On Constitution Day, Dr. Abena Boateng, Director of Research at the Centre for Democracy and Socio-Economic Development (CDS Africa), and Amar Nijhawan, Senior Program Officer at the International Development Research Centre (IDRC) and coordinator of the CDS Africa Consortium project, highlighted the unrecognized toll of unpaid care work on families caring for children with developmental disabilities.
Speaking on the Asaase Breakfast show, Dr. Boateng painted a vivid picture of the daily struggles: “Imagine yourself going to have a child and you are very excited… and then the child is born and they are not meeting those milestones. They can’t walk, they can’t talk. They depend on you solely for everything. So you probably will have to quit your job.”
She described carers – predominantly mothers – managing teens as old as 17 who require round-the-clock attention for conditions like cerebral palsy, autism, and Down syndrome. “They have no respite. They have no break whatsoever. They don’t have holidays,” Dr. Boateng said, noting hundreds of such cases across Ghana.
Funded by IDRC, the 18-month project has gathered data via time-use diaries led by partner Songtaba in northern Ghana to quantify this “hidden labor.” Preliminary findings reveal a stark gender imbalance: women and girls shoulder the load, often abandoned by partners.
“There’s a woman that we spoke to whose story kind of haunts me… her husband left her because in his ways they don’t have such children in his family,” Dr. Boateng shared. Men step in mainly if widowed and unmarried, but face pressure to remarry, leaving women without options.
Nijhawan emphasized the broader economic stakes: “The world runs on care… In the continent of Africa alone, women do almost three times the amount of unpaid care work.” Globally, unpaid care contributes 9% of GDP – about $11 trillion – per International Labour Organization data, yet it’s absent from Ghana’s metrics. Without it, “everything would stop functioning,” she warned, from household chores to enabling paid work.
Ghana’s inclusive education policy exists on paper, meeting international standards, but implementation lags due to funding and scaling issues. The experts called for starting small: opening public school doors for three hours daily. Benefits, Dr. Boateng argued, include mental and physical respite for carers, economic gains from freed-up time, reduced stigma for non-disabled children, and social development for those with disabilities.
A dissemination conference is set for Thursday at Palms at Eagle Hotel in Accra at 8:30 a.m., open to all stakeholders. “Let’s all come together… to make the inclusive education policy workable,” Dr. Boateng urged, directly appealing to the Education Minister and Ghana Education Service director for political will.
Media plays a pivotal role, with CDS Africa partnering on stories for traditional, social platforms, and IDRC’s global site. “We can’t do our work without the media,” Dr. Boateng affirmed.
Change won’t come overnight, Nijhawan noted, but evidence from such research is key to policy shifts.
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