Ayawaso Sub-Metro Education Infrastructure Report

We are pleased to share with you our latest MCI report, Education Infrastructure Challenges in East & North Ayawaso Sub-Metros: School Facility Survey Findings and Perspectives From Three School Circuits in Accra, Ghana. This study, researched and written in partnership with the Nima-based youth NGO “Voice in Community Empowerment” (VOiCE), affords us all a snapshot of the current conditions of the school facilities in four centrally located neighborhoods — Nima, Maamobi, Kotobabi and Kanda — in Ghana’s national capital.

Voice in Community Empowerment, or “VOiCE,” is a registered non-political, non-religious and non-profit organization dedicated to youth empowerment and to facilitating the community-led implementation of socio-economic and developmental projects in the communities within Accra’s Ayawaso Sub-Metros. VOiCE is managed entirely by area youth, capitalizing on their human capital through volunteerism. After a successful collaboration mapping civil infrastructure and community facilities in Nima East, VOiCE approached MCI to consider another partnership, this time, focused on the degraded and decaying school facilities in the so-called “Zongos” in the aforementioned Sub-Metros — that is, those neighborhoods considered to be inhabited largely by Muslim migrants from Northern Ghana and typically isolated from social and economic development. Already familiar with these schools’ conditions in the course of researching other projects in these communities, MCI agreed that the issue required as much careful documentation, exposure and attention as possible. Together, MCI and VOiCE profiled 23 schools, including 17 primary and 14 junior high school programs (some of which are contained within the same facility). By surveying the headmasters/mistresses, interviewing selected students and undertaking extensive fact-finding site visits, we document student performance, teacher/student ratios, PTA involvement, classroom conditions and crowding and other key educational infrastructure (including teacher qualifications, supply of learning materials, water, sanitation and power). While it may be well known in Accra that these schools require upgrading, we are confident that the findings revealed here, anchored in local knowledge, will be striking, nonetheless.

The report, supported, edited and designed by MCI, urges key development actors, including national and local government, NGOs and local community-based organizations to join VOiCE in facilitating sustained improvements in the educational infrastructure across the Ayawaso Sub-Metros, thereby ensuring that all students residing in these vibrant Accra neighborhoods are able to access the quality education they deserve.

We hope you will find the report of interest, with respect both to the current condition of so many schools in Ghana’s capital, and to the inspiring engagement, commitment and follow-through on the part of Accra youth, as they seek to improve their community’s schools in order to improve educational outcomes for current and future generations of students.