Second lady advocates digital libraries in Africa

Lady, Mrs Matilda Amissah-Arthur has called for the establishment of regional networks of digital libraries in Africa to accelerate the pace of research on the continent.

She said without any conscious effort to digitize the libraries and archives it would be difficult for the continent to harness its potential for accelerated development.

Mrs Amissah-Arthur was speaking at the fourth International Conference on African Digital Libraries and Archives (ICADLA-4) at the University of Ghana, Legon.

The conference, which was on theme: “Focusing on the strategic framework and road map for Africa’s Digital Libraries and Achieves” aims to provide a platform for African institutions to examine and review the development of national and international policies in relation to Africa.

The two-day forum is being attended by participants from regional and international policy institutions, archives, libraries, museums, government agencies and departments, all levels of educational institutions, funding institutions as well as research centres.

The conference was hosted by the Ghana Library Association (GLA), in collaboration with the Department of Information Studies of the University of Ghana and the Ghana Library Authority.

Mrs Amissah-Arthur also emphasized the need for a coordinating body that would be responsible for ensuring that the network comes in to help the various libraries that have problems with software issues and advice.

According to her, since 2009, there has been three successive conferences on digitization, yet there has not been much improvement in terms of the digitization of the libraries and archives and called on the authorities to do more in this regard.

She stressed the need to put in strategies and see how far the country’s libraries and archives have gone in the digitization effort.

Mrs Amissah-Arthur called for a strategic plan which would allow the regional networks to be divided into a sub-regional groups then upon improvement, move to the regional level for action to be taken.

She also charged the participants to come out with a plan on how to implement a road map of action for digital libraries and archives in Africa.

Mr Felix Kwakye Ofosu, the Deputy Minister of Communication, who represented the Minister of communications, said advances in information documentation continue to open opportunities for mankind and if adequately harnessed, will contribute significantly to the accelerated development of the country.

He said the government has identified ICT as a key pillar and the enabler for the country’s socio-economic transformation, and that, the development of the Ghana ICT for Accelerated Development (ICTD4AD) policy has been developed alongside relevant enabling environment for the promotion of ICT as a catalyst for the nation’s development.

He said the emergence of digital libraries and achieves have created new fields of information documentation, which has led the world of information we live in, adding that, the world thrives on information.

He said the government's fibre optic project would also support the e-government project which will link all Metropolitan, Municipal and District Assemblies to the seat of government.

Article culled from Ghana Web 30th May 2015.

Gender Minister defends Ghana’s child welfare system.

The Gender, Children and Social Protection Minister, Nana Oye Lithur has told the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child that Ghana is in the final stage of formulating the Justice for Children policy which aims at protecting children and guiding their interaction with the justice system.

Nana Oye Lithur strongly defended Ghana’s efforts at improving the welfare of children through legal, policy frameworks as well as institutional mechanisms.

According to her, Ghana has prioritised issues about children since the ratification of the Convention on the Rights of the Child in 1990.

"We are also finalising a justice for children policy to guide interaction of children with the justice system of Ghana and promote the well being of children; prevent abuse, and protect children from harm," she indicated.

She said government has also "prioritised interventions for girls, children with disabilities, children of asylum seekers, refugee children, children of immigrants, children exposed to sexual and gender based violence, children living with HIV and children living and working on the streets."

Touching on the phenomenon of witch camps which have been a haven for many human right abuses, Nana Oye Lithur also indicated her ministry will close down two more witch camps in the Northern Region having already closed one in December, 2014.

"A national conference on witchcraft accusations was also for the first time in our history held in Accra for us to develop a national consensus on the underlining causes and issues surrounding the phenomenon of witchcraft accusation and to chart a way forward for eliminating it," she said.

See more at: http://www.myjoyonline.com/news/2015/May-22nd/gender-minister-defends-ghanas-child-welfare-system.php#sthash.91nNNL2g.dpuf

Ghana’s education remains “robust” - Minister

Ghana’s Education Ministry believes until the methodology used in the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) recent school rankings is outlined, it will be erroneous to conclude that Ghana’s education system is poor.

According to a press statement signed by the Education Minister Prof. Jane Naana Opoku-Agyemang, the media must be circumspect with their reportage because the full report is not out yet.

Moreover, she reminded the public, the full report surveyed 195 countries and not 76 as being reported in the media.

