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The PanAfrican Research Agenda on the Pedagogical Integration of information and communication technology (ICT; PanAf) research project was initiated in 2006 to support initiatives in African countries to integrate ICT into teaching and learning through the frequent collection and analysis of data on ICT usage. The article examines the congruence between the intended and implemented ICT curricula in six African countries (Cameroon, Côte d'Ivoire, Ghana, Kenya, Senegal, and South Africa) that participated in the study. Data obtained from the PanAf observatory (at www.observatoiretic.org) on these countries' use of ICT in education revealed that the national curricula documents (intended curricula) and teachers' classroom practices (implemented curricula) both emphasize ICT as the subject of learning rather than as a means of learning.

The main aim of the study is to explore aspects of entrepreneurs' motivation and perceptions with reference to prevailing values in a given context in Africa. In the initial sections of the paper, we draw on concepts of entrepreneurship and the entrepreneurship ecosystem when discussing push and pull factors, access to resources, and Ubuntu. This discussion leads to the formulation of a set of research questions and the presentation of a case study analysis. The case study reveals the extent to which globalization and global events can present as palpable phenomena for small businesses opened by entrepreneurs in Africa. Further, in highlighting altruistically oriented entrepreneurial motivations and actions, the case study raises questions about notions of "necessity" entrepreneurs, given that entrepreneurship in Africa has traditionally been linked to finance and employment as opposed to altruistic and dispositional motivations. In drawing attention to the policy implications of the findings, we highlight that entrepreneurs driven by Ubuntu values are likely to be motivated to address issues of poverty, unemployment and community harmony as compared to those who are primarily motivated by rational-economic factors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we reexamine the determinants of nonperforming loans through the impact of supervisory devices in credit risk management in Africa. The paper employs bank-specific, macroeconomic and institutional data for a panel of 14 universal banks over the period 2009 to 2020. We develop models that capture the role of regulatory supervision on credit risk. Findings from the Panels Corrected Standard Errors (PCSE) and the system GMM shows that previous year's NPL and inflation significantly affect NPLs in the banking space of Gana. Bank size and financial development are inversely associated with NPLs. The interactive term of regulatory quality and government effectiveness on NPLs has net negative effect. This suggest that regulatory quality enhances the reductive effects of government effectiveness on NPLs. Our findings in general lends credence to the financial instability theory as NPLs in the Ghanaian context has been the outcome of activities of speculative borrowers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: The objective of this paper is to examine the effect of spending one extra year in high school on early marriage and childbirth. Design/methodology/approach: The study takes advantage of the education reform in 2007 that extended the years of high school education by one to conduct a quasi experiment. The marriage and fertility outcomes of women who completed a four-year senior high school education are compared to those who completed a three-year senior high school education. Findings: The findings from the study indicate that the one-year extension in high school education led to a 4.75 percentage point reduction in the probability of ever marrying by age 27 and a 6.7 percentage point reduction in the probability of ever given birth. The authors demonstrate that the extension of the duration of high school education by one year has a heterogeneous effect, as it reduced the fertility and marriage outcomes of rural girls more than urban girls. The study reveals opportunity costs and confinement effects as possible mechanisms through which the policy affected early marriage and birth. Originality/value: This study is one of the few studies that examine the impact of the duration of secondary school education on fertility and marriage. For Africa in particular, there is no such study. Thus, this study provides a unique contribution to the literature since available studies on this subject matter can only be found in advanced economies. Unlike other studies in Africa that use a design that provides the combined effect of duration of schooling and school enrolment on fertility and marriage, this design enables the authors to only look at the effect of duration of schooling on fertility and marriage. Peer review: The peer review history for this article is available at: https://publons.com/publon/10.1108/IJSE-04-2023-0323 [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Globally, Parliaments are democratic representation institutions responsible for law making, oversight over the executive, financial controls, and representation. There is ample evidence that Members of Parliament (MPs) in Africa are providing clientelistic services to constituents. This paper seeks to unearth the implications of the involvement of MPs in the provision of clientelistic goods and services on the effective performance of the MP's traditional functions. The paper used data collected from 80 Members of the 6th Parliament of Ghana, in 2016 to draw its conclusions. The incidence of Political clientelism among MPs manifest in two dimensions: Providing individual constituent's particular services and providing constituency-wide services. Political Clientelism prevents MPs from effectively performing their traditional roles. Educating the electorate on the traditional role of the MP, and improving the policy making capacity of political parties to engage citizens on policy issues, can help change the culture of political clientelism among MPs and citizens in Ghana and Africa as a whole. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: Population growth and urbanization pose several threats to terrestrial ecosystems, especially in forest ecological zones worldwide. This study examines the drivers of average willingness to pay (WTP) to restore urban forests in a developing country. Design/methodology/approach: It utilizes survey data of households and employs a robust Heckman two-step estimator with bootstrapping to address the research objective. Findings: The study underscores the role of income, gender, education and perception of the health benefits of forests as the underlying determinants of restoration bids by respondents. These drivers have a positive and statistically significant effect on forest restoration. Education and gender appear to be the most effective by magnitude, followed by the perception of health benefits, then income. Attention is therefore drawn to relevant economic, sociocultural and psychological factors towards the goal of forestry to improve well-being in urban centres. Originality/value: This paper seeks to add methodological insights to the literature on reforestation and land use changes in the Accra metropolitan area and the local population's WTP for reforestation in this area. In principle, this is a case study informing about the values people hold for forests in Ghana and Africa, where a knowledge gap exists with respect to their socio-economic valuation. Peer review: The peer review history for this article is available at: https://publons.com/publon/10.1108/IJSE-09-2022-0618 [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Africans express most of their religious beliefs in oral and symbolic forms. Music is one of the major sources of African theology and traditional wisdom. As the church in Africa strives to decolonize the Christian faith, African theologians must explore various means by which oral and symbolic theologies can contribute to the overall theology of the church. The present paper contributes to this theological exploration by examining key socioreligious ideas embedded in Papa Yaw Johnson's "Fa wo ntoma bɛbɔ me deɛ ano", a popular Ghanaian dirge. This paper used a literary analysis research approach to analyze the selected dirge. It began with the general concept of death and continued to consider dirges in the context of Ghanaian funerals. After offering a socio-linguistic analysis of the dirge, the paper offered a Christological reflection based on two key thematic areas: Nkwamafoɔ Christology and Nyansaboakwa Christology. The main thesis of the paper is that Jesus, through his life, ministry, death and resurrection, has reversed Adam's actions that placed humanity under the power of sin and death. Therefore, with Christ at the centre of life, one should not fear (physical) death. