ghanaopendata/ghanaian-research-english huggingface dataset:
The Evolving Demographic and Health Transition in Four Low- and Middle-Income Countries: Evidence from Four Sites in the INDEPTH Network of Longitudinal Health and Demographic Surveillance Systems.

This paper contributes evidence documenting the continued decline in all-cause mortality and changes in the cause of death distribution over time in four developing country populations in Africa and Asia. We present levels and trends in age-specific mortality (all-cause and cause-specific) from four demographic surveillance sites: Agincourt (South Africa), Navrongo (Ghana) in Africa; Filabavi (Vietnam), Matlab (Bangladesh) in Asia. We model mortality using discrete time event history analysis. This study illustrates how data from INDEPTH Network centers can provide a comparative, longitudinal examination of mortality patterns and the epidemiological transition. Health care systems need to be reconfigured to deal simultaneously with continuing challenges of communicable disease and increasing incidence of non-communicable diseases that require long-term care. In populations with endemic HIV, long-term care of HIV patients on ART will add to the chronic care needs of the community.

Source: UG
Evolving forecasting classifications and applications in health forecasting

Health forecasting forewarns the health community about future health situations and disease episodes so that health systems can better allocate resources and manage demand. The tools used for developing and measuring the accuracy and validity of health forecasts commonly are not defined although they are usually adapted forms of statistical procedures. This review identifies previous typologies used in classifying the forecasting methods commonly used in forecasting health conditions or situations. It then discusses the strengths and weaknesses of these methods and presents the choices available for measuring the accuracy of health-forecasting models, including a note on the discrepancies in the modes of validation.

Source: UG
The evolving social space of gender and slavery in nineteenth century Accra

By the seventeenth century, Accra had emerged as an important Atlantic trading port that dealt in slaves, gold and European luxury goods. The establishment of the European trading forts; namely the Dutch Fort Crevecoeur (built 1649), the English Fort James (1673-4) and the Danish Fort Christiansburg (1660) ensured the incorporation of Accra into an Atlantic cultural and commercial orbit. Accra thus evolved a multiplicity of identities which included aspects of Euro-Atlantic cultural and commercial practices that influenced indigenous Ga notions of slavery, gender relations and the expression of social power. It is important to note that the Ga and Mulatofoi (Euro-African) women were never constrained by patriarchal structures. Women slave owners tapped into the different and often conflicting norms regulating slavery to their own benefits. Slave holding thus became an important avenue for the contestation of social power and thus shaped urbanism, gender and social cleavages in Accra. The institution of slavery continuously evolved to reflect the contested interests of ma rtsEmEi (singular: mantse; ruler of a town) principal ablempen (grandees), Mulatofoi, influential women, and at the end of the nineteenth century, the fledging British colonial regime who sought to abolish it.

Source: UG
Ewe borrowings into Logba

Logba, a Ghana-Togo Mountain language, operates an active noun class system in which there is agreement within the noun phrase (NP) and the subject NP is cross-referenced on the verb in a form that agrees with the class of the subject. As a minority language dominated by Ewe, a non-noun class language, it is exposed to the phenomenon of borrowing. In this paper, I examine the repercussions of borrowing in terms of nouns, locative verbs, grammatical items, and culturally loaded expressions. I will show that nouns borrowed from Ewe are allocated to a class with similar semantics, while verbs show the subject–noun cross-reference on them in a clause. Grammatical items—relativizers, conjunctions, and clause linkers—have forms very similar to those found in Ewe. Other forms of borrowing shown in this paper are proverbs, riddles, and emotional expressions calqued in Logba from Ewe. It is noted that there is generalization and simplification going on among younger native speakers of Logba. The paper concludes that there is a contact-induced change in progress in which a noun class system of a minority language is exposed to interference by a majority language.

Source: UG
Ewe borrowings into Logba In

Logba, a Ghana-Togo Mountain (GTM) language, operates an active noun class system in which there is agreement within the NP and the subject NP is cross-referenced on the verb in a form that agrees with the class of the subject. As a minority language dominated by Ewe, a non-noun class language, it is exposed to the phenomenon of borrowing. In this paper, I examine the repercussions of borrowing in terms of nouns, locative verbs, grammatical items, and culturally loaded expressions. I will show that nouns borrowed from Ewe are allocated to a class with similar semantics while verbs show the subject noun cross reference on them in a clause. Grammatical items— relativizers, conjunctions, and clause linkers—have forms very similar to those found in Ewe. Other forms of borrowing shown in this paper are proverbs, riddles, and emotional expressions calqued in Logba from Ewe. It is noted that there is generalization and simplification going on among younger native speakers of Logba. The paper concludes that there is a contact-induced change in progress in which a noun class system of a minority language is exposed to interference by a majority language

Source: UG
Ewe Verbal Taboos: A Study in Indirection

In all languages, there are certain words and expressions that are regarded as unsuitable for general use either because they deserve particular reverence or because they are felt to be ‘unclean’ or vulgar. The word taboo derives from the Polynesian word tabu which referred to a prohibition forbidding certain actions, contacts, relationships or words (Todd & Hancock 1986). This paper looks at the linguistic aspect of taboos in Ewe. There are verbal and behavioral taboos. The latter involves certain acts that are prohibited in a particular community, for example incest is a taboo act, but the expression for it is not forbidden. The other type of taboo has to do with words and expressions relating to certain phenomena that are prohibited. This paper’s focus is on verbal taboos, and discusses the types of expressions used in place of the taboo expressions. It is noted that taboo avoidance expressions involve euphemisms, which take forms such as metaphor, circumlocution and apologetic expressions.

