Why are there no libraries in Ghana?

Abena Kusi Opinion Jun - 25 - 2014 , 07:59

Why are there no libraries in Ghana? This is the question I asked my dad as we drove down the crumbling Accra-Tema motorway one hot April evening.

You might wonder what I’m talking about. Of course there are libraries in Ghana, but I’m not talking about little book rooms set up in private institutions and schools which the brightest student stumbles upon once in a while.

Neither am I talking about the few humongous stone buildings set up in University centres accessible to the whole of Ghana but with the capacity to hold a few thousand visitors, to give a few hundreds of students the ability to borrow and to hold the interest of the least amount of people.

I’m talking about centres of learning in every single district of Ghana; places where intellectuals and labourers can comfortably sit down and read stories in different languages, resource books and articles and also research.

And what about children? The only time the Ghanaian child gets to sit down and study is during school hours. This is not enough. Why can’t we encourage our children to be more studious? If we could have learning centres where children could read comics and story books in addition to textbooks, they could become 21st century learners who would later add to the workforce and move Ghana forward.

I am fighting the cause of communal libraries when there are a lot of schools who don’t even have libraries. Doesn’t this talk much about the quality and limits of research that pupils can undertake? What level of education are Ghanaian children getting if their schools don’t provide libraries for them to not only do further learning but also to find a conducive learning environment?

In chapter five of the Ghanaian constitution, the right to equal educational opportunities and facilities is advocated in article 25. It also states that functional literacy shall be encouraged and intensified as far as possible. Despite this law on our basic educational human rights, our years of independence have not led to a fully educated workforce.

From statistics recorded in 2009, the literacy rate of the Ghanaian population is only 66.62 per cent . If you want to hide something from a black man, you can put it in a book. Children are subject to compulsory primary education but when they reach the Senior High School level, more than half drop out. If these dropouts had easy access to a local library, their studies could proceed.

So coming back to my opening question: What was my dad’s answer? Well, he said the government had a lot on its hands (evidently). But what are the District Chief Executives doing? What projects are their offices rolling out to gain local revenue to fund development into local infrastructure?

If the districts didn’t just rely on the government to give them funds but were able to raise enough revenue from district taxes, they could do a lot more than just building a few roads around their districts.

Now, to me that sounds like a more sustainable idea. If we rely on the central government for everything then we’re going to have to put “more libraries” at a bottom of a long bucket list filled with the more urgent needs of roads, hospitals and jobs. What do you think?

Writer’s email : kusib@hotmail.com

The writer is an intern at the Human Rights Advocacy Centre and a student at Tema International School.