Astute diplomat and former Vice-Chair of the African Union, Thomas Kwesi Quartey, shares that the free education policy currently being pursued in Ghana is the surest way of realizing the continent’s reintegration agenda and must be taken seriously.
“The readiness will depend on education; if you look at the countries that have made great leaps and bounds like Korea and China, they began with free compulsory education,” he tells Single African Market in an interview.
Adding to the above, he says: “Ghana is on the right path with its free education policy. It will be important to have the political class agree to this agenda to make it consistent and sustainable in the long term.
Mr Quartey argues that it was impossible to identify a person’s talent until they are educated and that denying someone access to a decent education is a crime against that person, who may have ended up as a genius, an inventor or entrepreneur.
“We need to, as a country, have a clear understanding and consensus of what we want; and I see that will come. You may find debates rather fierce and at variance with each other; but on the core principles, they are the same.”
Dr Quartey, therefore, encourages the political class to enhance discussions and opinions that breeds transparency, leading to greater and deeper consensus and fewer divisions amongst them in the interest of economic integration.
Commenting on the AfCFTA, Mr. Quartey, who is also a former deputy foreign affairs minister in the erstwhile NDC administration, says the single continental market will disentangle the various blocks that hinder intra-Africa trade.
“What the free trade area is seeking to do is to disentangle blocks so that Africans can trade with each other and not just to import added-value products from the top or north, but also to seek to add value to tradable commodities within the continent.
It is the act of making this legal and formal through the ages became the AfCFTA, he says.
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