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ghana's petroleum industry is located several nautical miles offshore in the Western Region of the country. Yet, the mechanisms and processes of production and transportation of crude petroleum are accompanied by the dispossessing of the adjoining coastal communities of their means of (re)production both on the ocean and on land. Although the insights of agrarian political economy have been deployed fruitfully to analyse land grabs in Africa, similar efforts are rare when it comes to ocean grabs. With reference to the new development thinking on the ocean economy—or 'blue economy'—as the new frontier of resource‐based industrialization in Africa, we re‐frame the agrarian question and apply it to the offshore petroleum industry, expanding agrarian political‐economic theory of industrialization beyond its traditional confines of land and agriculture. Our paper makes two main theoretical contributions. First, it contributes to efforts in agrarian political economy to incorporate the ocean and fisheries. Second, we contribute a fresh theoretical framework for analysing offshore petroleum industries and their potential to contribute to industrialization in Africa. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: The purpose of this paper was to explore African conceptions of digital libraries from the perspective of the historical literature. This paper argues that the concept of digital libraries is a western creation and that there was a need for developing societies to develop their own conceptions to guide their own digital library development agenda. Design/methodology/approach: The paper is based on a literature review. The paper makes use of publicly-available literature on the theme of digital libraries from both the Western and African perspectives. The search terms used were "digital libraries", "Africa digital libraries", "electronic libraries", "information communication technologies/libraries" and "institutional repositories". A total of 89 publications were examined for this purpose. Findings: The analysis revealed that most of the initial digital library initiatives in Africa emanated from the west with African countries benefiting from international initiatives to expand access to information resources to bridge the global digital divide. However, due to a number of contextual challenges such as lack of sustainable funding and inadequate capacity and strategy, the development of digital libraries was hampered. Thus, even though digital libraries enjoy considerable goodwill, there remain negative conceptions of digital libraries in Africa. Practical implications: Information institutions in African countries must evolve a unified conception of digital libraries as this would largely drive the direction of digital library development towards achieving the developmental goals of the continent. Originality/value: The study applies the attributes of innovation to explain contextual factors shaping African conceptions of digital libraries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Introduction There is limited knowledge in the context of Africa on how work history associates with hypertension at old age. Therefore, this paper analyses such an association using Ghana as a case study. Methods Data from the World Health Organisation Study on Global AGEing and Adult Health Wave 2 was used to explore the relationship between work history and diagnosed hypertension at old age. In the Wave2 study, a multistage cluster sampling was used to select participants at the household level across rural/urban areas in all administrative regions. A multifactor logit regression analysis was performed. The paper also estimated diagnosed hypertension prevalence across subgroups. Results The mean age of the total of 3564 participants examined was 64 years (SD = ±10years). The overall prevalence of hypertension was 10.3% [95% CI = 9.4- 11.1]. The highest predicted rate was 41.1% [95% CI=38.0 - 49.2] among those who stopped working before the statutory retirement age 60 years, whereas it was only 4% [95% CI = 3.7 - 5.2] for those who retired from active work at age 60 years. Those who retired at age <60years recorded the highest risk of hypertension diagnosis [OR = 14.1; 95% CI=10.5-19.5]. There was also a significant association between diagnosed hypertension and a history of working <5 days per week [OR=1.6; 95% CI=1.1-2.3]. It emerged that those with a history of informal sector employment were at significant risk of hypertension at old age, if they worked <5days per week [OR=1.5; 95% CI=1.0-2.3]. Conclusions Overall, retirement age emerged as a significant risk factor for diagnosed hypertension at old age, followed by a history of less than five working days per week. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Addressing contemporary nutrition problems often requires application of knowledge from multiple disciplines. The scaling up nutrition (SUN) movement harnesses multiple sectors for effective global and in-country planning and implementation. Although the role of knowledge networks (academia and research institutions) is recognised, the how of engaging knowledge networks in the current SUN architecture is only now becoming apparent. For relevant sectors to play their roles effectively, observed capacity gaps, particularly in developing country settings, need to be addressed. The present paper presents the work being undertaken by the Ghana SUN Academic Platform (AP), a local knowledge network, towards strengthening nutrition capacity in Ghana. The AP presently provides technical support, evidence and capacity towards scaling up effective nutrition interventions in Ghana and beyond. The data presented draws heavily on the observations and collective experiences of the authors in practice, complemented by a review of relevant literature. The ultimate goal of the AP is to build capacity of professionals from nutrition and cognate sectors (including planning, agriculture, health, economics, research and academia). This is an essential ingredient for effective and durable SUN efforts. The paper recognises that both disciplinary and interdisciplinary capacity is required for effective SUN efforts in Africa, and offers an approach that utilises cross-sector/inter-professional, peer-learning and experiential learning initiatives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study was commissioned to investigate the level of risk and Barriers associated with mobile money transactions in Ghana. It seeked to assess the level of risk perception among mobile money users and merchants. In addition to the above, the paper examined behaviour and attitudes exhibited by customers and merchants during mobile money transactions. This was to help in ascertaining whether or not both parties are being susceptible to high risk or not. The empirical evidence showed that, mobile money transactions have become the most popular and preferred method of sending and receiving payments in Africa since the vast majority of the Continent’s population are rural dwellers with Ghana not being an exception. The population for the study was customers and merchants of the MTN brand of mobile money from which five hundred and fifty (550) respondents were sampled for the study. The methodology used was quantitative where primary data was sort through administration of questionnaire within the Sekondi-Takoradi Metropolis. The paper discovered a higher-level patronage of mobile money among respondents. It emerged that, there were eminent risks associated with mobile money operations although the growth prospects appeared to be greater. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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Despite the generous legislative environments that protects children from sexual abuse, the magnitude of child sexual abuse has not changed much in most societies across the globe, especially in Africa. This has been attributed to the limited studies on the subject due to its sensitive and complex nature. Where studies are done, researchers have had to negotiate carefully through the matrix of gaining access and consent, through to ensuring that victims are not further victimized in the process of research. This paper discusses some practical and ethical challenges inherent in researching the phenomenon of child sexual abuse in Ghana. The paper outlines and discusses the undergirding principles and strategies for conducting child-sensitive research to serve as a framework for researches who want to conduct studies on child sexual abuse and other sensitive topics in Africa. