the assemblies to those problems and provides strategic mechanisms for resolving them.

Mr. Iddrissu said the EPA also carries out Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) and Auditing.” We identify the different categories of development projects that impact on the environment such as the establishment of petrol stations, telecommunication masts, road projects, dams, educational infrastructure, clinics and hospitals. We inspect and register these projects and make technical inferences. We then pass them through a technical review committee and we certify and give them the conditionality under which they have to operate.”

The EPA carries out investigation of environmental complaints in all districts, regardless of whether they emanate from the communities themselves or from visits to the communities for which they provide technical backstopping, education and enforcement of laws to resolve the situation.

Some of such complaints include the misuse of agro –chemicals. Since it is the duty of the EPA to register and monitor the activities of agro-chemical and pesticide dealers, certify them, and provide training it intervened by by organising some training programmes.

Thus, a two day comprehensive training workshop was organized for the Ghana Agricultural Inputs Dealers Association (GAIDA) in conjunction with the International Fertilizer Development Centre ) IFDC  in Tamale and Yendi.  A total of 140 agro- input dealers in the region were trained, comprising agro-chemical retail dealers and agro-chemical users such as farmers.  

Mr Azimah Lansah Abdul-Rahman, District Desk Officer for EPA in the Savelugu Nanton District, said as far back as the year 2000, the EPA and the Institute of Local Government, organized a two week intensive training course on environmental management for all district assemblies in Northern Ghana.

He said they were taken through all the thematic areas in the activities of the EPA.  Following the workshop, he visited schools and communities in the district to discuss with them issues on the environment during which it was uncovered that the district had several environmental related problems.

The District Planning officer who is the team leader of the District Environmental Management Committee, incorporated environmental issues into their Medium Term Development Plan which normally has a four or five year lifespan depending on available funds and the time frame for the  projects. A task force was set up under the District Environmental Management Committee to respond swiftly to reports on allegations of activities that degrade the environment. 

Mr Addul Rahman said the services of the Police Force is sometimes sought to restore law and order on environmental issues in the communities where necessary. Such reports are also collated to enable the district to deliberate on them and adopt appropriate action.       

He named some members of the District Environmental Management team as National Disaster Management Committee (NADMO), the Gender Desk office, the Ghana Education Service (GES), the Department of  Social Welfare, the District Community Development Officer, the Environmental Health and Sanitation Unit, representatives of traditional rulers and the Town and Country Planning most of  whom already have baseline information about the environment and are given further training.

He said Community Environmental Management Committees have been set up and have been earmarked for training under the Ghana Environmental Management Project (GEMP) which was initiated in 2008 with funding from the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA).

High Enrollment Levels not Reflected in School Retention Levels in Ghana

The Volunteer Services Organization (VSO) has bemoaned the fact that increases in enrollment levels of children into basic schools in the Upper East, Upper West and Northern Regions of Ghana has not translated into their retention in the upper primary and Junior High schools (JHS).

Gender parity and the enrollment of children with disabilities which have also   improved at the enrollment level in recent years are not also reflected at the upper primary and JHS levels in these three regions.  

Speaking at the launch of an innovative project aimed at enhancing education in the three regions, the Country Director of VSO, Mr.

Amidu Ibrahim, Country Director, VSO

 Amidu Ibrahim, said those children who manage to transit into upper primary and JHS have generally under performed in all educational tests as compared to their colleagues in other parts of the country.

Hence, it is against the backdrop of these problems that the new project, dubbed “Tackling Education Needs Inclusively (TENI) is being implemented to address all issues that militate against quality education holistically to ensure the retention, high performance levels and improved completion rates of school children in the three affected regions by the year 2013.

The first phase of the 10 year project will initially be implemented in the Talensi Nabdam District in the Upper East Region, the Jirapa District in the Upper West Region and the West Mamprusi District in the Northern Region from the year 2009 to 2013. During this phase, TENI will improve the retention rate of pupils in 80 percent of the schools in the selected districts and their transition to JHS by 30 percent, targeting about 50,000 pupils, 50 percent of whom will be girls. 

School children in the Northern Region

The 4.5 million phase one TENI project which is being co-funded with 3 million pounds from Comic Relief and 1.5 million pounds from the VSO will support the development of educational strategies that integrate child-centred and inclusive methodologies into pre-service teacher training.

