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Copyright of Contemporary Journal of African Studies is the property of Institute of African Studies and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Succession to monarchical thrones has often generated violent conflicts among royal families in Ghanaian communities. Numerous conflict resolution approaches are often employed by different conflict resolution agencies. Many studies have examined the appropriateness and effectiveness of some of these approaches adopted to resolve chieftaincy conflicts in Ghana. However, to the best of the researchers' knowledge, the extent to which conflict resolution institutions or agencies collaborate in the resolution of chieftaincy succession conflicts in the specific region of the Bole Traditional Area is less studied. By integrating an inductive thematic analytical approach into collaborative leadership theory, we unpacked a deeper level of disharmonised efforts of multiple conflict resolution agencies in the peace processes in the Bole Traditional Area. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Contemporary Journal of African Studies is the property of Institute of African Studies and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Studies on migration have largely neglected the emergence of migrant chiefs in Africa’s urban centers. Chieftaincy analysis has also not been adequately extended to those who are migrants and how they are selected and installed as chiefs in the cities. Through deliberately-provoked conversations with Dagomba migrant chiefs and their elders, the paper undoubtedly extends the frontiers of both chieftaincy and migration studies bringing to the fore dynamics of Dagomba migrant chiefs and their changing roles in Ghana’s city of Accra. Reworking Blundo’s administrative brokers, this paper reveals how migrant chiefs in urban settings liaise with state institutions to help solve certain problems migrants encounter in the city. The paper concludes that other actors in the urban space, such as youth leaders around Members of Parliament coming from migrants’ home regions, could gradually take up the brokerage role in the city. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper contributes to our understanding of the social life of used computers in West Africa through analysis of the sending, distribution, recognition, and reception of recycled equipment. Based on multi-sited and longitudinal fieldwork in Denmark and Ghana, it employs George Marcus' suggestion of following things as a methodological selection device for ethnography. Theoretically, it engages the concept of affective circuits to address how transnational recycling, belonging, hometown development, and family relations are interlinked. I present a three-fold argument: first, that the actions of sending, distributing, recognizing, and receiving used equipment enable different actors to demonstrate and perform hometown belonging, development, and leadership; second, that these capacities reflect differentiated mobilities and connectivity of the people involved; and third, that the recycled furniture and information technology (IT) gear become upcycled to objects of value, being mobilized and transformed through long-term processes and negotiations of reciprocity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Indigenous traditional chieftaincy institutions in Ghana continue to gain recognition whilst wielding influence across socio-political divides. In this viewpoint essay, against the backdrop of the fight against the global COVID-19 pandemic, the author explores the potential roles of these institutions in fighting the pandemic. Particularly cognisant of their roles in Ghana's transition from pre-colonial, colonial, and post-colonial, through independence to a democracy and its consolidation, this article argues that the existence of the chieftaincy institutions as change agents presents a wealth of opportunity to be harnessed for pandemic control, management, and containment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A Conflict can be resolved when there is an adequate understanding of its causes. The objective of this study is to contribute to the understanding of the contributory factors of the Bawku chieftaincy conflict as a case study and explore the lasting solutions to the conflict which contributes to the political, cultural, and socio-economic development. The study surveyed 200 householders using systematic and snow-balling in five spatial locations in the Bawku Traditional Area. Subsequently, face-to-face interviews were conducted with the Traditional Authorities, the Police, and the Belim-Wusa Development Agency to verify the claims made in the survey and to obtain further insights into the conflict. The responses obtained from the interviews were analyzed for patterns and themes and used as narratives in the work. The geographical location and socio-economic activities such as population growth, farming, and poverty have made the Bawku Traditional Area more prone to persistent conflicts. Again, other contributory factors included; political interference, freedom from fear, a proliferation of small arms, and inadequate access to social services. The empirical findings support the proposition that political interventions sowed the seed of the Bawku conflict. The study recommended that the National Peace Council should organize a workshop to educate the political parties on the need to stay away from chieftaincy matters. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article discusses the supporting roles of Traditional Authorities (TAs) towards state-led formal education in Ghana through the Otumfuo Education Fund (OEF) from 2000 to 2012. The OEF is an educational fund initiated by the current Ashanti king, Otumfuo Osei Tutu II, in the early 2000s to address falling educational standards not only within his kingdom but also other parts of Ghana in line with the state's educational vision. As one of the foremost educational partnership by a traditional leader in support of state-driven formal education at a massive scale in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), we examine how such state-chieftaincy hybrid governance approaches can promote educational delivery. Through in-depth interviews with 15 multiple stakeholders including officials at the OEF secretariat, traditional leaders, headteachers, government officials and project consultants involved with the OEF, we investigated the effectiveness and limitations of the OEF's partnership with state educational agencies in the Ashanti Region of Ghana. By using Helmke and Levitsky's typology of formal-informal interactions, we find that hybrid arrangements between traditional leaders (through the OEF) and the Ghanaian state aligns to an 'accommodating-complementary' type of partnership. Under this, the OEF supported the state in four main areas namely providing scholarships (to brilliant but needy students), expanding and renovating educational infrastructure in deprived areas, providing educational materials and organising career development workshops for students. We conclude that greater attention should be given to partnerships between state educational agencies and TAs, particularly in deprived areas where access to education remains a challenge. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Prior to colonial rule, governance in Africa rested on chiefs. However, colonialism and other currents of social change reduced the powers and functions of chiefs. Critics tagged the chieftaincy institution as anachronistic and even predicted its demise during the struggle for independence. However, chieftaincy has persisted after several years of Ghana's independence. The paper specifically seeks to answer two fundamental questions: Is chieftaincy anachronistic? And, how relevant is chieftaincy in Ghana's democratic dispensation. The paper is a desk review examining the instrumentality of the chieftaincy institution in the midst of a web of reputational challenges in contemporary Ghana. The study unearthed that the anachronistic label is pivoted on the undemocratic nature of chieftaincy institution and, chieftaincy and land disputes. Despite the above label, it was also found that chiefs are instrumental in conflict resolution, governance and administration, promotion of education and economic empowerment and performance of representational and diplomatic roles. Though people continue to perceive the chieftaincy institution as undemocratic, the institution has critical roles to play in contemporary Ghana. This paper recommends that studies should be conducted on how chiefs can be integrated into modern governance structures for them to contribute to national development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In many parts of the world, traditional authorities influence the pre-construction stakeholder management process on infrastructure projects. In this conceptual article, we sought to explore the dimensions of traditional authority that influence stakeholder management at the pre-construction stage, using the case of Ghana. Twenty-nine different issues related to traditional authority were identified through a systematic literature review. Then, through a narrative focus group discussion, the issues were validated, revised and condensed into 21 items. Through thematic analysis, the issues were clustered into four dimensions of traditional authority influences: power and role of traditional leadership; expectations of traditional leadership; project impacts on community resources; and impact of religious and cultural values. Through a further abstraction of the results, we identified six patterns of influence that emerge from the interaction between traditional authorities and other stakeholders, viz.: compromise; uncertainty; instability; power and role suppression; acculturation; and polarization. The findings provide a starting point for theorizing the influence of traditional authority on pre-construction stakeholder management. The findings also provide project managers with information for the development of practical strategies for managing the influence of traditional authorities to ensure an effective stakeholder management process at the pre-construction stage of infrastructure projects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While forms of authority that descend from social or cultural tradition are commonly understood as archaic, traditional authorities often survive and occasionally even thrive during the formation of modern states. Chieftaincies do not only endure in the Ghanaian countryside but also proliferate in new neighbourhoods on the peripheries of Ghana's fast-growing cities. We develop an explanation for the endurance of traditional authorities, based on extensive fieldwork in one recently developed neighbourhood in a previously uninhabited part of Greater Accra, where we conducted interviews and analysed documents from the archives of the chief's Divisional Council. We show that the formation of a modern state has restricted the chiefs' discretion as sovereigns but afforded them greater power as managers of the land and gatekeepers of the state bureaucracy. Traditional authority is not overwritten but rather refined, transformed and stabilized in the process of state formation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As colonial and nationalist governments pursued small-scale development in mid-century northern Ghana, so-called ‘voluntary’, &#x2018.communal’, or ‘self-help’ labor became a key determinant of funding. District records and oral histories show how colonial officials, chiefs, and party politicians alternately cast unpaid labor as a way to cut costs, a catalyst for new forms of politics, and an expression of local cohesion. This article extends analysis of ‘self-help’ beyond articulations of and debates about national policy, examining daily negotiations over budgeting and building. It follows two chiefs who used their ability to raise labor to navigate a rapidly changing political landscape. The line between coercion and voluntarism was rarely clear, nor were the meanings of labor fixed for administrators, chiefs, or their constituents. These local actors created the circumstances for successive governments to frame unpaid labor as a legitimate demand on rural citizens. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ghana is regarded as a leader of democracy and stability in Sub‑Saharan Africa. Owing to two decades of rapid economic growth and relatively peaceful transitions of power after elections, it is also one of the fastest developing and safest countries in the region. However, some challenges for internal stability and development are still to be addressed, for instance: the quality of leadership, poverty, environmental problems or inadequate and ineffective regulations. While solving these problems Ghanaian politicians and citizens have to either choose between or bring together both tradition and modernity. One of the aspects to analyse is traditional form of governance, in particular the role of traditional leaders, such as chiefs and queen mothers, in development, as well as their relationships and coexistence with the local and state government institutions. Therefore, this article focuses on understanding how traditional ways of thinking and acting, especially in the case of traditional leaders, influence Ghana’s strive for national development. The main questions are: whether they can be used as resources or rather constitute impediments? and how are they changing to address contemporary challenges? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Chieftaincy institution is the most enduring establishment in the Republic of Ghana's political history. Its capacity to transcend the three phases of the country: pre-colonial, colonial and post-colonial eras as well as the three regime types: one-party, multi-party and military, demonstrates its resilience. Further, it remains the medium of expression of social, political, religious, traditional and economic authority in most communities in Ghana. In spite of the persistent spirit of the institution, in the Akan areas of Ghana it is bedevilled with protracted succession conflicts which has become one of the major sources of conflict in the country, and a key party to these conflicts is the unseen role of the Queen Mothers. Hence, the central aim of this paper is to assess the contribution of Queen Mothers in these conflicts. Documentary sources and elite interviews were the methods of data collection; the study used the Conflict Development Analysis as framework to identify the various dimensions of these succession conflicts in four Akan regions. The study resolved among others that if all lines of succession of chiefs were documented and preserved, it would be a useful guide to Queen Mothers and king makers in the mitigation of chieftaincy conflicts in the country. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article sets out to explain the basis of status ambiguity of the Houses of Chiefs and Traditional Councils in Ghana and the implications of this ambiguity on the status of the administrative personnel working in them. The interest was necessitated by complaints from administrative personnel in the Houses of Chiefs who were excluded from the general salary enhancement to all civil servants in Ghana in 2007. Between 2007 and 2009,research was conducted in all the 10 Regional Houses of Chiefs, in the National House of Chiefs and at the Ministry of Chieftaincy and Culture (MCC). While interviews were the main methods used at the MCC, it was combined with observations at the Houses of Chiefs. Primary and secondary documents were also consulted in the process. Data revealed that the Houses of Chiefs serve as "customary" courts for chieftaincy disputes and over the years, have incorporated certain practices of the English common law into their proceedings. Thus, they are neither customary courts in the strictest sense, nor common law courts, which equally explains the difficulty in determining whether or not the administrative personnel in these Houses are civil servants. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although chieftaincy has remained a highly contested institution, it is one traditional institution that most Ghanaians identify with: chiefs have been and still are regarded as the custodians of the nation's cultural beliefs and practices. Their position as intermediaries between the ancestral spirits and the people they represent makes them sacred figures and their regalia sacred objects. Chiefs are also very important in facilitating the provision of social infrastructural projects and ensuring law and order in their communities. Such was the power and prestige of chiefs that under colonialism the British administration incorporated them into colonial governance. However, while the nationalist leaders in the immediate postcolonial era did not find it appropriate to incorporate chiefs into national governance, they nonetheless used some cultural materials of chieftaincy to legitimize and Africanize their authority and give the new state of Ghana a unique political identity. By incorporating chieftaincy objects into the newly designed political culture, the state profiled and reified chieftaincy as a national heritage. This article discusses the intricacies of turning sacred objects of chieftaincy into national state symbols. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates whether chieftaincy is the only form of leadership in Ghana, a former British Colony in West Africa. It tries to find out if it is possible for one to be a successful leader in Ghana without acting as a chief. It sets off by investigating the root of chieftaincy and analyses series of interviews with chiefs and leaders. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In Ghana historical and modern legal and political circumstances have contributed to violent conflicts being structured around chiefs and tradition. Horizontal inequalities and local rivalries provide material for conflict narratives which in turn interact with national party politics, giving rise to the threat of inter and intra-ethnic violence being triggered by contentious events. By analysing the background to the series of inter-ethnic conflicts in the Northern Region which culminated in the 1994–1995 ‘Guinea Fowl War’ this paper examines how traditional and modern politics interact in Ghana and how they generate the categories and dynamics that fuel conflict. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the contested ways in which the international development concept of “indigenous knowledge” has been used and understood by a variety of actors within Ghana including both Ghanaian and non-Ghanaian development workers, chiefs, and members of beneficiary communities. While an ostensibly simplistic opposition between “indigenous” and “western” knowledge underscores this discourse, I argue that it has acted to frame a number of complex and geographically specific debates concerning the respective roles of chiefs and elites in the development of the country. The article also explores how the assumed incommensurability of these knowledge systems creates the need for various kinds of “mediation” and “translation” in which both chiefs and development workers foreground a “dual” identity. Against the prevailing anthropological tendency to critique the opposition between “indigenous” and “western” knowledge, I suggest that it is important to understand how these terms are used by different actors in the negotiation of identities and relations that are not reducible to the binary logic of the terms themselves. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Palace customs and missionary rights are at the core of what can be discerned as a revitalisation of tradition in Kyebi, the capital of the Akyem Abuakwa kingdom in southern Ghana. Both have been subject to fervent debates between the local chiefs' palace and the Presbyterian Church and were labelled by the institutions as their respective tradition. Claimed as a set of legal instruments and normative practices, the two traditions were displayed in a conflict which surrounded the celebration of the Ohum festival and the implementation of particular regulations by the palace. The latter was strongly objected by the church which saw her legal immunity seriously breached, one allegedly gained by the Basel missionaries for the early Kyebi Christians. Both, palace and church, are therefore caught in a sort of traditional pluralism creating a framework in which sovereignties are challenged and discursively negotiated. In this article, I lay out the particularities of this framework of pluralistic traditions in Kyebi, nourished by historically rooted and reoccurring debates on rights, regulations, practices and their legitimacy. In particular, analysing the multiple claims for power reveals how tradition is subject to quite differing agendas just when institutional boundaries, loyalties and dogmas are at stake. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]