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Parliaments generally perform functions including oversight, legislation, and representation. In many developing countries, the representation function portrays Members of Parliament (MPs) as Developmental agents in their communities. One of the main sources of funds for MPs in Ghana has been the District Assemblies Common Fund. The Constitution of Ghana has created the District Assemblies Common Fund to transfer financial resources from the central government to local governments. Out of this has been the creation of the MPs share of the District Assemblies Common Fund. The allocation is made to help MPs directly address developmental challenges in their districts. This study attempts to assess the MPs Common Fund from both citizens’ as well as MPs perspectives. This is what we term ‘perception meeting practice’. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The African continent has witnessed most health crises including yellow fever, meningitis, cholera, and Ebola. Two recent health crises faced by Ghana have been the Ebola virus and the Covid-19 virus diseases. This paper attempts to compare these two crises to understand what preparedness approaches were used by the government of Ghana during these two crises. Also, the paper attempts to identify what the similarities and differences have been and why these similarities and differences existed in the preparedness towards these crises that happened over different periods and whether Ghana's Covid-19 preparedness was based on lessons from Ebola. Through the policy legacies analytical framework and a review of the literature, the paper argues that Ghana's preparedness shows a lot of similarities from the training of healthcare workers, the health infrastructure introduced, approaches to public engagement, and political decisions made to fight both crises. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper focuses on the policy responses of Ghana's government with a focus on three areas: health, economic, and social. Ghana had made several policy interventions in these three areas. The study highlighted the adoption of the 3T-approach in health, CAP-20 in economics, and free water and subsidized electricity for citizens as social interventions. The study concludes that the measures undertaken by the Government of Ghana have yielded significant results even though some challenges with delivery mechanisms are identified. The available statistics as of October 25, 2020 on the COVID-19 situation in Ghana further affirm the gains. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Governance has been described as an institutionalised mode of social coordination to provide collective goods. In Ghana, governance involves various stakeholders such as the government, state agencies, development partners, the private sector, and civil society organisations (CSOs). While government's participation in governance is mandatory, stakeholders like CSOs may be driven by certain factors to participate in the governance process. Using stakeholder analysis as its analytical lens, this article reports on a study that adopted a qualitative research approach and found that CSOs in Ghana are driven by their contribution to the development of a just society, the mandate of the organisation, funding, and recognition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Public Accounts Committee (PAC) has been established by Standing Order 151 (2) to exercise an oversight function over the Executive on public expenditure on behalf of Ghana's Parliament. The Committee is to review the Auditor General's report and make recommendations to prevent future occurrences. With the consistent and increasing mismanagement of public finances, the PAC has been criticised as not being effective in its role in ensuring efficient public financial management in Ghana. The study sought to understand the work of the PAC with a focus on the challenges hindering the PAC to perform its functions in ensuring efficient public financial management. Employing a qualitative research approach, the study found that the challenges of the PAC were the late submission of Audit reports, a dysfunctional follow-up regime, extreme partisanship of the members of the committee, and inadequate technical support to analyse audit reports. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The quest of most state or governments to adequately cater for the healthcare needs of its people continue to be a difficult task since many states have experienced, and continue to experience, a reduction in allocation of resources to the health sector. The involvement of the private sector in health care delivery is an option being explored by a number of states to augment resources in the health sector with some partnerships between the public and the private healthcare facilities in the fight against AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria. However, not many empirical studies have been conducted to identify and better understand these partnerships between the state agencies and the private sector in Ghana. This study, therefore, sought to answer questions on the range of partnership and collaborative activities existing between public and private healthcare institutions in Ghana, the need for these collaborations and the factors that hinder these collaborations in Ghana. The study adopted the stakeholder theory as various stakeholders come together to ensure the delivery of healthcare in Ghana. The study revealed that there was no direct partnership between these two groups. They, however, collaborated in some instances under the umbrella of their governing organization. The perceived need for collaboration that was identified under the study was for the protection of human lives. The study concluded that this collaboration is necessary to ensure an efficient healthcare delivery. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]