It will also support continuous assessment and performance of pupils through School Performance Reviews (SPRs), advocate for improved teacher motivation to enhance their performance and conduct more research on best practices that ensure systematic change in education in the Upper East, Upper West and Northern Regions.

Under the TENI project, the capacities of implementing partners and civil society organizations would be strengthened to whip up their ability to engage with the state to guarantee quality education. Implementing partners are the Link Community Development (LCD) in the Upper East Region, PRONET North in the Upper West Region, Integrated Social Development Centre (ISODEC) in the Northern Region and the National Service Scheme (NSS).

Mr. Ibrahim said the Kayayei phenomenon is a terrible indictment on the quality of support that girls receive at home, from their communities and in schools to enable them to access quality education. Some of the causes that undermine support for education include the lack of teachers in classrooms, especially in the rural and deprived areas, and the incapacity of teachers to support all children in their learning. The lack of trained teachers is also another factor with only about a 100 out of the 500 teachers at the primary level in the West Mamprusi District being trained teachers.

Other factors include the weak engagement between communities, district assemblies and school authorities to improve quality education for all children and socio-cultural believes and practices that discriminate against girls and children with disabilities thus denying them access to quality education.

He noted that, set against this gloomy picture are the efforts of government at making quality education available and affordable to all children. These range from the upgrading of teacher training colleges and incentives for teachers serving in deprived areas to the establishment of the Savanna Accelerated Development Authority (SADA) which will provide the development framework, the coordination and the synergy for all development efforts in the three regions covered by the project.

Mr. Ibrahim said TENI seeks to build on and support these efforts to ensure that all stakeholders work together to break the socio economic barriers to the retention and performance of children in schools.      

In a welcoming address the West Mamprusi District Chief Executive, Mr. Sulley Abudu Zackaria , said two notifying government interventions, the school feeding programme and the capitation grant, have significantly enhanced education in Ghana. He lauded the recent increment of 100 percent per child in the capitation grant, saying, it will further go to consolidate the gains that government has made by introducing these interventions.  

He mentioned the vastness of the district coupled with its scattered human settlements which are inundated by a number of rivers and streams as one of the challenges facing education in the district. The district also has inadequate professional teachers since most professional teachers refuse postings to the area because of the difficulties associated with the terrain, the poor road network and the lack of social amenities such as electricity and water. Poverty, rural urban drift of children of school going age, absenteeism among teachers, teenage pregnancy, and the negative attitude towards female education were also cited as some challenges.

The Chairman for the occasion, Naa Professor Nabila, Chief of Mamprugu Traditional Area and President of the National House of Chiefs,  said education is the best gift that any parent can give to a child and opens doors of opportunities that would otherwise be  closed if one were not educated. He therefore extended gratitude to VSO and Comic relief for taking the initiative to invest in the education of children in the three beneficiary districts.

Naa Professor NabilaA section of chiefs and elders at the ceremony

Methane Gas from Tamale Landfill Fuels Global Warming.

 

Methane gas escaping through vents in the Tamale Landfill  in the Northern Region of Ghana is contributing to global warming, the Environmental Protection Council (EPA) has warned.

Methane, a greenhouse gas, is produced by bacteria as a by-product of anaerobic respiration during the bio-degradation of waste that occurs in landfills. Since the gas is flammable, if it is allowed to accumulate, it would reach a level that if there is a fire, there would be a big disaster. Fires at landfill sites are difficult to extinguish because of the presence of methane. Furthermore, if the gas remains within the landfill, it will prevent other micro-organisms from working and the waste will not be degraded.

However, the present method of getting rid of the gas by simply allowing it to escape is of grave concern to environmentalists because while atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide has risen by about 31 percent since pre-industrial times, methane concentration has more than doubled.

As a greenhouse gas, methane is 21 times more powerful than carbon dioxide and remains in the atmosphere for nine to 15 years. It is the second most important human induced greenhouse gas and accounts for about a fifth of warming effects.  Its chief sources are landfill sites, fossil fuel energy and agriculture, especially rice and livestock farming. Other sources are coal mining, waste water treatment, stationary and mobile combustion and some industrial processes.

