Abdul-Rahim Mohammed
4 Publications in AERD
Author Publications
Export PDFChild marriage and education in the context of a global pandemic: Exploring the gendered implications of COVID-inspired school closures in Ghana
By Abdul-Rahim Mohammed
This article aims to cast light on the negative but silent effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on girls' education and welfare in Ghana. Since the pandemic emerged in 2019, unprecedented changes have occurred in ordinary people's health, education and social life. As a response to the pandemic, governments globally implemented social distancing regimes, lockdowns and school closures to curtail the spread of the virus. While this approach did help in curtailing the spread of the pandemic, implementing lockdowns and school closures in Ghana had unintended consequences: they amplified gendered inequalities in access to education. Drawing on one-on-one semi-structured interviews with (i) 10 teachers and one head teacher, 13 parents of child brides, and 11 child brides (aged 15–19), and (ii) Focus group discussions (FGDs) with 15 community leaders in a rural Ghanaian setting (Mion), this article provides empirical evidence to show how the pandemic has disrupted the lives and education of 11 girls. In particular, school closures and rising poverty due to the pandemic led to increased child marriage. These 11 schoolgirls were seen as a burden by their parents, and, consequently, married off to older men as an adverse coping strategy. Furthermore, some of the girls themselves requested to be married, due to rising household chores occasioned by the school closures. Finally, the school closures also offered the community the justification to reactivate deeply held notions about the value of a girl's education as a basis for marrying them off. © 2023 Association of Child Protection Professionals and John Wiley & Sons Ltd.
Children's lives in an era of school closures: Exploring the implications of COVID-19 for child labour in Ghana
By Abdul-Rahim Mohammed
On 11 March 2020, the World Health Organisation declared COVID-19 a global pandemic. Subsequently, governments worldwide implemented strict regimes of lockdowns and school closures to contain the transmission of the virus. Ghana's government on 15 March 2020 also announced a lockdown and closure of schools, lasting up till January 2021. Against this backdrop, the paper examined the implications of school closures on child labour in Ghana. Qualitative data for the study were collected between October 2020 to February 2021 in a small rural community in northern Ghana. Findings from 16 semi-structured interviews with schoolchildren aged 8–13 years show how school closures have meant that children from contexts of poverty: (a) are driven into child labour as they are either forced to accompany their parents to work on farms or sell foodstuff by the roadside; and thus, ultimately (b) engage in no learning during the lockdown period. © 2022 National Children's Bureau and John Wiley & Sons Ltd.
Austerity is impeding children’s education: A qualitative study of the associations of food insecurity and school engagement in Ghana
By Abdul-Rahim Mohammed
The latest round of fiscal austerity in Ghana has meant that the feeding rate paid to the service providers of Ghana’s school feeding programme is both frozen and unrealistically low. Accordingly, service providers adopt discretionary coping strategies. This qualitative case study, therefore, explores the impacts of austerity on children’s school engagement. Relying on semi-structured interviews with school children in two public primary schools, as well as two focus group discussions with the teachers in both schools, the study shows how the discretionary coping strategies adopted by the service providers impact school children’s food security, which might lead to disinterest in classroom activities and increases in absenteeism and truancy. © The Author(s) 2021.
Discretion on the frontlines of the implementation of the Ghana School Feeding Programme: Street-Level Bureaucrats adapting to austerity in northern Ghana
By Abdul-Rahim Mohammed
Ghana's economy faltered in 2012, culminating in the country requesting a bailout from the International Monetary Fund (IMF). Typical of IMF financial assistance, the approval of this bailout was hinged on the government agreeing to implement some conditionalities. In fulfilment of the IMF conditionalities, the government in 2015 adopted fiscal austerity. Using Michael Lipsky's Street-Level Bureaucrat conceptual framework, this paper investigates the implications of Ghana's fiscal austerity programme for the implementation of the country's school feeding programme. Specifically, the paper examines the coping strategies adopted by the service providers to endure the challenges of delivering the programme within the climate of austerity. The findings highlight how financial challenges can lead to inadequate service delivery, as the service providers adopt a host of discretionary practices such as compromising the quality of meals served, the delivery of cheaper-to-prepare diets and an inconsistent service delivery regime. © 2021 John Wiley & Sons Ltd.
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