Growing up without a reliable supply of energy: A child’s experience

There are a lot of things we take for granted, such as water, food and energy. Here in Sweden, as in places like Britain, Germany, Japan, and the United States, children only touch the switch and they have light to learn, energy to cook and warm water to wash their clothes.

I was born in a village called Akrofonso, with a population of around 1300, in the Ashanti Region of the Republic of Ghana. As a child I didn’t know anything about electricity. I didn’t know I could put my food in a fridge for a while and, when I wanted to eat it, put it in a microwave and warm it. I didn’t know I could turn on a stove and boil water to prepare tea before going to school. There was no electricity and therefore there was no appliance in the house that used electricity.

Every child’s desire is to get up in the morning, get a warm shower and have a hot tea or coffee before going to school; while in school be able to use computers and other electronic gadgets that make learning easy and fun; when at home again be able to do homework in the evening, watch television or play some video games, before finally going to bed. While these desires are met in most western countries, it is sad to say that there are many people who are citizens of our planet that do not have these desires met and also have a lot of difficulties in meeting their energy needs.

The lack of electricity in my village meant that we could only prepare food using firewood or charcoal. The process of getting firewood made all of us children very sad. As a child it was my first duty to help my mother gather firewood and bring it home from the bush. The farm where we could collect the firewood was about five kilometres away and we had to go there on foot. Gathering firewood is one of the most tedious activities for anyone living in a place without electricity.

After walking five kilometres we spent a lot of time collecting firewood. Then, after getting enough, we would tie it and carry it for another five kilometers to the house. I was always tired after any trip. But my ordeal would not end after the 10-kilometre journey; after getting home I would have to wash my clothes and school uniform. That meant fetching water from the stream that was about a kilometre away. My mother’s ordeal did not end there either. She would have to go straight to the kitchen to prepare food and spend about half an hour getting the fire ready before cooking. Since we didn’t have a fridge, my mother also dried fish, meat and vegetables by using the smoke and heat from the fire. The whole house was full of smoke, a situation that always made me uncomfortable.

All this meant that we spent our life gathering firewood, cooking and washing. Every activity involved a considerable amount of time and energy.

But what about my education? How was I able to learn without electricity? Well, I had to do my homework immediately after I came home from school. But sometimes, as soon as I got to the house, I was told, “Mother says there isn’t enough firewood!” I had to rush to the bush and meet her and bring some home. After bringing the firewood home I would be so tired that I would not be able to do the homework. My experience wasn’t different from the rest of the students in the village. The pressure to fetch firewood and to ensure that the family had enough energy in the house was daunting.

Can a child really learn after a 10-kilometre journey carrying firewood? Would a student be able to excel under these conditions? I have to admit that I was unable to read by the time I got to class three. I couldn’t write my name nor speak English or Twi. I was totally illiterate, even though I had been going to school.

In the village the best time to learn was the daytime, and if the day was used to collect firewood or perform non-academic work, it meant we had lost it. With no electricity the only way I could learn was by using a candle or a lantern, and neither were good, but a beggar has very little choice and so I had to make do with it.

Finally, I left our village for a town where there was electricity. There, the students could learn late into the night. I started making improvements with reading and learning and soon became one of the best students in class. I went to secondary school, got one of the best grades in the whole country, then proceeded to sixth form, passed my A-levels and then went to the university.

There was no way I could have made it to the secondary school, let alone to sixth form and to university, without electricity.

However, the situation today has not changed much. The problem of energy access in many parts of Ghana is almost the same as when I was a child. Children are still experiencing the same problems as I had. But today their experience is even more precarious, because most of the firewood is used up. They have to walk several kilometres further than the five kilometers I journeyed to fetch firewood. That means that it is still a big challenge for them to find opportunities to learn and do something meaningful with their lives.

In my village employment opportunities are limited and poverty is high. People are therefore caught in a vicious cycle; lack of access to energy limits their opportunities to study and to do many other things that could improve their lives. The denominator for improving social and economic conditions for people, to fight and end extreme poverty, is – energy. Access to efficient and reliable energy sources hold the key to Africa’s development. Access to energy is the miracle that would push Africa out of the conundrum of underdevelopment and poverty.

Achieving the Millennium Development Goals or new sustainable development goals will be elusive without a clear focus on energy access. Poverty cannot be halved if people do not have electricity to bring out the potential in them and transform their communities. Let us all support the effort to make energy deficiency a thing of the past.