The effect of methane emissions is also compounded by the fact that, methane-induced warming in turn stimulates microbial decay of organic matter in wetlands, the primary natural source of methane. Scientists have expressed fears that deposits of methane and similar gases trapped in normally frozen ground in the arctic constitute a time bomb and may thaw out and spew into the atmosphere if global warming continues unabated.

Commenting on the issue, Mr. Abu Iddrissu, Northern Regional Director of the EPA said methane trapping remains the best solution to the problem. This would not only curtail its global warming effects but would also provide household gas for cooking in hospitals, schools and other institutions which will in turn  reduce their overreliance on fuel wood thus saving our forests.

He said the aspect of methane trapping as a waste management process can be contracted to private companies to undertake as a business venture if it falls beyond the capacity of the Tamale Metropolitan Assembly which is currently managing the landfill.

He called for the landfill to be condoned off or fenced completely. Presently, it has only been partially fenced with the lee end, where water has accumulated exposed to the public thus allowing goats, vultures and other animals to stray into it.

Mr. Iddrissu stressed the need to regulate the waste in the land fill site by partitioning the waste. “Hazardous waste such as clinical and biomedical waste, car batteries and ordinary torchlight batteries should not be mixed with ordinary waste. Labour should be hired to sort out hazardous waste from plastic waste and organic waste”.

He criticized the mode of transportation of waste to the site and the management of the site, saying, “Waste vehicles transporting waste to the landfill site should be covered and after the waste has been dumped at the close of the day, it should be covered so that it would not be blown around by wind. Presently, there is 24 hour access to the site which should not be so. Anybody can just walk in, and people living in communities close to the site walk into it and scavenge its contents”

 Furthermore, the Tamale landfill was not built up to modern standards. While it is a requirement that the sides of landfills should be lined with clay or absorbent material to prevent liquid from seeping into ground water leading to its pollution, the Tamale landfill is unlined.

Data collection on the kind of wastes in the landfill to facilitate the recycling of waste has also been neglected. 

“It important to keep data on the kind and quantity of waste in the landfill since it constitutes a repository for research. We should be able to tell the weight of plastics or bio-degradable material coming in as well as the amount of fluid and methane coming out. Then if there is the need for the assembly to purchase a waste re-cycling plant or a plastic plant, based on the tonnage of plastics coming in, they can tell whether such a project would be sustainable and can generate enough pellets of plastic for sale or whether fertilizer can be produced from organic waste material However, in the absence of hard data, you cannot tell. ”, Mr Iddrissu said. 

He regretted that present figures on waste are based on the sum of all the waste coming in, saying, “The present waste management system does not allow for composting to produce organic manure. What we are battling with is simply waste collection. If the bio-degradable ones are sort from the non bio-degradable ones, then we can think of composting.”

Mr Iddrissu said since the landfill can create jobs if managed successfully, the Tamale Metropolitan Assembly should seek assistance outside its own doors by throwing the challenge to research institutions such as the University for Development Studies (UDS) to research on how to create  livelihoods and generate income from the site; “It is a repository for making money to undertake all the development projects we need in Tamale and there would even be reserves yet we are wasting it.”

“The technical knowhow to turn the waste into useful products is not available hence there is the need for policy makers to link up with academia and manufacturing industries”, he explained.

He suggested some potential uses of the waste as the recycling of plastic waste for the manufacturing of plastic yam stakes, car and motor bike plates and materials for pegging during road construction as well as signboards and bill boards while waste paper can be recycled into affordable toilet roll.

Mr Iddriss said since yam stakes result in the destruction of a lot of small trees in a year, if plastic materials were turned into yam stakes, they would not only rid the environment of waste but also reduce the dependency on trees and preserve the environment.

Children in the Forefront to Restore Ghana’s Forest

Allanblackia, a Boost to the Cosmetic Industry

A worker at FORIG holding allanblackia fruits

Can you imagine a tree bearing fruits with each fruit weighing about 40 kilograms, the average weight of 10 newborn babies? Allanblackia, parviflora, a tropical tree growing in the forests of Ghana which has recently caught the attention of scientists bears about 120 of such fruits each year, equivalent to the weight of 1,200 new born babies!

