The Vice President of the Republic and flagbearer of the New Patriotic Party (NPP), Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia, has appointed Dr. Prince Hamid Armah, the deputy minister nominee for Works and Housing, to chair the campaign team’s manifesto committee on education.
His appointment has, however, plunged the Western Region into a mood of jubilation amidst outpours of gratitude to the vice president for the honour done the region.
Currently the vice chairman of the education committee in Parliament, Dr. Armah is expected to lead the charge to produce a comprehensive manifesto document that can stand the test of time to address the issues bedevilling the education sector in the country.
The former Director-General of the National Council for Curriculum and Assessment (NaCCA) boss’ appointment was contained in a statement issued on Thursday, February 22, by the Communications Director of Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia’s campaign team, Dennis Miracles Aboagye.
The committee, the release stated, shall be responsible for undertaking a holistic review of the party’s 2016 and 2020 manifestos and engaging all relevant stakeholders to come up with a pragmatic 2024 manifesto.
The Member of Parliament for Kwesimintim in the Western Region, is an education and social research consultant, with nearly two decades experience in teaching Mathematics as well as expertise in social research, policy development and implementation within Ghana and the United Kingdom contexts.
He also supervised the introduction of the Standards-Based Curriculum for Kindergarten and Primary schools, the national training of teachers and the approval of new instructional resources associated with the curriculum and assessment reforms, and introduced the Common Core Curriculum for Junior High Schools.
Dr. Hamid Armah has extensive expertise in quantitative methods and data analytics, having been rigorously trained at the Doctoral Training Centres (DTCs) of the Universities of Nottingham, Edinburgh and Manchester with funding from the Economic and Social Research Council of the United Kingdom, where he specialized in applying quantitative methods to the examination of social policy issues. He has particular interest in constructing and validating latent variables using factor analytic and the Rasch Models, and applying data analytic techniques such as Structural Equation Modelling (SEM) to construct human social behaviour change models.
He is experienced in project management, public finance management, monitoring and evaluation and has undertaken academic research into the impact of public education spending efficiency on economic growth in Sub-Sahara Africa using Data Envelopment Analysis and Generalized Methods of Moments estimations, among others.
Dr. Armah served on the Technical Team of the Ministry of Education that developed Ghana’s Education Strategic Plan (ESP) 2018-2030 and, associated Medium-Term Development Plan 2018-2021. He was the lead education consultant to the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO), UK (previously Department for International Development) Partnership Beyond Aid (PBA) programme which drew up a thorough plan for Ghana’s transition to self-reliance through improvements in economic and social sector management, quality service delivery financing, accountability and capacity building. He has consulted for several other funded projects of national and international organizations including The World Bank, USAID, UKAID/FCDO, UN Education Commission, Ministry of Education/Ghana Education Service, among others, contributing to national development in various ways particularly in the areas of research and human capital development.
He holds a PhD degree in Mathematics Education from the University of Aberdeen (UK), an MSc in Development Finance from the University of Ghana Business School, an M.Ed. in Mathematics from the University of Education, Winneba in Ghana and a B.Ed. (Hons) in Mathematics from the same university, in addition to a Qualified Teacher Status (QTS) from the Teaching Regulation Agency (UK).
