Knowledge Revolution in Ghana

Fellow Ghanaians, with this article, which forms the platform of what will become an unending series of scaffolding knowledge in our desire to live, move and have our being in the order of things, I intend to initiate a KNOWLEDGE REVOLUTION, first in Ghana and then across the entire sub-Saharan Africa. What I would appreciate very much is contributors being dispassionate and unemotional about their inputs, which should be about three things: i. what constitutes knowledge ii. how knowledge is produced, by who and under what circumstances, and iii. knowledge for what purpose(s).

I am not going to go now into what is meant by ‘knowledge’ and ‘revolution’. That will unfold as the scaffold is constructed in due course. What I want to start off in this article is for contributors to provide me with their viewpoints about this question: Why do we send our children to school? I will collate these viewpoints and snowball them to generate the necessary sub-platforms for the knowledge revolution.

For a start, I want to give you my own viewpoint to the question I have posed: I sent my children to schools to obtain ‘knowledge’ so that when I am dead and gone they would hopefully use that knowledge to live, move and have their being in the world that they would live in. You may have your own viewpoints, and that is what I want to collate so that we can all contribute to our living. Finally, I feel it is imperative that I give you a brief outline insight into what has motivated me into launching this knowledge platform. There are three dimensions: First, as a human being, conditioned to live, move and have my being, it is my firm belief that I must KNOW how to live, how to move and how to have my being as a human being. This led me to my second motivation: How then do I know what to know, in order words what approach or approaches do I take to know what to know in order to live, move and have my being?, which led me to the final dimension: Is the Ghanaian (or sub-Sahara African) society a knowledge society? If yes, then why is the society still lagging in development, comparatively; if not, then why, what is holding our society back? I hope that this article will be the beginning of an unending quest of ideas for the Ghanaian (sub-Sahara African) society to achieve progress by deploying our capacity for reason within some approaches to know in order to establish the truth of a situation or event or condition and use it as means of serving the needs of the Ghanaian (sub-Sahara African humanity in the world. The final point I want to make is this: we are all together engaged in this mission to make knowledge work for our society, and that no single person holds the key to knowledge. Therefore, all ideas are welcome. Thank you.

Jesse Ofirikyi