Gigantic Allanblackia Fruits

However, scientists’ interest in the tree was not inspired by the exceptional weight of its fruits but the fact that the oil-rich seeds contained within its gigantic fruits could be the answer to attempts by the cosmetic industry to find a replacement for palm oil in the production of cosmetics.
Uniliver Ghana, a company that produces cosmetics, soaps, detergents and processed foods is one of the ‘early birds’ ready to take advantage of the tree’s oil rich seeds. It is therefore funding research on the tree at the Forestry Research Institute of Ghana (FORIG) in conjunction with Novel Development Ghana.
Research into Allanblackia , a wild indigenous plant begun in 2003 when Uniliver Ghana approached the institute for information on the tree. However, the institute had very little information on the tree at that time because it had never been researched. Through interviews with farmers and hunters who were familiar with it, the institute gathered enough indigenous knowledge of the tree to serve as a basis for further research.
Further research carried out by FORIG revealed that the tree is dioecious, with male and female flowers on different trees. Thus only female trees can bear fruits. The institute has established that each female tree produces an average of 40 kilograms of seed which in turn can yield 12 kilograms of oil. Had the tree been monoecious, with both male and female flowers on one tree the present number of trees in the forest might have been enough to meet the needs of Uniliver Ghana.
This has necessitated the need to propagate the tree under domestic conditions to pave the way for the establishment of tree plantations to meet future demand. Seven years down the lane, FORIG has explored the most successful method for propagating the tree.
“Scarification, which involves the removal of the testa or seed coat remains the best method for speeding up the germination of Allanblackia seeds” says Theresa Peprah, of the Forest Wildlife Management and Governance Department of FORIG. Seeds with their seed coat intact need two years to germinate, but scarification reduces this period to seven months. Putting the seeds in polythene bags after scarification further reduces the germination period to four months.

Allanblackia seeds germinating under domestic conditions

The maturity period of Allanblackia is still unknown but some farmers claim it can take as long as 15 years to produce fruits. Trees that were planted by the institute six years ago are still far from maturity, creating the need to find alternative methods of propagation if the tree is going to be beneficial to industry.
The main method being used to speed up the maturing of the plant is vegetative propagation, namely wedge grafting. Cuttings of mature trees that are flowering and fruiting, known as the scion, are trimmed into a spear like shape and inserted into wedges that are cut within the seedlings of the tree, known as the root stock. The resulting joint is bandaged with a plastic strip which is smeared with Vaseline to prevent water and air from entering. Since the scion bears the characteristics of an adult plant, the grafted tree skips the years normally required for the trees development and reaches maturity much earlier.
The main challenge that FORIG foresees with grafting Allanblackia is whether the resulting trees that would be smaller that the parent plants can bear the weight of the fruits that would be borne. Grafted seedlings were made available to farmers last year to start the commercial cultivation of the tree. This move was welcomed by the farmers who were relieved to hear that they would not have to wait several years for it to fruit.
While waiting for their own plantations, farmers are already benefiting from the tree by collecting its fruits and selling it to middle men who in turn sell it to Uniliver Ghana. Thus, a supply chain involving collectors, processors, middlemen and a company which does the milling already exists. Two hundred communities are already involved in the collection and drying of Allanblackia seeds and they provide Uniliver Ghana with 150 tonnes of seeds each year which yields 50 tonnes of oil. However, this is far below Uniliver’s requirement of 2000 tonnes a year.
For this reason, Novella Africa, a private –public initiative which was set up with support by Uniliver and operational in Ghana is working in Tanzania, Cameroon, Nigeria and Liberia to set up supply chains and to cultivate the trees for commercial seed production.
In view of the high demand for Allanblackia seeds by industry, it is one area where successful scientific research can reduce rural poverty by providing farmers with a fast growing tree variety that can fetch them the cash that they desperately need.

The local names for the tree amongst communities where it is known include osono dokono, meaning ‘elephants kenkey’, probably because of the size and colour of the fruits which resemble huge balls of kenkey, a local diet in Ghana. Other names like kusieadwe, meaning ‘rat’s nuts’ and ‘apesedua’ meaning ‘porcupine tree’, refer to the giant rat and the brush tail porcupine respectively which feed on its fruits. The communities also expressed awareness of the tree’s oil rich seeds which they described as ‘very tasty when eaten hot’ since they process it into edible oil for cooking. It is also mixed with palm kernel oil to improve upon its quality to fetch a better price on the market.