“Ghana’s educational system remains robust and we are encouraged by the gains we are making and also by the popular verdict by many independent global assessors.

“This is the country that has successively won the three top awards in the West African Secondary School Certificate Examinations for the last five years. Ghana’s educational system cannot be a failed one neither can it possibly be the worst in the world and it is at least gratifying that the OECD report does not say so,” Prof Opoku-Agyemang stated.

Below is her press statement

The Ministry of Education has taken note of media publications regarding a school ranking on Mathematics and Science at age 15 by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) with specific reference to Ghana’s position among 76 countries in the world.

As we wait for the full report to be formally presented at the World Education Forum in South Korea next week to which our Minister of Education Prof. Jane Naana Opoku-Agyemang has been invited, it is important to be circumspect at this stage and to acknowledge that we do not at this point have details on the methodology and the period covered in this first ever OECD report on school rankings.

We have also noted from the press highlights of the research that only 76 countries out of over` 195 countries in the world were considered for this research. It therefore cannot be said that Ghana’s educational system is the worst globally as has been circulated by sections of the Ghanaian media.

Additionally, Ghana is one of only five African countries that feature in this ranking. It will be interesting to explore how these five African countries thus Ghana, South Africa, Botswana, Morocco and Tunisia made it to these rankings. Are we perhaps being told that these are the best performing nations in Africa? What other interpretations exist to justify the inclusion or selection of these African nations and indeed of the entire 76 nation sample frame?

It is worth pointing out that apart from this OECD report, all other recently published international reports have been highly complementary of Ghana’s efforts at improving the quality of Education. For example, the independent United Kingdom think tank, the Overseas Development Institute (ODI) praised the tangible gains Ghana has made in access and quality in its report captioned “Ghana, the Rising Star: Progress in Political Voice, Health and Education” published in March, 2015. The report notes that Ghana ranks among the highest performing countries in human development in sub-Saharan Africa, especially in terms of health and education.

Similarly, the UNESCO Education For All Global Monitoring Report under access reports that Ghana’s progress between 2000 and 2012 surpasses the averages of sub-Saharan Africa, developing countries and developed countries. Ghana’s KG Enrolment Ratio increased by 74 percentage points compared with the sub-Saharan average of 9%, developing countries average of 22% and developed countries average of 13%.

On the goal of ensuring that all children have access to and complete primary education, the performance trends indicate that Ghana is one of the best performing countries in the world.

The 2014 Global Information Technology Report of the World Economic Forum also highlighted signifiant successes and ranked Ghana 46th out of 148 countries in the world in terms of quality of our education system while in the area of Mathematics and Science, Ghana was ranked 2nd in Africa and 62nd in the world.

Meanwhile, it is important to stress that the Government of President John Dramani Mahama has long prioritized the study of Maths and Science not only to improve scores but to make it more attractive and exciting to study whiles targeting improved transition rates. This is the reason Government has been embarking on a number of bold interventions over the last three years including engaging the services of globally renowned mathematicians Prof. Francis Allotey and Prof. Sitsope Anku. Under this intervention, thousands of maths and science teachers are being retrained to meet Government’s objective.

This Government in 2014 met its obligation for the first time in decades when it provided 12 million core English, Maths and Science text books to meet the required textbook-pupil ratio. Over 50,000 computers over the last two years have also been distributed. The Science Resource Centre Programme is being expanded to cover all public Senior High Schools (SHSs) in the country. In 2014, 100 SHSs across the country benefited from this project to improve on the teaching and learning of Science.

Under the 156 million dollars World Bank supported Secondary Education Improvement Project (SEIP) the Ministry is supporting quality improvement in 125 beneficiary SHSs with emphasis on the teaching and learning of Mathematics and Science.

Ghana’s educational system remains robust and we are encouraged by the gains we are making and also by the popular verdict by many independent global assessors. This is the country that has successively won the three top awards in the West African Secondary School Certificate Examinations for the last five years. Ghana’s educational system cannot be a failed one neither can it possibly be the worst in the world and it is at least gratifying that the OECD report does not say so.

Nonetheless, the Ministry of Education is determined to continue to improve the standard of education and put in place measures to ensure quality teaching and learning at all levels of the educational system in our dear country.

Signed, Prof. Jane Naana Opoku-Agyemang

GhanaWeb - General News of Thursday, 14 May 2015