EDUCATION MATTERS: How Obama's Team Inspires USA's Youth Through Education - Lessons For Africa

BOTH Barack and Michelle Obama come from an American culture where historically the black man or woman has to be twice as educated, and work twice as hard to compete and succeed in a white world.

To say quality education is central to this first family is an understatement. Education has been the touchstone of each successive achievement of theirs, all the way to the top.

The first couple serve as the very embodiment of how education can lift a life with meaning, and grace it with self-actualisation.

It was revealing that Obama symbolically chose Abraham Lincoln (the 16th U.S.

President) as a mentor, and swearing - during his own inauguration as the 44th President – on the very same Bible the honest Abe used in 1861.

Starting out as a rural postmaster in his early years - and from a humble family with no important economic, political or family ties - Lincoln realised from day one that his salvation and effective public service rested on quality education.

He took it upon himself to study freely and privately, and earned a law credential. Talk about rising up from your own bootstraps!

He is, today, the most revered, written about and quoted of all the American presidents, especially in the area of effective leadership which he exhibited through the gory civil war that united the union that, today, we call the United States of America, boasting of the best learning institutions of the world, and many of the world’s greatest achievements and inventions.

Another Obama mentor is America’s resilient 32nd president, Franklin D. Roosevelt. Though crippled by polio with “Paralyzed legs locked in heavy braces”, F.D.R. led his country through the great depression, serving an unprecedented 4th term as president.

His determination was fostered by sheer cerebral firepower. He took on the best of the republican adversaries and doomsayers without a crease on his daunting intellect.

A Piers Morgan interview (CNN, late Jan 2012) with Mrs Jill Biden, a teacher by profession, was most inspiring. She said that right after the inauguration – in January 2009 that ushered in her husband Senator Joe Biden and Obama - she made it clear to the powers that, in four days, she would be back into the classroom where her profession and commitment beckoned. And the team happily gave her the supportive thumbs up, with blessings as icing on the cake.

Another stalwart on the American education turf is the secretary of education, Erne Duncan. His bottom up, hands-on approach, is remarkable. It is always enlightening to read about him making the rounds with the president himself in schools as the prime leader committed to the 21st century demands of ICT applications in the classroom.

From Boston, on the east coast - to Los Angeles, on the west coast, the numerous invitations to the youth - to enrol in schools, pick up skills, and follow a dream of one’s own making - are elating, and can be seen in trains, buses, and stations all over the country.

The following from Obama’s State of the Union (SOTU) address (Jan 2012) to both houses of the U.S. Congress, tells the story:

“Join me in a national commitment to train two million Americans with skills that will lead directly to a job. My Administration has already lined up more companies that want to help.

“Model partnerships between businesses like Siemens and community colleges in places like Charlotte, Orlando, and Louisville are up and running. Now you need to give more community colleges the resources they need to become community career centers - places that teach people skills that local businesses are looking for right now, from data management to high-tech manufacturing.”

The African leader with such forward looking concerns for education a continental scale is none other than Kwame Nkrumah. Education meant the life to him. About the time of Ghana’s independence, he said, “As never before we want thinkers – thinkers of great thoughts. We want doers – doers of great deeds.”

Like Lincoln, the Osagyefo’s lineage was most humble. With no large ethnic following, no economic or family ties in his favour, he opted for education, ending in no other tertiary institution than the Lincoln University in Pennsylvania.

Returning home after his education in the U.S., it hurt him to see the mass illiteracy on the African continent, with children abandoned to their own devices. His commitments and various books are now classics.

The announcement that of the 100 top world universities not a single one was African might have sent shivers through Nkrumah’s grave.

Having evolved the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST), and the University of Cape Coast (UCC), I am wondering what Nkrumah would say on hearing that of the 100 top universities in the world, not a single one was African.

Where many leaders themselves stop learning, and glue themselves to grandiose mansions and lifestyles - what chance will the young generation ever have? That, unfortunately, is the African predicament.