How Does The New ‘Manufacturing And Processing’ Syllabus Help Africa?

We cannot take a tablet and possibly think to jot down all the benefits due to accrue from implementing a syllabus as this in schools across Africa.

The likes of Nkrumah were great visionary leaders whose breeds are uncommon. They envisioned an Africa that is self-sufficient. In their effort to make those dreams come true, they built state enterprises and industries. Upon diligent search, we find many of those industries in an equally dead state as the people who built them. Why?

The simple reason we lost those big companies and manufacturing plants was because of the mismatch between the industries built and the training given to manpower. Our schools never lack teachers; neither does our hospitals, nurses. Why? We have built institutions to train such categories of labour. How many schools were built to train factory workers? They never existed. So when the founding fathers built factories without considering how needful it was to inculcate a syllabus that trains learners to work in those factories – they had missed it from scratch.

A syllabus like Manufacturing and Processing seeks to train and ensure available human resource for industries across Africa.

Ready manpower who are engaged in active processing and manufacturing activities, either on their own or in some company, is the yeast needed for increased production.

We should be out of our minds to import what our own children who have graduated from our schools are already producing. Increased production of varieties of processed goods and manufactured products is the cure for high level of importation. And not just that, it stands to increase our exports as well.

Why should we have sleepless night again about rising level of exchange rates when we produce whatever we need within or across our borders? Increased production is same a remedy for the persistent rising exchange rate.

Talk of economic growth, how is it measured? Is it not by GDP? And what is GDP? GDP stands for Gross Domestic Product. Not gross “foreign” product, but gross DOMESTIC product. This means, that no nation ever grows by importation of cheap foreign products; nations grow in equal proportion to what they are able to produce within their borders - domestically. Well, GDP is also not gross domestic import, but gross domestic PRODUCT. And what does this new syllabus seek to do other than empower the African to produce more and achieve economic growth?

Many youth in Africa are not just unemployed, but unemployable simply because they were taught things in school for which no real job exists to be done. What a tragedy! With a syllabus like Manufacturing and Processing, every graduate can find his or her way into some form of meaningful employment. This syllabus reduces and seeks to eliminate unskilled labour and the woes of unemployment.

Does that not reduce unemployment in Africa? Of course, it does. And is that all? Not at all. It also translates into ensuring political stability and peace within the borders of our nations.

As I have outrightly stated in the beginning, neither pen-and-paper nor tablet could be enough to hold the numerous benefits a syllabus as this, Manufacturing and Processing, stands to bring to Ghana and the continent of Africa.

We are far advanced in developing textbooks for the teaching and learning of the content as briefed in the previous article. However, we humbly seek the sponsorship of any and every passionate African citizen, organization or government to aid us do the needed research to complete this project. Thank you.

Let Africa Arise!

Written by Rich Akpalu