Longterm Poverty Reduction through Boreholes Provision in Rural Communities – The Quality Education Platform: Practical Insights from the Atebubu and Afram Plains Districts of Ghana

Abstract

This study essentially indicates how boreholes provision facilitated effective school attendance to reduce poverty in rural communities in the long term. The sample size of 1200 household respondents was selected by simple random sampling technique. Primary data was collected from the Atebubu and Afram Plains Districts in Ghana through the use of quantitative and qualitative research instruments. In the study area the lack of potable water prevented the achievement of quality education objectives because school children trekked long distances in search of water daily for their households. However, results from this study shows 91.3% of survey respondents indicated boreholes provided facilitated improvements in quality education delivery; 83.9% indicated boreholes helped to check frequent absenteeism at school; 79.0% indicated boreholes provided helped to check high level of dropouts; and 87.7% indicated boreholes provided helped to improve punctuality at school. Thus, this powerful intervention in rural communities fostered a holistic and effective education delivery at the foundational level with trends showing as 71.0% increase in school enrollment in the Afram Plains District from 1992 to 2000, and a 29.0% increase in the Atebubu District from 1998 to 2006. Boreholes provision therefore constitutes a very powerful intervention for facilitating time gains that enabled children in rural households to actively attend school consistently. Through such regular school attendance children could eventually access education up to tertiary level and eventually obtain highly paid jobs to break from poverty.

Article published in Online Journal of Social Sciences Research, 2013. Also available at www.onlineresearchjournals.org/JSS

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