Mobility, education and livelihood trajectories for young people in rural Ghana: a gender perspective

Abstract

This paper examines the gendered implications of Africa's transport gap (the lack of cheap, regular and reliable transport) for young people in rural Ghana, with particular reference to the linkages between restricted mobility, household work demands, access to education and livelihood potential. Our aim is to show how mobility constraints, especially as these interact with household labour demands, restrict young people's access to education and livelihood opportunities. Firstly, the paper considers the implications of the direct constraints on young people's mobility potential as they travel to school. Then it examines young people's (mostly unpaid) labour contributions, which are commonly crucial to family household production and reproduction, including those associated with the transport gap. This has especially important implications for girls, on whom the principal onus lies to help adult women carry the heavy burden of water, firewood, and agricultural products required for household use. Such work can impact significantly on their educational attendance and performance in school and thus has potential knock-on impacts for livelihoods. Distance from school, when coupled with a heavy workload at home will affect attendance, punctuality and performance at school: it may ultimately represent the tipping point resulting in a decision to withdraw from formal education. Moreover, the heavy burden of work and restricted mobility contributes to young people's negative attitudes to agriculture and rural life and encourages urban migration. Drawing on research from rural case study sites in two regions of Ghana, we discuss ethnographic material from recent interviews with children and young people, their parents, teachers and other key informants, supported by information from an associated survey with children ca. 9–18 years.

Keywords:

• school distance
• child labour
• transport gap
• load-carrying
• educational access

Acknowledgements

This research on which this paper is based was funded by the UK Economic and Social Research Council and the UK Department for International Development [RES-167-25-00028]. However, these organisations can accept no responsibility for any information provided or views expressed. Our grateful thanks are due to our many respondents in the villages, to other contributing University of Cape Coast field researchers, Mercy Otsin and the late Ekow Afful-Wellington, and to the Ghana young researchers, Cyril Agbley, Doreenda Agyeman, Daniel Aidoo-Bossah, Emmanuel Cornelius Ampong, Lois Antwe, Exonoyski Ntim Asare, Emmanuel Owusu Danquah, Evans Egyir, Eoudia Kumi-Yeboah, Joshua Opoku, Emmanuel Teye Owusu, Lawrence Tabiaa, Charity Tawiah, Dorothy Tawiah, and Victoria Yeboah. We also wish to thank two anonymous reviewers for their comments.

Notes

In the latter strand, seventy young people (mostly secondary school pupils aged between 11 and 19 when they started), received a basic, one-week training in a variety of research methods, selected research tools they preferred and conducted their own studies with their peers. A full description of the recruitment and methodology in this child researcher component is available elsewhere (Porter et al. 2010a). The young researchers selected sites convenient to them and these did not include the rural sites discussed in this paper.

The main field research assistants are included as authors.

Pseudonyms are used both for settlement names and for individuals, to preserve anonymity.

Information from the latest Ghana Living Standards Survey (2008) is not yet available. This also included a question about time to school and mode of transport.

The interviewer subsequently checked the punishment type with Patience and clarified that this referred to what he terms ‘lashing’ i.e. a common Ghanaian term for caning.

Of course, the constraints which affect children's travel to school, may also impact similarly on teachers, since few can afford their own vehicles.

Young children often start to carry tiny loads as they accompany their mothers from around three years old (Porter et al. 2011).

Schooling tends to take the following pattern in Ghana: six years of primary education, 3 years JHS/JHS, 4 years SHS/SHS.

According to this report (DFID 2010), in sub-Saharan Africa there are 79 girls for every 100 boys at lower and upper secondary school.