Reflections on International Literacy Day

Friday, September 8, 2017 is International Literacy Day, a day set aside by UNESCO to propagate the importance of literacy to global and national productivity.

Literacy is a human right, a tool for the right of all illiterates the world over to be given the opportunity to access basic education which is essential for eradicating poverty, reducing child mortality, curbing population growth, achieving gender equality and ensuring sustainable development, peace and democracy.

UNESCO sources indicate that 756 million adults and 263 million children worldwide cannot read and write. While the global literacy rate for males is 90.0 per cent, that of females is 87.7 per cent. It is important to note that developed nations have a literacy rate of 99.2 per cent, while Saharan Africa has a literacy rate of 64.0 per cent, justifying the reason for the rapid economic growth and technological advancement of developed nations.

Illiteracy in Ghana

In Ghana, the 2010 Census Report indicates that the country’s illiteracy rate is now 28.5 per cent literacy. Together with the huge deposit of school dropouts, Ghana has a huge responsibility to reduce this literacy deficit to single digits.Illiteracy arises out of missed opportunities for children of schooling age after attaining the maturity age for schooling.

For children in developing countries, another missed school year is another missed opportunity to lift themselves out of the cycle of illiteracy.

One’s ability to read, write and calculate is not an end in itself but a means to an end. The current world information and communication order, as well as the digital technological revolution has rapidly transformed human behaviour and bridged the gap for transacting business, networking and communicating internally and globally. Distance is no more a challenge as access to information has been made very easy and more convenient.Creativity through digital technology has resulted in new inventions that are continuously improving commerce, health delivery, industry and agriculture through efficiency and productivity.

Undoubtedly, people lacking the ability to read, write, compute and appreciate digital science and technology have been overly secluded from the rest of the world.

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Theme

It is against this background that the theme for the 2017 International Literacy Day “A Digital World in Ghana: The Case of Functional Literacy” rings a serious bell and need to be seriously thought through.

It is clear that literacy the world over has gone beyond reading, writing and calculation. Effective use of mobile phones, the internet and other technological gadgets are transforming lives and enhancing wealth creation and employment generation to the extent that literates lacking digital literacy are themselves caught up in the web of functional illiteracy, a phenomenon which involves the inability of the educated to function effectively in society for lack of adequate knowledge in Information Communication Technology (ICT) and other digital tools.

For International Literacy Day to be meaningful, drastic efforts should be made by countries to open up all barriers to school to enable children of schooling age to go to school. This include implementation of holistic policies that will absorb the challenges inhibiting children from going to school. This include construction of schools within manageable accessible limits; expansion of school feeding programme to cover all basic schools; provision of free school uniforms and systems for transporting children free of charge to school where schools are far from the communities where the children reside. All available means to stop the leakages from occurring or becoming a canker in the lives of the marginalised should be stopped.

UNESCO’s vision

UNESCO’s vision for linking this year’s International Literacy Day to Digital technology is ample testimony of the need for the world to share this great technological breakthrough to all illiterates worldwide to enable them to tap the enormous benefits that accrue from digital technologies and innovations. A miss out on the digital world is a great loss to the individual.

It is ,therefore, prudent for the non-formal education division to work in harmony with all digital technology providers in Ghana towards creating the needed conducive environment that will enable non-literates acquire digital literacy to enable them to operate effectively in the digital world in Ghana.