A Forgotten Generation: The silent crisis of the boy child

We stood on the precipice of change, and rightly so. The world looked upon its past with remorse, recognizing the sins it had committed against the girl child—sins of suppression, of silencing, of treating half of humanity as less than equal. And so, we fought. We built movements, waged campaigns, and restructured entire systems to favour the girl child, to give her the chance she was once denied.

But as we stand here today, basking in the triumphs of girl child education, of women’s empowerment, of quotas and policies that champion one gender, I cannot help but ask: At what cost?

Somewhere, in the shadow of our noble fight, another child has been left behind. He was not weak, nor was he crying out for help—at least, not in ways we could hear. The boy child, once seen as the automatic inheritor of privilege, now finds himself an afterthought in the very society he was expected to lead.

A World Where Boys Are Losing Ground

In Ghana today, the educational landscape is shifting. Girls are excelling, and rightly so—they were given the push they so desperately needed. But while we celebrate their ascent, a silent crisis is unfolding. Boys are dropping out at alarming rates. They roam the streets of Tamale, lost in the ghettos of Ashaiman, not because they lack potential, but because no one is asking about them.

• Who is championing the cause of the boy child? Where are his empowerment programs? His reserved quotas? His targeted scholarships?

The narrative of historical male privilege is one the West constructed for itself—one rooted in centuries of institutional advantages that men wielded. But in the African reality, both boys and girls suffered under systems of poverty, war, and economic hardship. Our boys were not sitting in glass towers watching as their sisters were denied opportunities. They, too, were struggling. They, too, needed a helping hand.

And yet, when the world opened its eyes to the injustice against girls, it shut them to the struggles of boys.

Meritocracy or Gender-Based Advantage?

We have reached an era where opportunities are no longer distributed based on skill, intelligence, or ability. Instead, we hand them out based on gender. Girls are given scholarships, not because they are the best, but because they are girls. Women are placed in leadership roles, not because they are the most qualified, but because the statistics must balance.

• If equality is what we fought for, why are we tipping the scales so drastically in one direction?

In the rush to empower the girl child, we have created a new kind of imbalance. A world where boys must now prove they deserve opportunities that girls are simply given. A world where being male no longer means privilege—it means exclusion.

The Ripple Effect: A Society on the Brink of Imbalance

When you push one side up without securing the other, the entire structure tilts. That is the reality we are creating.

Across Ghana—and indeed much of Africa—young boys are slipping through the cracks. With no structured support, no mentorship, and no empowerment programs tailored to their needs, many are turning to self-destructive paths. Hard drugs, Money rituals and Internet fraud, known as Sakawa, have become their escape.

They see a world that has no place for them, a system that does not acknowledge their struggles, and they choose the only routes that promise power, wealth, and recognition—even if its illegal.

Society expects these boys to “man up,” to figure things out, to be providers and protectors. But how can they? What tools have we given them? What guidance do they have? They are like boats lost at sea, expected to find land without a map or compass.

And here is the bigger question: What happens when we create a society of prosperous women and unsuccessful men?

In African culture, men are traditionally seen as the heads of households, the providers. But what happens when the very men meant to lead and support families are Instead struggling, jobless, and lost? The family unit—the foundation of our society—begins to crumble.

We are already seeing it today. Highly educated, successful women struggle to find partners they deem worthy. Marriage rates are declining. Relationships are becoming fragile. Not because these women do not want to settle down, but because the pool of equally accomplished men is shrinking.

And what happens when men feel they are no longer needed in families? They withdraw. They detach. We create a cycle where strong, independent women are forced to take on both roles—mother and father—while disempowered men either fade into irrelevance or rebel against the system.

This is not just a social issue—it is an economic one, a cultural one, a national crisis waiting to explode.

If we do not correct this imbalance now, the future will look like this:

• A growing population of young men addicted to drugs, fraud, and crime.

• A generation of women unable to find partners, struggling to maintain family structures.

• A weakened societal fabric where the traditional roles of men and women are distorted—not by choice, but by circumstance.

We need to act now.

Not five years from now, when we are forced to create Boy Child Empowerment initiatives out of desperation.

Not ten years from now, when we have to fund rehabilitation centres for the lost boys we neglected.

Because if we do not, the very society we are building will collapse under the weight of its own imbalance.

A Call for Balance, Not War

This is not a war against girls. It never was. But what good is empowerment if it comes at the cost of another? What victory is there in creating a new generation of disadvantaged people just to balance the sins of the past?

We do not need to choose between the girl child and the boy child. We can—we must—fight for both.

A future where girls and boys are given equal opportunities, where merit determines success, where empowerment is not a gendered privilege but a right for all children.

Because if we do not act now, the very movement we celebrate today will be the crisis we must solve tomorrow.