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Evaluation is an increasingly vital component of community and economic development projects in Africa. Yet questions remain about how relevant most dominant evaluation approaches are for the African evaluation context. Within the Made in Africa evaluation (MAE) approach, ubuntu is frequently cited as an African philosophical concept with salience to MAE. There is a need to further expand and explicate other African philosophies that can serve as epistemological guideposts for African evaluation—and other decolonizing, Indigenous evaluation approaches more broadly. Purpose: Drawing on Ghanaian epistemologies and frameworks, the purpose of this paper is to propose the Nnoboa system of communal collaboration in farming and industry, as well as the notion of Sankofa as a traditional philosophical concept that interrupts and challenges hegemonic Eurocentric notions of the linearity of time, to yield a Ghanaian Indigenous knowledge of evaluation. Research Design: This conceptual study draws on literature on culturally responsive evaluation (CRE) and MAE and (from beyond the field of evaluation) descriptions of Nnoboa and Sankofa to propose a conceptual synthesis applicable to decolonizing, Indigenous evaluation. Findings: We propose that Nnoboa and Sankofa represent an addition to the decolonizing and Indigenous evaluation knowledge base, building on and going beyond the reliance of CRE and MAE on ubuntu. We propose this Ghanaian approach has potential applications across MAE and CRE more broadly. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The discourse on homosexually has largely remained Euro-American with a focus on human right of African homosexuals residing in Africa. However, current debates in Africa have centered on the cultural acceptability, legality as well as mental health concerns presumed to be associated with homosexuality. The paper approaches the issue of homosexuality from a perspective that is sensitive to the cultural context of Ghana and also through a non-Euro-American lens. The author attempts to address some of the misunderstanding about the legal status of homosexuals and the negative attitudes in Ghana. The paper concludes that Ghanaians face a paradox of accepting homosexuality because it cannot be understood to further growth of human society from their perspective. Similarly, if Ghanaians view homosexuality as a mental health issue, then it is more appropriate to decriminalize it as it is not appropriate to criminalize mental disorders. Reconceptualizing the issue as a human rights one in which both anti- and pro-homosexual religious and sexual rights respectively are accommodated may be more progressive than promoting one set of rights at the expense of the other. Though Ghana is the focus of this paper, it is believed that the discussions presented are applicable to the rest of Africa and other non-Western societies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• The changing structure of households in Africa is challenging the design of micro-level pro-poor policies. • Divorce/separation and widowhood have increased compared to data from 1987/88. • Lower incomes in female-headed households do not lower children's educational investment. • The gender mix of children plays a key role in aggregate household investments for male-headed households, with the financial inclusion of female household heads under 40 years being important for investments in children's education. • Structural changes in female leadership in communities interact with structural changes at the household level. Female headship of households has increased significantly around the world. This paper establishes a link between gender, income, and children's educational investments in an imperfect credit market. We show using a representative household survey from Ghana that, even though there is a positive correlation between income and educational investments, there are expected and unexpected heterogeneities in income and children's educational investments. We find that, whereas income levels for male-headed households with children 6 to 18 years are over 20% higher, female-headed households tend to invest 31% to 38% more on children's education than male-headed households. In imperfect credit markets, higher educational investments could be taking place at the expense of other household outcomes such as food/leisure. Our empirical results show the need for different interventions for different households. We also show how institutional changes that recognize affirmative action can interact with household-level structural changes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims to contribute to the indigenisation discourse by illustrating how dominant discourses and cultural practices explain and perpetuate social problems. We argue that focussing on the fundamental issue of a cultural conceptualisation of social problems will contribute positively to the development of the indigenous social work practice framework. As social work education forms an important foundation for how future social work practices will be performed, we interviewed 15 social work practicum students in Ghana about the cultural underpinnings of social problems. Themes developed from the interview data suggest that culture plays a key role in conceptualising social problems in Ghana. Although not often, culture tends to underpin and perpetuate social problems, such as streetism, child marriage and child neglect. Social work practice within the indigenous framework should aim at addressing the negative impacts of the cultural undertones of social problems. Social work practitioners should increase advocacy and knowledge sharing on the cultural explanations of social problems and collaborate with community leaders to change cultural values and norms that have negative ripple effects on children, young people and women. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Climatic impacts on the environment, land cover and land use change such as urbanisation and deforestation affect rainfall and change riverflow responsiveness and seasonal flows as a result of their influence on nonlinear behaviour of the catchments of rivers. Water supply is seriously affected which invariably impacts on domestic activities and agriculture. In some countries river transportation, hydropower, irrigation and fish farming are at risk due to these impacts. Within this paper, a review of existing hydrological and climatic studies in Africa and Ghana in particular is presented. The paper highlights the knowledge gaps identified in the review, such as rainfall-riverflow processes and their controls in the country, estimation of cycles in evapo-transpiration and solar radiation time series, together with the complete characterisation of the temporal and spatial fluctuations within the climate cycles. The establishment of a monograph of catchment response characteristic across the Ghanaian latitudinal gradient and if possible across the tropics is recommended. This could be used for the prediction of hydrologic response of ungauged catchments in the country. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Africa is endowed with vast natural resources. It is equally labelled a cursed continent due to a plethora of conflicts emanating from the use and sharing of gains from these natural resources. For the past decades, accountability has been thought of as an anecdote to natural resources conflicts. However, these challenges have persisted across the Sub-Saharan African region. Using Ghana and South African communities, the study revisits the relationship between accountability of natural resources and community development with the aim to strengthen accountability processes in Africa. The paper revealed that accountability in natural resources management should extend beyond reports and opinions of the technocrats, bureaucrats, experts and political elites. We argue that accountability should be participatory, inclusive, and embody elements of trust and social justices. It therefore proposes the adoption of negotiated accountability, to strengthen the governance of natural resources in Africa. Negotiated accountability should holistically address four main accountability elements: the normative, relational, decisional and behavioural element. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In Africa, the work experiences of disabled people can help employers and the government build more inclusive workplaces. Nonetheless, research exploring disabled people's work experiences at various employment stages is limited, particularly in Africa. The study applies ethnographic research methods to examine the work experience of those with visual, speech, hearing, mobility and psychological disabilities in Ghana. Data were coded and analysed using content and descriptive methods. The findings suggest that disabled people face several barriers, including inadequate accommodation, negative stereotyping, stigmatization, discrimination and poor performance evaluation at work. This paper argues that transformational leadership is a prerequisite for African governments and private sector employers seeking to improve the workplace environment and build an inclusive culture within these spaces. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Capacity building programmes for African regulators should link education, training and research with career development in an approach that combines an academic base and experiential learning aligned within a competency framework. A regulatory ecosystem that engages with a broad range of stakeholders will mean that expertise in the ever‐expanding field of regulatory science filters into teaching and research in a symbiotic way. In this way capacity development interventions will be a collaborative approach between the learning context (academic and training institutions) and the performance context (regulatory agencies and industry), which will ultimately best serve the patients. Monitoring and evaluation of capacity development interventions will be essential to show value of investments and ultimately guide continued funding and sustainability. This paper reviews the skills and human capacity gaps, reports on regulatory assessment pathways used in Ghana, South Africa and Zimbabwe and outlines a staged tactical approach for Africa that builds on previous efforts to strengthen African regulatory ecosystems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

New cities are increasingly presented as a solution to contemporary challenges of rapidly urbanizing African cities. A growing body of research has, however, questioned the appropriateness of these megaprojects on the basis of their governance structures, underlying planning principles and target groups. Yet little is known about the local constellations of government that enable and/or hinder these megaprojects to materialize. Drawing on the notion of governmentality, this paper seeks to deepen our knowledge about how particular new cities in Africa are governed and the rationalities behind them. Through an in-depth case study of Appolonia City - a new private satellite city under construction outside Accra, Ghana - the paper demonstrates how this example of privatized urbanism has reached its recent stage of implementation through a specific constellation of government that includes state actors at all levels, traditional authorities and private developers. The engagement of these actors is based upon multiple rationalities, including an advanced liberal rationality that emphasizes the superiority of private-led urban development; spatial rationalities that seek to form 'world-class' environments and subjects through a strong emphasis on urban formality and ordered aesthetics; prospects of economic profit-making; and assumptions on how the 'mixed city' model can provide sustainable and inclusive urban milieus. These rationalities partly conflict and Appolonia risks becoming yet another elitist urban megaproject despite its stated aim of creating a sustainable and inclusive urban environment. There is thus an urgent need to (re-)politicize the urban question in Africa in order to enable future city developments that benefit the many and not the few. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Natural Semantic Metalanguage (NSM) approach to language studies has been applied to languages such as English, French, Russian, Malay, Spanish, Italian, Arabic, Japanese, Chinese, and Korean. The indigenous languages in Africa that have gained scholarly attention in NSM studies are Ewe, Fulfulde, Amharic, Likpe, Wolof, Giryama, and Igala. Akan, the most widely spoken language in Ghana, has not been explored. This paper explores the extent to which the translation equivalents of the set of semantic primes are expressible in Akan, with special reference to the Asante Twi dialect. Sentences or sentence fragments that exemplify the allowable grammatical contexts of the NSM primes were used as data. The claim in NSM research is that semantic primes are universal or near-universal meanings that can be expressed as lexical units or morphemes in every language. We found that in Akan, almost all the lexical equivalents correspond in a straightforward manner with the English primes and their syntactic frames. However, the semantic prime MOMENT seems problematic to posit and thus, needs further investigation. The set of NSM semantic primes in the Asante dialect of Akan can serve as a valuable tool for descriptive linguists, especially semanticists, to analyze Akan culture-specific meanings and test their semantic equivalence with the corresponding vocabulary in English and other languages. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

LIS education is more concerned with training in librarianship. LIS education aimed at producing competent librarians to manage all types of libraries in the countries of the world for sustainability. Other information related disciplines such as documentation, archives and records management were relatively unknown when they started existing, thus, they were not accorded prominence. However, librarianship in Africa owes its origin to colonialism. Colonialism introduced reading and writing among the indigenous people. Until then, the two activities were alien. Colonial governments introduced Western education which entailed among others, reading and writing. In an attempt to boost the two activities, a need was felt to provide the new literates with information materials, basically books, to further their reading and writing skills which brought about the establishment of Library Schools in Africa. Thus, UNESCO played a leading role in the establishment of LIS education programmes in Africa and in particular Anglophone sub-Saharan Africa. The pressure emanated from public libraries. UNESCO was convinced that illiteracy in sub-Saharan Africa could only be eradicated with the support of libraries. A number of regional seminars were held between 1953 and 1963 on the African continent to sensitize colonial governments on the need to establish public libraries in their colonies to speed up socio-economic development, thus, library schools were established in Africa to sustain library practices The history of Library Education was traced in Nigeria, Ghana and South Africa. The paper concluded that the existing ICT laboratories in all library schools in Africa should be well equipped, while the library schools without laboratories should be encouraged to establish one by training efficient manpower to manage and coordinate the established libraries in Africa and the yet-to-be established ones in order to sustain library practices. Adequate laboratories would enhance the provision of adequate and efficient practical and the acquisition of IT skills. Above all, the parent institutions in Africa (universities, polytechnics, monotechnics and colleges of education) running LIS programme should provide adequate funding for the procurement of facilities in the ICT laboratories. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• There are complexities of Indigeneity at different spatial scales. • Indigenous claims have become important for natural resource management. • Indigeneity has been increasing resource-related conflicts in many parts of Africa. • Climate change is intensifying human mobility and resource-related conflicts. There is considerable evidence in the literature of the nature of Indigeneity in Africa, yet few studies explore the complexity of definitions of the concept at different spatial scales. This paper builds on existing scholarship by problematizing 'Indigeneity' at both regional and national scales through a critical analysis and synthesis of contemporary literature across sub-Saharan Africa, in association with a specific case study from northern Ghana. In generating the review, the concomitant implications for natural resource management and associated conflicts are analyzed. The paper argues that the definitions and conceptualizations of Indigeneity are heterogeneous with numerous ambiguities and complexities at regional and national scales, which have contemporary implications for both acute and prolonged issues of natural resource allocation and management. Claims of Indigeneity in relation to climate change-driven migration and settlement processes are facilitating support for resource access and utilization, but also generating a myriad of problems linked to overlapping and disputed claims. The ambiguity of claims of Indigeneity by vulnerable individuals and groups also has latent implications. Political misunderstandings or conflicts over natural resources are becoming more widespread across Africa during a period of environmental change. Understanding the complexity of Indigeneity at both regional and national scales will provide important opportunities to inform effective policy for the sustainable and equitable distribution and management of resources in sub-Saharan Africa. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Development projects play a crucial role in kickstarting and promoting women's empowerment in agriculture. This paper is a conversation starter on how women can be included in the agenda to mechanise agriculture in Africa. It investigates the potential of empowering women as vital actors in the mechanisation value chain, by analysing the perceptions and experiences of the trained women tractor operators. The findings showed that the involvement of women in mechanisation pushed them beyond their comfort zones and offered them a new self-identity with new opportunities previously reserved for men. It also broadened their social capital through the formation of an association for women operators which ensured their representation at a local and national level. For young women, being an operator is the only alternative they have to one day owning a tractor-for-hiring service business because they do not own land or have capital, which is often a precondition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Choosing the most effective language is critical when advertising to multilingual audiences as the success of any advertising campaign depends on whether the audience "gets" the message. This paper argues that in Africa, "getting the message" is partly dependent on language given that indigenous languages, colonial legacy languages and blends between them compete for audience attention. Using Elaboration Likelihood Model (ELM) arguments, the study examines this possibility among a 1000 multilingual audience members in five cosmopolitan cities in Ghana. Findings show that advertisements are not consumed in a language vacuum and that language blends are the most appealing to the multilingual audience. The study also finds that attention to, and belief in advertisements are partly shaped by language preference. Besides these empirical contributions, the study positions the ELM as a viable theoretical lens for analyzing the implications of advertising language. Its use of an African sample to test the ELM's assumptions also introduces novel evidence to the theory's body of scholarship. Recommendations are made on how advertising practitioners and brand communicators may take advantage of language as an important segmentation criterion in advertising strategy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is argued that the present pace of small and medium enterprises (SME) research on Africa remains slow, despite being one of the growing fields. Consequently, there have been calls to advance the field from the perspective of Africa. This study partly responds to the call and aims to systematically review and organize the different SME research contributions from Ghana to help us appreciate and understand how research on SMEs in Ghana has advanced over the years. Combining major online databases such as Web of Science, Business Source Complete (EBSCO), ABI/INFORM, and Scopus databases, this paper reviews and analyzes 231 SME studies between 2000 and 2018. The paper structures SME research on Ghana into salient themes to offer the current state of knowledge and, consequently, aids scholars to scope the field and discover value-adding avenues to advance our understanding about SME research in the context of Ghana. Based on the findings, implications on theory, policy, and practice are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An introduction is provided in which the author discusses articles in the issue on topics including counseling in Africa, prediction of academic success in southwestern Nigeria, and the experiences of college students from Ghana who are studying in Great Britain.

This study developed, validated, and evaluated a framework of factors influencing dietary behaviours in urban African food environments, to inform research prioritisation and intervention development in Africa. A multi-component methodology, drawing on concept mapping, was employed to construct a framework of factors influencing dietary behaviours in urban Africa. The framework adapted a widely used socio-ecological model (developed in a high-income country context) and was developed using a mixed-methods research approach that comprised: i. Evidence synthesis consisting of a systematic review of 39 papers covering 14 African countries; ii. Qualitative interview data collected for adolescents and adults (n = 144) using photovoice in urban Ghana and Kenya; and iii. Consultation with interdisciplinary African experts (n = 71) from 27 countries, who contributed to at least one step of the framework (creation, validation/evaluation, finalisation). The final framework included 103 factors influencing dietary behaviours. Experts identified the factors influencing dietary behaviours across all the four levels of the food environment i.e. the individual, social, physical and macro levels. Nearly half (n = 48) were individual-level factors and just under a quarter (n = 26) were at the macro environmental level. Fewer factors associated with social (n = 15) and physical (14) environments were identified. At the macro level, the factors ranked as most important were food prices, cultural beliefs and seasonality. Factors ranked as important at the social level were household composition, family food habits and dietary practices. The type of food available in the neighbourhood and convenience were seen as important at the physical level, while individual food habits, food preferences and socioeconomic status were ranked highly at the individual level. About half of the factors (n = 54) overlap with those reported in an existing socio-ecological food environment framework developed in a high-income country context. A further 49 factors were identified that were not reported in the selected high-income country framework, underlining the importance of contextualisation. Our conceptual framework offers a useful tool for research to understand dietary transitions in urban African adolescents and adults, as well as identification of factors to intervene when promoting healthy nutritious diets to prevent multiple forms of malnutrition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research in geography and allied disciplines on gendered experiences in Africa have struggled to comprehend the nuances that make up young men's lifeworlds. Influenced by theoretical orientations in urban studies, which demonstrate how music offers a way to explore social dynamics in Africa, we examine the thoughts, actions, and experiences of male youth in Ghana using Guru's popular song "Boys abrƐ [Boys are tired]." Drawing on interviews and focus groups with young people in Accra, the empirical findings and analysis illustrate how the phrase "boys are tired," and the dispositions it evokes, provides a subversive critique of and protest against the precariousness of contemporary Ghanaian urbanism. Problematically, "Boys are tired" also encourages the (re)calibration of gender relations on patriarchal terms. These insights extend debates around geographies of children and youth and gender relations in two novel ways. First, the vernacular of "tiredness" generates fresh theoretical perspectives on a wider set of questions about youth agency and contemporary gender relations, namely, how young people are implicated in the reproduction of patriarchy. Through doing so, we identify a set of troubling gender relations unfolding in Accra that are conceptualised as "retaliatory patriarchy" which has three constituent elements: entitlement, resentment, and obliviousness. Second, the paper detects reasons why young men in Accra are reluctant to support feminist action and suggests how to counter this trend. These findings support wider efforts, within and beyond the discipline, to better conceptualise and prevent the perpetuation of inequity and oppression along gendered lines. