Features
Education and the Ghanaian diaspora in Finland
Education in Finland was free until 2017
Today, I focus on educational exploits of Ghanaian migrants in Finland, their work opportunities and the positive image they have created within the Ghanaian migrant community and in Finland generally.
I have been writing about different aspects of the Finnish educational system as well as how it affects migrants in Finland.
There are many positive things that Ghanaian individual migrants have achieved in the area of education that need to be stressed.
Educational opportunities in Finland
The Finnish education was free until about 2017. The Finnish educational system offers both the majority population and minority (including migrants) the chance to work while studying or after their studies.
Thus, the privilege of education enhances the potential of such migrants who study in Finland to become skilled workers in banks, as lawyers, medical doctors, nurses, engineers, ICT specialists, entrepreneurs, technical and semi-technical personnel in the country.
In recent times, some trained migrants are beginning to find jobs as experts and top-level personnel in the health, educational, and the service sectors of the economy.
Ghanaian migrant graduates
Many Ghanaian migrants have graduated from educational programmes in recent years, such as in the Health Care (Nursing) courses and other popular English-language study curricula.
Others have been educated in the engineering and technology sector; business and management; computer science and information technology (IT); natural sciences and mathematics; and education and training.
As I wrote some time ago, according to the Study in Finland portal, Finnish higher education institutions currently offer over 500 bachelor’s and master’s degree programmes taught in English. There are also countless doctoral degree programmes (see www.studyinfinland.fi).
Today, from the over 2000 Ghanaian migrants living in Finland, there are hundreds of them who hold the bachelor’s, the master’s, or the PhD degrees. There are also countless others who have graduated with the diploma.
Education and the job market
Research has shown that most migrants are gainfully employed either as paid workers or as self-employed entrepreneurs.
Studies show that migrants often have unstable or marginal positions in the Finnish labour market as cleaners, waitresses, and bouncers in pubs.
However, as mentioned already, many Ghanaian migrants have become skilled workers in banks, as lawyers, medical doctors, nurses, engineers, ICT specialists, and entrepreneurs, technical and semi-technical personnel in Finland and they are excelling in their areas of work.
Gender aspects
Having opportunities to education is very much pronounced for both males and females, without any hindrances along gender lines in terms of admission into programmes and finding a job after graduation.
Although I do not have the specific number of Ghanaian (international) students who are admitted to Finnish universities or who graduated and gain employment, I can say that they are quite visible in Finnish institutions and in the job market in Finland.
In addition, there are those who have ventured into entrepreneurship. This is an area that is gaining much attention in the entrepreneurial space in Finland.
Integration and inclusion through education
Finland is committed to the integration of migrants into the Finnish society, and a number of research studies from surveys and other in-depth enquiries have shown a trend of increasing efforts to integrate African and other migrants into the Finnish society.
One key area through which migrants can easily be integrated is the educational sector. For example, the work of the Finnish National Agency for Education is aimed at increasing equality and open-mindedness in education and internationalisation among others, according to information on its website.
One of the key points here is that supporting the integration of migrants, developing the teaching and education of learners with a migrant background and building a diverse society play an important role in achieving those goals (see www.oph.fi/em/news). Thank you!
The writer is a Ghanaian lecturer in Finland
By Perpetual Crentsil
One of the issues we have been grappling with as a nation is corruption, and it has had such a devastating effect on our national development. I have been convinced that until morality becomes the foundation upon which our governance system is built, we can never go forward as a nation.
Our traditional practices, which have shaped our cultural beliefs, have always espoused values that have kept us along the straight and the narrow and have preserved our societies since ancient times.
These are values that frown on negative habits like stealing, cheating, greediness, selfishness, etc. Our grandparents have told us stories of societies where stealing was regarded as so shameful that offenders, when caught, have on a number of instances committed suicide.
In fact, my mother told me of a story where a man who was living in the same village as her mother (my grandmother), after having been caught stealing a neighbour’s cockerel, out of shame committed suicide on a mango tree. Those were the days that shameful acts were an abomination.
Tegare worship, a traditional spiritual worship during which the spirit possesses the Tegare Priest and begins to reveal secrets, was one of the means by which the society upheld African values in the days of my grandmother and the early childhood days of my mother.
Those were the days when the fear of being killed by Tegare prevented people from engaging in anti-social vices. These days, people sleeping with other people’s wives are not uncommon.
These wrongful behaviour was not countenanced at all by Tegare. One was likely going to lose his life on days that Tegare operates, and so unhealthy habits like coveting your neighbour’s wife was a taboo.
Stealing of other people’s farm produce, for instance, could mean certain death or incapacitation of the whole or part of the body in the full glare of everybody. People realised that there were consequences for wrongdoing, and this went a long way to motivate the society to adhere to right values.
Imagine a President being sworn into office and whoever administers the oath says, “Please say this after me: I, Mr. …., do solemnly swear by God, the spirits of my ancestors and the spirits ruling in Ghana, that should I engage in corrupt acts, may I and my family become crippled, may madness become entrenched in my family, may incurable sicknesses and diseases be my portion and that of my family, both immediate and extended.”
Can you imagine a situation where a few weeks afterwards the President goes to engage in corrupt acts and we hear of his sudden demise or incapacitation and confessing that he engaged in corrupt acts before passing or before the incapacitation—and the effect it will have on his successor? I believe we have to critically examine this option to curb corruption.
My grandmother gave me an eyewitness account of one such encounter where a woman died instantly after the Tegare Priest had revealed a wrong attitude she had displayed during the performance on one of the days scheduled for Tegare spirit manifestation.
According to her story, the Priest, after he had been possessed by the spirit, declared that for what the woman had done, he would not forgive her and that he would kill. Instantly, according to my grandmother, the lady fell down suddenly and she died—just like what happened to Ananias and his wife Sapphira in Acts Chapter 5.
NB: ‘CHANGE KOTOKA INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT TO KOFI BAAKO
By Laud Kissi-Mensah
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BY ROBERT EKOW GRIMMOND-THOMPSON
