<<Print>>

Seventy-four point one percent (74.1%) of female students in the Northern Region cannot read at all, a Ghana Demographic and Health survey has revealed. The survey said only 0.7% are able to read a whole sentence, while 1.4 percent can partially read a sentence. Zangbalun-Bomahe Naa Chief Alhassan Issahaku Amadu, the Regional Population Officer who disclosed regional theses statistics at the regional celebration of the 2012 International Women�s Dayon Wednesday in Tamale said 65 percent of the region�s female population had no formal education and only 6.4 per cent had attained more than senior high school education. Organized by the Department of Women (DoW) of the Ministry of Women and Children�s Affairs, the celebration was on the theme: �Connecting Girls, Inspiring Futures, Reducing Rural Poverty�. Naa Amadu said access to quality education could brighten the future of females in the rural areas and lead to poverty reduction. He said it was critical for females to be empowered through mentorship and role modeling, to help them improve their self esteem behavior and educational progress. He stressed the need to create an open door system for leadership development of females and involving them in educational planning at all levels, adding that �government needs to increase the political will, transparency and accountability of girl education policies�. Mr. I.P.S. Zakari-Saa, the Northern Regional Director of DoW said despite the many commitments signed by the government at the international level including the Beijing Platform for Action and the Millennium Development Goals that had the implications for women�s well-being, they continued to lag behind their male counterparts in various areas of endeavor. �Even though there have significant achievements by women and attitudinal shift in society�s thoughts about women�s equality and emancipation, there are stills issues concerning male dominance,� he said. Madam Bridget Parwar, Regional Officer of Women in Agriculture Development, who delivered a paper titled: �Women in Agriculture; A Way of Reducing Rural Poverty�, said the Northern Region had about 5000 hectares of land some of which women could use for framings to help reduce poverty. She said the government had initiated many agricultural projects including the block farm system, fertilizer subsidy, agriculture mechanization and extended credit to farmers which omen could take advantage to generate income to support their families.