Mission Statement
To feed the hungry minds of Sub-Saharan Africa by promoting education at all levels but especially at its most crucial juncture, the secondary level.
Rationale for Our Mission
Think of sub-Saharan Africa. If there is the sophistication not to think animals and safaris, what come to mind instantly are abject poverty, starvation, disease, political instability, misrule and corruption. But behind the blinding glare of the stereotypical image, for those willing to look – and see – is another reality. Rarely noticed or considered is that, despite the all too obvious deprivations and misery, the sub-Saharan African child – the future of the region – thirsts and hungers for knowledge. This need for education is rarely met. But when it is met at crucial junctures in early life, these children have proven to be highly motivated learners and have gone on to hold their own in the best institutions of higher education in the western world and have gone on thereafter to lead successful and fulfilled lives as adults. Kofi Anan, Barack Obama Sr., the Nobel laureate, Wole Soyinka and countless others, not as well known or visible, are examples of what education can do to transform African lives that would otherwise be stunted and diminished beyond recognition. In the final analysis, a good education is the best and most effective – but by no means the only – antidote to the maladies that afflict sub-Saharan Africa.
“We should take this chance that among those who now sit and
will sit in the main classroom block, those who will sleep in the
renovated student hostels, those who will titrate solutions, connect
cables and dissect the cockroach and toad in the renovated laboratories,
those who will project technical drawings; among all who will draw from
the fountain of knowledge at GSSA, we may get Nobel laureates, we may
get clones of Newton, we may get famous men without taint.”
— Prof Ndu Eke, PM (primus)
GSSAAA is devoted to education in sub-Saharan Africa. Our activities will include the restoration of crumbling school buildings including rehabilitation of crucial infrastructure such as water and power facilities; the erection of new buildings and even new schools; the development and support of teaching staffs; the equipping of schools including stocking of school libraries and laboratories and the provision of scholarships to deserving indigent students. The activities of the organization may also include “Books for Hungry Minds” campaigns involving solicitations for book donations for schools at all levels but especially the secondary school level.
Our activities will focus initially on those areas where education has lost ground and suffered serious setbacks as a result of war and its aftermath. Such areas include especially southeastern Nigeria where educational institutions were devastated by the Nigerian Civil War of the late 1960’s. Sierra Leone, Liberia and Mozambique are other countries ravaged by wars that took a toll on the schools. War is still raging or simmering in the Congo. That situation will therefore be addressed when the embers of war have finally died down there. Southern Sudan deserves special mention. We have a soft spot for this new nation because Dr. John Garang, the head of the Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA) and the liberator and founding father of the new nation of Southern Sudan, was a student at GSSA briefly in the 1960’s. Demographic imperatives require that a lion share of resources will go to southeastern Nigeria.
Charity begins at home. So Job one is the restoration of our alma mater, GSSA.