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explains how presidential candidates in Africa's highly diverse states appeal across ethnic lines when ethnic identities are salient, but broader support is needed to win elections. I argue that election campaigns are much more bottom-up and salience-oriented than current theories allow and draw on the analysis of custom data of campaign appeals in Ghana, Kenya, and Uganda, as well as interviews with party strategists and campaign operatives in Ghana and Kenya to demonstrate clear patterns in presidential candidates' cross-ethnic outreach. Where ethnic salience is high, incumbents offer material incentives and targeted transfers to placate supporters, challengers fan grievances to split incumbents' coalitions, and also-rans stress unity and valence issues in the hope of joining the winner. The research contributes to our understanding of parties' mobilization strategies in Africa and further clarifies where and how ethnic divisions are politicized in elections in plural societies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Preparation and coordination have come to dominate discourse on operational excellence in post disaster supply chain management. In this paper we explore the critical success factors (CSF) of operations excellence in post-disaster operations management in Africa, using in-depth interviews with disaster management practitioners. Available studies have often focussed on the commercial supply chains, but rarely on the critical success factors in service excellence in post disaster management operations in Africa. Using in-depth semi-structured interviews and desk-top data collection techniques from disaster management experts in Ghana a number of factors were identified. Employing thematic data analysis technique, these factors were categorised into eight (8) themes: management and administration, resources, political, governance structure, socio-cultural, education and training, infrastructure, and stakeholder involvement and co-operation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Several countries in Africa are perpetually linked to an inexpungable history of cyclical ethnic conflicts, violence and coup d'état which culminated in the untimely death of many, others severely wounded and many left in a hopeless situation. The paper discusses in-depth, the role and functions of the clergy (ministers of religion) in the political health development in Ghana. The rationale is that the clergy's esteemed status among the church members and the society as a whole could impact positively on the lives of the people in the society, and for that matter, they are expected to speak to national issues. Twenty-one clergy participated in one-on-one in-depth interviews for this study. It was found out that a number of the ministers of religion were not interested in political health development issues, and therefore, their roles in politics were woefully inadequate. It is recommended that the clergy boldly take up their leadership responsibilities and provide a framework for collaboration and reconciliation in the peace-building process and also be models of a peaceful disposition. The clergy are to continue to pray fervently, advise politicians and educate their church members for a sound political health development in Ghana. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Global risks of zoonotic disease are high on policy agendas. Increasingly, Africa is seen as a ‘hotspot’, with likely disease spillovers from animals to humans. This paper explores the social dynamics of disease exposure, demonstrating how risks are not generalised, but are related to occupation, gender, class and other dimensions of social difference. Through case studies of Lassa Fever in Sierra Leone, Henipah virus in Ghana, Rift Valley Fever in Kenya and Trypanosomiasis in Zimbabwe, the paper proposes a social difference space–time framework to assist the understanding of and response to zoonotic diseases within a ‘One Health’ approach. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In today's rapidly urbanising world, young people from poor socio-economic backgrounds are becoming increasingly marginalised. Young men in particular are adapting to very mobile forms of existence. Navigating complex and unfamiliar urban landscapes, they must constantly interpret and adapt to changing circumstances in order to survive. Living in shifting informal urban environments, they have of necessity developed survival strategies and new behaviours, drawing on traditional beliefs combined with new urban experiential knowledge. However, while women and children are generally considered most vulnerable to the growing levels of risk associated with everyday life in densely-settled informal urban settlements, the particular vulnerabilities of the itinerant young men who live there have generally been disregarded or at best are poorly understood. This presents a critical gap in our understanding of urban risk in South Africa. Answering to a research imperative that seeks to understand the nature of the mobility of young black South African men living in informal settlements, and the vulnerabilities associated with their fluid and generally insecure livelihoods, this paper contributes a new perspective to current understandings of urban risk, presenting a review of key bodies of literature and relevant theoretical debates drawn from disparate disciplinary perspectives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper places land grabbing within the context of developments within agribusiness within the last 30 years, tracing the various trajectories of increasing competition and concentration and pressures on commodity prices that have resulted in increasing dispossession of smallholders and a move in some agri-food chains towards large estate production. The paper explores the ways in which contemporary agricultural policies and neoliberal market reforms reflect these developments and examines recent framing of land policies in Africa in the context of the development of agrarian capital and agribusiness. Competitiveness results in dispossession of less successful smallholders from below by commercial smallholders, and from above by large estates vertically integrated into agribusiness marketing chains. This is illustrated with examples from the cocoa sector in Côte d'Ivoire and pineapples in Ghana. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to assess the extent to which the process of becoming a surveyor in Ghana mirrors a broad conception of professionalism. Design/methodology/approach - The work is grounded in field research in the form of interviews/survey conducted by the authors in Ghana. The sample is drawn in such a way that the work benefits from the experiences of people at different levels of surveying training. Findings - The study reveals that professional surveying training in Ghana is effective but narrow: senior surveyors do provide mentoring to probationers, but they engage in poor labour practices; probationers do obtain professional training, but many of their expectations are not met. While there are both costs and benefits to the mentors and mentees, the study finds that, on balance, the process of professionalisation is designed to favour a few owners of surveying firms. Practical implications - It is the intention of the authors that this work would contribute to a process of "conscientisation". The paper provides part of the basis for young surveyors to reject being passive recipients of instruction to becoming active workers and professionals who have a deep awareness of the social reality which shapes their professional lives and understand how they can reshape that reality. Originality/value - This research work is the first study of the state of professionalism and work conditions of surveyors in Ghana. The study sheds light on the conditions under which surveyors work and shows how professional they are. On the one hand, this study provides the opportunity for prospective surveyors in Ghana to reflect on their aspiration before embarking on that "journey". On the other hand, it gives practising surveyors a basis for reflecting on how the profession can be improved. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: Firms are adopting strategies to advance product quality and environmental sustainability to achieve improved profitability and shareholders' wealth. The study investigates strategies that create a superior quality performance to competitors and improve both environmental and business performances. This paper explores the direct and indirect influence of lean management and environmental practices on relative competitive quality advantage, environmental performance and business performance. Design/methodology/approach: The study uses a quantitative method where data is gathered from 259 manufacturing firms in Ghana. The data is gathered through customized questionnaires. The partial least squares structural equation modeling (SmartPLS 3.2.8) is used to analyze the data. Firm size, industry type and importance of environmental issues are used as control variables in this study. Findings: The findings of the study indicate that both lean management and environmental practices create relative competitive quality advantage and improve environmental performance and business performance. Environmental performance and relative competitive quality advantage mediate the influence of lean management and environmental practices on business performance. The results further indicate that lean management creates a higher relative competitive quality advantage than environmental practices, while environmental practices have more potency to enhance environmental performance than lean management. Originality/value: The study develops and proposes a comprehensive theoretical framework that examines the potency of environmental practices and lean management in creating a relative competitive quality advantage and improving environmental performance and business performance from a Ghanaian perspective, which is an emerging economy in Africa. Lean management and environmental practices may jointly help firms create relative competitive advantage and improve environmental performance to enhance business performance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Student loans program is one of the most controversial phenomena in financing higher education in Ghana, but its importance as a cost sharing mechanism is incontestable. This paper describes the challenge of financing higher education in Ghana. It provides a critique of the Social Security and National Insurance Trust (SSNIT) Student Loans Scheme, and analyzes the present Student Loan Trust Fund (SLTF) policy. The paper outlines the new policy framework, critically looks at some implementation problems and provides some practical policy recommendations. The paper questions the mechanisms put in place to ensure the sustainability of the new policy? It concludes that a more efficient student loans scheme should strike the balance between lenders risk and borrowers aversion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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The persistence of food insecurity in many African countries continues to engage the attention of policymakers, development theorists, and the world at large. One panacea touted to address food insecurity, specifically from the angle of production, is biotechnology. This paper examines the extent to which biotechnology can bring about marked improvements in agricultural production in Ghana. The paper focuses on the institutional capacities of the national agricultural research system, especially the role of research institutions to generate, to engage, or to harness biotechnology. The paper also examines policy dilemmas on biotechnology and some policy options. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose:We investigated how information resource diversification can enhance smallholder agricultural knowledge in Ghana. Design/Methodology/Approach:Study tools and methods were questionnaire survey (N = 200), focus group discussion (N = 1), in-depth interviews (N = 18) and field direct observation. Findings:This study shows there existed diversity of information resources in Hohoe. This diversity was, however, devoid of a broad integration process to enhance smallholder access to and use of agricultural information. We demonstrate that new information channels or sources cannot function independently, but rather through an integrated approach that relies on a human facet of extension. Practical Implications:We illustrate the need for integrated extension that includes interactive field modules such as basic cell phone decision guides that support smallholder construction of solutions for their circumstances. This process requires new sets of smallholder skills and holistic extension schemes that diversify information resources through incorporation and adaptation, rather than substitution. New information resources can only be gradually mainstreamed through integration with more familiar extension means. They need a human interface because smallholder householders did not require same types and/or amounts of information. Human interface is essential to ensure critical groups including women access and utilise agricultural information resources, but without entrenching unfair task allocations among smallholder householders. Originality/Value:This paper illustrates how extension can be strengthened through new approaches. However, new approaches such as use of basic cell phones cannot be standalone processes; they require a human interface and an integrated process. The article presents actual data collected from the Ghana. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Background: As utilization of individual antenatal care (I-ANC) has increased throughout sub-Saharan Africa, questions have arisen about whether individual versus group-based care might yield better outcomes. We implemented a trial of group-based antenatal care (G-ANC) to determine its impact on birth preparedness and complication readiness (BPCR) among pregnant women in Ghana. Methods: We conducted a cluster randomized controlled trial comparing G-ANC to routine antenatal care in 14 health facilities in the Eastern Region of Ghana. We recruited women in their first trimester to participate in eight two-hour interactive group sessions throughout their pregnancies. Meetings were facilitated by midwives trained in G-ANC methods, and clinical assessments were conducted in addition to group discussions and activities. Data were collected at five timepoints, and results are presented comparing baseline (T0) to 34 weeks' gestation to 3 weeks post-delivery (T1) for danger sign recognition, an 11-point additive scale of BPCR, as well as individual items comprising the scale. Results: 1285 participants completed T0 and T1 assessments (N = 668 I-ANC, N = 617, G-ANC). At T1, G-ANC participants were able to identify significantly more pregnancy danger signs than I-ANC participants (mean increase from 1.8 to 3.4 in G-ANC vs. 1.7 to 2.2 in I-ANC, p < 0.0001). Overall BPCR scores were significantly greater in the G-ANC group than the I-ANC group. The elements of BPCR that showed the greatest increases included arranging for emergency transport (I-ANC increased from 1.5 to 11.5% vs. G-ANC increasing from 2 to 41% (p < 0.0001)) and saving money for transportation (19–32% in the I-ANC group vs. 19–73% in the G-ANC group (p < 0.0001)). Identifying someone to accompany the woman to the facility rose from 1 to 3% in the I-ANC group vs. 2–20% in the G-ANC group (p < 0.001). Conclusions: G-ANC significantly increased BPCR among women in rural Eastern Region of Ghana when compared to routine antenatal care. Given the success of this intervention, future efforts that prioritize the implementation of G-ANC are warranted. Trial registration: ClinicalTrials.gov Identifier: NCT04033003 (25/07/2019). Protocol available: Protocol Available at: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9508671/. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Medical education in Africa is in desperate need of reforms, evident in widespread diseases, and an inability to mobilise and train the required medical workforce to deal with these health issues. However, the exponential rise in the use of mobile technologies due to the spread of the Internet and increased telecommunication networks offer an opportunity for the transformation of medical education and practice through the deployment of mobile devices as a medium for learning and conveying health care services to the remote and resource-constrained locations of Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). This paper reviewed articles on the affordances of m-learning for distributed medical education in SSA published between 2010-2018. Results from 18 articles identified in the review revealed a slow-paced ascendancy of practice and research in the field; it further exposed competing priorities, infrastructural deficit, and chronic workforce shortages as the bane of m-learning implementation in the subregion. This paper makes recommendations that will enhance the growth of mobile-based distance medical education and practice in SSA.

