The Aftershocks of Pandemic Restrictions: Report from Ghana: Part 1: Introduction
Ola, Cape Coast
Sunday 31 December 2023
The name Cape Coast is a corruption of the Portuguese “Cabo Corso,” or “Short Cape.” Cape Coast lies alongside the Gulf Of Guinea, in what used to be called the Gold Coast and now constitutes the modern nation of Ghana. This spot is within walking distance of Saint George’s Castle at Elmina, constructed in 1482, the first major stone structure ever built by Europeans south of the Sahara.
The shoreline here resembles the ones depicted in every picture postcard from every tropical island paradise you have ever seen — endless white sandy beaches fringed by coconut palms, calm azure waters stretching far beyond the horizon. Unfortunately, almost all of it is completely unswimmable. The same geomorphology that made this part of the world such an attractive locale for the European slave traders to build their forts and castles also makes it potentially lethal for unwary bathers, as the water beneath these azure waves is littered with rocks and boulders.
It is here that I spent the four happiest years of my life, teaching at the University of Cape Coast. And it is to here that I have returned, for a variety of reasons, not the least of which is to assess the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic restrictions on the children here.
Ghana was not immune to the movement restrictions and school closures that plagued the rest of the world. Schools were closed for fifty-three weeks. (For calibration, school closures lasted for twenty-four weeks in neighboring Nigeria and fourteen weeks in Sierra Leone.) The entire country was locked down for more than four months, from 16 March to July 31. At its highest, Ghana scored eighty-six points (out of a possible one hundred) on the lockdown stringency index.
The economic shocks of the pandemic restrictions were severe. A whopping eighty-four percent of households surveyed reported diminished income, half reported missed meals, and a third reduced access to markets.
What about the effects on children? Three researchers from the University of Education at Winneba found the great majority of secondary and tertiary students reported they were unable to learn effectively from the home, and never received any orientation from their teachers prior to the closures. Thirty percent of learners had never even heard of the online learning platforms supposedly made available to them, and a solid majority lacked access to the internet. The vast majority reported that their parents were unable to provide effective guidance, and that they lacked adequate resources for self-guided learning in the home.
A UNICEF report found thirty percent of children ages 6-17 reported feeling sad “more often” or “much more often.” The same report warned of increases in food insecurity due to disruption of food supply chains, loss of income due to pandemic restrictions, and loss of school meals (for the poorest children, often the most substantial meal they had during the day).
The report also noted that that students spent on average fewer than less than six hours per week learning, and a solid forty percent of school-age children stopped learning altogether. Nearly half lacked access to the internet, and a quarter lacked textbooks. Many children faced inadequate conditions for home learning, such as overcrowded households, lack of electricity or proper lighting, lack of a dedicated learning space, and inadequate support from parents.
A team of researchers from the University of Pennsylvania studied the effects of pandemic restrictions in the greater Accra area and found that sixty-five percent of respondents reported diminished earnings, and forty percent had to limit portion sizes at meals or skip some meals altogether. Only half of teachers reported their schools offered any kind of remote learning at all, and many students lacked access to computers. In other cases, students were encouraged to continue learning by means of radio or television classes, but many of them lacked access to these technologies as well. Other students were provided with hard copies of textbooks, but without any guidance on how to use them. No doubt circumstances were even more dire in rural areas.
All this was enforced by a barrage of fear porn, to the extent that many children believed COVID-19 could spell doom for all of humanity.
When the students finally were allowed to return to school, the grade repetition rate tripled.
Other students never returned to school at all. Some were pressed into unpaid domestic labor, or child marriages, or ended up in the labor force. Some of those ended up working exhausting, dangerous jobs such as gold mining, where they carried heavy loads, crushed ore with hammers, inhaled dust, and handled mercury, a highly toxic heavy metal. One-third of these child laborers reported working ten hours or more a day, often for seven days a week.
The UNICEF report linked to above concluded with a warning that the pandemic restrictions had put children at risk for irreversible losses in developmental progress, and the after-effects of reduced productivity and earnings would be with us for decades to come.
But I have come to see for myself. For the next five weeks, I will share with you what I have learned about the effects of pandemic restrictions on the children of Ghana.
My book The Day the Science Died: Covid Vaccines and the Power of Fear is now available on amazon.