In an era where toddlers can swipe before they can speak and schoolchildren spend more hours on tablets than textbooks, a quiet revolution is taking place in the Bono East Region.

It doesn’t require Wi-Fi, batteries, or a glowing screen. It only needs a wooden frame, a few colourful beads, and a child’s focused mind.

Organisers of the 2026 Smartmas Abacus Competition are championing this centuries-old tool as the antidote to what paediatricians call a public health crisis: excessive screen time.

The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) currently recommends avoiding screen media entirely for children under 18 months and limiting it to just one to two hours per day for older children. Yet, with smartphones and tablets now household staples, those guidelines are often ignored with serious consequences.

Studies have linked prolonged screen exposure to delayed language development, poor sleep quality, and shrinking attention spans. But in Techiman, a growing movement believes the solution lies not in high-tech apps but in a low-tech counting frame.

‘Screens Reduce Concentration’

Christian Tugi, the Smartmas Area Coordinator for Kumasi, is at the forefront of this push. Speaking on the sidelines of this year’s competition held in Techiman, he made a stark observation about how devices are dulling young minds.

“Screens reduce the concentration of kids,” Tugi said. “Replacing screen time with the abacus helps improve their concentration and allows them to focus more on their learning skills.”

His words are backed by action. At the competition, hundreds of young learners sat in disciplined silence, fingers flying across abacus rods, solving complex arithmetic in seconds—all without a single device in sight.

STEM Education Gets a Boost

The initiative has also caught the attention of national education authorities. Pensa Brefo, the Bono East Regional Principal Administrative Manager of the National Schools Inspectorate Authority (NaSIA), believes the abacus is more than a math tool—it’s a gateway to innovation.

“The Smartmas abacus will help improve the performance of learners in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) education,” Brefo stated. “That would help make them innovators when they grow.”

His confidence is rooted in the abacus’s unique ability to train both hemispheres of the brain simultaneously, enhancing visualisation, memory, and logical reasoning skills that are foundational for future engineers, coders, and inventors.

A Learner’s Testimony

But perhaps the most compelling evidence comes from the children themselves. Pius Alebara, one of the young competitors, says the abacus has transformed his academic life.

“The abacus has improved my learning ability by increasing my speed and accuracy in class,” he said. “I can now do calculations in my head faster than I could ever do on paper.”

Pius’s story is being repeated across the region as more schools and parents embrace the abacus not as a nostalgic relic, but as a practical, screen-free learning tool that builds discipline and mental agility.

A Call to Parents

For parents struggling to pull their children away from phones and tablets, the message from Techiman is simple: 15 minutes of abacus practice each day can offer more cognitive benefit than an hour of passive screen time. It improves focus, boosts confidence, and gives children a tangible sense of achievement.

Smart-Mas Abacus coordinator Haruna Boadu admonished parents to be mindful of their children’s learning needs by replacing screens with the abacus. “We need to replace screens with the abacus because it helps children learn more and better with accuracy and speed.”

The 2026 Smartmas Abacus Competition may have been a showcase of talent, but it also served as a powerful reminder. In a world overrun by digital noise, sometimes the smartest technology is the one that doesn’t need an update.