A large, extant literature examines the effect of political factors on individual subjective well‐being. These studies have treated political factors as a cause and subjective well‐being as an effect. A sparse but growing literature now advances the argument that subjective well‐being is a cause and voting or political participation an effect. In this paper we examine whether subjective well‐being influences voting and political participation in Ghana. Using data from Wave 6 of the World Values Survey in Ghana, we find that subjective well‐being influences neither voting nor protest behavior. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: The Ghana Health Service in collaboration with partner institutions implemented a five-year primary health systems strengthening program known as the Ghana Essential Health Intervention Program (GEHIP). GEHIP was a plausibility trial implemented in an impoverished region of northern Ghana around the World Health Organizations (WHO) six pillars combined with community engagement, leadership development and grassroots political support, the program organized a program of training and action focused on strategies for saving newborn lives and community-engaged emergency referral services. This paper analyzes the effect of the GEHIP program on child survival. Methods: Birth history data assembled from baseline and endline surveys are used to assess the hazard of child mortality in GEHIP treatment and comparison areas prior to and after the start of treatment. Difference-in-differences (DiD) methods are used to compare mortality change over time among children exposed to GEHIP relative to children in the comparison area over the same time period. Models test the hypothesis that a package of systems strengthening activities improved childhood survival. Models adjusted for the potentially confounding effects of baseline differentials, secular mortality trends, household characteristics such as relative wealth and parental educational attainment, and geographic accessibility of clinical care. Results: The GEHIP combination of health systems strengthening activities reduced neonatal mortality by approximately one half (HR = 0.52, 95% CI = 0.28,0.98, p = 0.045). There was a null incremental effect of GEHIP on mortality of post-neonate infants (from 1 to 12 months old) (HR = 0.72; 95% CI = 0.30,1.79; p = 0.480) and post-infants (from 1 year to 5 years old) -(HR = 1.02; 95% CI = 0.55–1.90; p = 0.940). Age-specific analyses show that impact was concentrated among neonates. However, effect ratios for post-infancy were inefficiently assessed owing to extensive survival history censoring for the later months of childhood. Children were observed only rarely for periods over 40 months of age. Conclusion: GEHIP results show that a comprehensive approach to newborn care is feasible, if care is augmented by community-based nurses. It supports the assertion that if appropriate mechanisms are put in place to enable the various pillars of the health system as espoused by WHO in rural impoverished settings where childhood mortality is high, it could lead to accelerated reductions in mortality thereby increasing survival of children. Policy implications of the pronounced neonatal effect of GEHIP merit national review for possible scale-up. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Climate change, increasingly recognized as a hurdle to achieving sustainable development goals, has already begun impacting the lives and livelihoods of people around the world, including on the African continent. Vulnerability is a concept often employed in the context of climate change to identify risks and develop policy and adaptation measures that address current and projected impacts. However, it is situated in a broader social context, driven by factors such as land tenure and access, livelihood diversification, and empowerment, which single out historically marginalized groups like women. This paper applies a vulnerability framework to a case study of cocoa farming in the Central Region of Ghana, depicting not only the variety of factors contributing to climate change vulnerability but also different narratives on vulnerability that emerge based on a woman's relation to cocoa production itself. The paper conveys how homogeneous representations of women farmers and the technical focus of climate-orientated policy interventions may threaten to further marginalize the most vulnerable and exacerbate existing inequalities. This has implications for both climate change policy design and implementation, as well as the broader social development agenda that has bearing on vulnerability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ghana has made significant stride towards universal health coverage (UHC) by implementing the National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS) in 2003. This paper investigates the progress of UHC indicators in Ghana from 1995 to 2015 and makes future predictions up to 2030 to assess the probability of achieving UHC targets. National representative surveys of Ghana were used to assess health service coverage and financial risk protection. The analyses estimated the coverage of 13 prevention and four treatment service indicators at the national level and across wealth quintiles. In addition, we calculated catastrophic health payments and impoverishment to assess financial hardship and used a Bayesian regression model to estimate trends and future projections as well as the probabilities of achieving UHC targets by 2030. Wealth-based inequalities and regional disparities were also assessed. At the national level, 14 out of the 17 health service indicators are projected to reach the target of 80% coverage by 2030. Across wealth quintiles, inequalities were observed amongst most indicators with richer groups obtaining more coverage than their poorer counterparts. Subnational analysis revealed while all regions will achieve the 80% coverage target with high probabilities for the prevention services, the same cannot be applied to the treatment services. In 2015, the proportion of households that suffered catastrophic health payments and impoverishment at a threshold of 25% non-food expenditure were 1.9% (95%CrI: 0.9–3.5) and 0.4% (95%CrI: 0.2–0.8), respectively. These are projected to reduce to 0.4% (95% CrI: 0.1–1.3) and 0.2% (0.0–0.5) respectively by 2030. Inequality measures and subnational assessment revealed that catastrophic expenditure experienced by wealth quintiles and regions are not equal. Significant improvements were seen in both health service coverage and financial risk protection over the years. However, inequalities across wealth quintiles and regions continue to be cause of concerns. Further efforts are needed to narrow these gaps. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]