Examining the Role of Non-Formal Education as a Conduit to Poverty Reduction and Rural Development: The Case of a Rural Community in a Municipality in Ghana

Abstract

Non-formal education (NFE) programmes involves literacy and numerical programmes aimed to train people to read and write. Basic literacy of reading writing and computation helps in lifelong development of individual personality, which consequentially, also helps community development. The Ministry of Education, Ghana, in the year 2000, introduced the National functional literacy programme with the chief aim of making basic literacy and life skills accessible the rural people of the state. Hence the paper attempts to understand how basic education can be life-changing for the poor, rural class withina municipality in Ghana. In order to find a lens for this question I employed Amartya Sen's capabilities approach to economic and human development and Paulo Freire's concept of education for conscientization.The findings of the study shows that that the non-formal education programme plays a very critical role in the reduction of illiteracy coupled with improving the living standard of the rural adult learners if the programmes is well organized and implemented. Thus, the activities of NFE have the potential to make the illiterate poor to become functional literate which is a necessary condition for poverty reduction. Providing skill training is one of the major ways of improving the livelihood of poor people. Based on the impact of NFE activities on those who had graduated from the programme have the potential of reducing illiteracy and improving the standard of living of the people. These impacts have been felt in areas like literacy and numeracy, economic, social and political empowerment of learners in the community studied. However, the programme needs to be strengthened to address the issue of funding which has become a major challenge for the NFE. Facilitators and supervisors need enough motivation to commit them fully to the task and learners need support to start their own business to bring about meaningful poverty reduction.