Education Is The Only Sustainable Way To Get Out Of Poverty And To Develop A Country

A speech delivered on July 14, 2018, By S. Tiawan Gongloe

Thank you for inviting me to speak to our children on the occasion of their graduation from the ninth grade. I have one message that I am carrying around these days, especially when I am invited to speak to students. That message is that education is the only sustainable way to get out of poverty.  When a child from the poorest family in a village, town or a community gets educated, his life changes for the better. Learning, both formal and informal provides a better chance to get out of poverty forever. Education provides the opportunity to get trained as a mechanic, a masonry person, radio repairer, a teacher, nurse, medical doctor, engineer, a preacher or a lawyer, amongst others.

If a person becomes educated and works hard in using what he has learned,  he earns money based on what he has learned. For example, during the Liberian civil conflict, many Liberians went to Ivory Coast, Guinea, Sierra Leone, Ghana, Nigeria, The Gambia, amongst other places. Some Liberians left behind compounds of houses, large rubber, cacao, coffee, and oil palm farms, a fleet of commercial vehicles, stores, amongst others. Some Liberians left Liberia leaving no assets behind. Amongst the Liberians that left nothing behind, were Liberians that had acquired skills in radio repairing, sewing, driving, masonry and some were formally educated as teachers, doctors, accountants, etc. History shows that those who left Liberia with some form of education had better opportunity to survive and excel over those who left behind big commercial farms and housing estates, etc. While those with big farms and housing estates were waiting for the conflict to end so that they can return to better life. Many educated Liberians in refugee camps were able to get jobs, scholarships to study abroad and lived generally better in their host countries than those who were not educated but relied on their housing estates and farms back in Liberia.  

Education brings change in a person’s life for the better. It makes a child born to a poor family to live in a better condition than his parents. In other words, a person may be born in a poor family and may be poor as a child, but the life of such a child may change for the better, once that child goes to school, stays in school and gets educated. The responsibility of a person to change his life for the better is a personal responsibility and the best way to this is by acquiring education.

Bill Gates, the inventor of Microsoft description of the responsibility of an individual to change his life for the better is instructive. He says, “ If you are born poor, it is not your it is not your mistake. But if you die poor, it is your mistake.” You can avoid the mistake of dying poor only by going to school. Education is, therefore, the only reliable source of hope for a change in life for the better. Today, because Bill Gates got educated and worked hard to apply what he learned, he is a billionaire. Dr. Sakui Malakpa , a Liberian from Lofa County became blind when he was a little boy, but that did not discourage him from going to school. Today, Sakui Malakpa has a Ph.D. and is teaching in the University system in the United States of America. He came from a poor family and was poor as a child, but today, he is not poor because he went to school.

There are many outstanding persons in the Liberian society who were born or who grew up right here in New Kru Town and came from poor homes or families that were not considered rich, but today, because those children went to school and were serious about acquiring an education, they cannot be counted among the poor people in Liberia, anymore as long as they live. Let me name just a few of these persons. Atty. Wilson K. Tarpeh, our current Minister of Commerce grew up here in New Kru Town, not under the best of economic conditions. But because he went to school and remained in school, he has served as President of the Agricultural and Cooperative Bank, held a senior position at the African Development Bank and served as Minister of Finance. Today, he is our minister of Commerce. He may not be a millionaire, but he cannot, certainly, be counted among the poor people of Liberia anymore. Atty.  Philip Wesseh, grew up here in New Kru Town, from a poor family.

But, because he went to school, today he is a lawyer and also publishes one of the leading newspapers in Liberia, The Inquirer Newspaper.  Mrs. Cecelia Kuffy Brown was not born to a rich family, but she went to school like her other siblings did and because of that she is today the acting managing director of the National Port Authority. Cllr. N. Oswald Tweh grew up here in New Kru Town, not from a rich family. But, today, because he went to school and stayed in school, he is not only one of the leading lawyers in Liberia, he is, also, the President of the Judicial Council of the United Methodist Church for the whole world, and the first person to hold that position from outside the United States of America.

Anyone can hope for change in his or her personal life. But if that hope is not supported by education, whether formal or informal, then that hope will lead to hopelessness in the end because mere hope without learning anything will not change a person’s life for the better. Therefore, education is the surest way out of poverty.

Education is also the only sustainable way to develop a country. The development of the human mind is the best way to create opportunities and an enabling environment for any country to develop the required capacity for economic growth and development. Therefore, the most sensible thing for any nation to do is to make education a top priority for the investment of its limited resources, if it has any plan to develop. The evidence of the important role of education in national development is not hidden. Before the invention of a motor vehicle, it took human beings ten or more hours to walk a distance of fifty miles from one location to another. The invention of the motor car reduced the time for such a distance to fifteen or twenty minutes depending on the road condition. It was, in fact, impossible for human beings to travel across one continent and to travel from one continent to another. Today, it takes hours to do with an airplane. It was only possible for those who invented motor cars, airplanes, trains, motorcycles, and other means of travel to do so because they went to school. United States, Russia, Japan, China, Singapore, Malaysia and the Scandinavian countries and other European countries have developed because the spend their countries’ resources on the education of their children.

When a country invests in the development of the minds of its citizens, the probability for those educated citizens to think, do research and find ways to make life less difficult in a country becomes high. One of our own citizens, Dr. Dougbeh Nyan has invented a rapid diagnostic test that detects Ebola, HIV, Zika, Plasmodium (Malaria), Yellow Fever virus, Dengue virus, Hepatitis B, C, and E and West Nile virus. According to reports, the test can detect three to seven infections simultaneously in 10 to 40 minutes. It was only possible for Dr. Dougbeh Nyan, a Liberian from River Gee County to invent this great diagnostic because he had the opportunity to go to school and he used the opportunity well. When a country educates its citizens, the citizens will use their minds to develop their country. Therefore, I call on our leaders in all sectors of our country to make the education of our children the number one priority on our agenda for National progress.

I thank you.