Source: UG
Ex vivo Sensitivity Profile of Plasmodium falciparum Clinical Isolates to a Panel of Antimalarial Drugs in Ghana 13 Years After National Policy Change

The Department of Immunology conducts research in the field of immunology of infectious and non-infectious diseases. The Department has the overall goal of contributing knowledge to better diagnosis, management, control and prevention of infectious and non-infectious diseases in Ghana and worldwide. This is consistent with the overall strategy of the Noguchi Memorial Institute for Medical Research (NMIMR) and in line with the strategy of the College of Health Sciences of the University of Ghana.

Source: UG
Exact Matrix Completion via Convex Optimization

We consider a problem of considerable practical interest: the recovery of a data matrix from a sampling of its entries. Suppose that we observe m entries selected uniformly at random from a matrix M. Can we complete the matrix and recover the entries that we have not seen? We show that one can perfectly recover most low-rank matrices from what appears to be an incomplete set of entries. We prove that if the number m of sampled entries obeys for some positive numerical constant C, then with very high probability, most n*n matrices of rank r can be perfectly recovered by solving a simple convex optimization problem. This program finds the matrix with minimum nuclear norm that fits the data. The condition above assumes that the rank is not too large. However, if one replaces the 1.2 exponent with 1.25, then the result holds for all values of the rank. Our results are connected with the recent literature on compressed sensing, and show that objects other than signals and images can be perfectly reconstructed from very limited information.

Source: UG
An Examination of Elite Consensus Towards National Development in Africa: A Case Study of Ghana

Consensually united elites are said to be very rare and as such limit the possibility for the spread of liberal democracy across the world. In Africa, Ghana presents itself as a case in point, not only because it is one of the most democratic countries in Africa but also the fact that political elites have been accorded the force behind this success. The study therefore examines the place of elite consensus in Ghana’s political landscape by examining the political parties, elections, the legislature and national development planning in the fourth republic. This analysis was made based on a wealth of knowledge provided by numerous scholars on the topic of elite consensus and how this concept is connected to democratic development. Within the Ghanaian political dispensation, based on some operational benchmarks, this study adopted self-perceptions expressed in qualitative, in-depth interviews with a limited number of political party executives, think-tanks, parliamentarians, civil servants and National Development Planning Commission (NDPC) officials. The study found out that political elites in Ghana are very united and as such depicts a horizontal integration of elites as explained by Higley and Burton. This has accounted for Ghana’s envious democratic strides. However, this consensus is only on issues affecting elites and not the citizens which are particularly indicative in Ghana’s legislature and national development planning since the start of the fourth republic. This finding goes against Higley and Burton’s vertically integrated elitism, which suggests a great cohesion between elites and the masses. This then confirms the hypothesis of the study which states that Ghana lacks an enduring elite consensus which has negatively affected national development. In light of these conclusions, the study prescribes some remedies in solving Ghana’s deficits on elite consensus towards national development in the long-run. They include having a third force in Ghana’s political arena, some constitutional amendments, effective civic education, procuring a national agenda on national development planning and effective conflict resolution mechanisms.

Source: UG
An examination of Ethiopia’s anti-terrorism on fundamental human rights.

Since the enactment of Ethiopia’s Proclamation on Anti-Terrorism in August 2009, at least11 journalists have been convicted, each sentenced to at least 10 years imprisonment. There are concerns that the proclamation limits the right to freedom of thought, opinion and expression, provided for in Ethiopia’s Constitution. Through the lens of the right to freedom of thought, opinion and expression, the paper argues that Ethiopia’s Anti-Terrorism Proclamation violates the human rights of people within its jurisdiction. It finds that there is a real potential for the state to crack down on political dissent in governance and curtail the growth of democracy in Ethiopia.

Source: UG
An Examination of Ghana beyond Aid: Prospects and Challenges

Ghana has had a well-documented dalliance with many donor countries and multilateral donor agencies since the 1960s. However, in his Independence Day speech in March 2017, the President, Nana Addo-Dankwa Akufo-Addo signaled his intent to pursue the vision of a Ghana that is not dependent on aid. This led to the commissioning of the Ghana Beyond Aid Committee to draw up the roadmap for achieving this objective. The main objective of this study therefore is to examine the government’s new direction of taking Ghana beyond aid to know what it means, the options to foreign aid the government seeks to explore and how it intends to achieve this aspiration as well as the prospects and challenges that could result from this new direction. To achieve the set objectives, the study employed qualitative methods by relying on primary and secondary sources which include face to face interviews, books, journal articles, reports and internet sources. The study found that the approach to a Ghana Beyond Aid is not a radical rejection of aid. Rather, it takes a gradualist approach by building capacity to go beyond aid. It also found that aid will be leveraged alongside domestically mobilized resources to eventually go beyond aid. These alternative sources to aid include both foreign and domestic options like a 100 year sovereign bond, municipal bonds as is the practice in Rwanda, broadening the tax base, fiscal prudence in the public sector and leveraging natural resources as has been done in the 2018 Sinohydro agreement. The study concludes that although the vision of a Ghana beyond aid is a laudable one, it can be achieved when there is agreement among politicians on the direction of the nation when it comes to its development trajectory.

Source: UG
An Examination of Ghana’s Foreign Aid Utilization under the PNDC and NDC Governments (1982-2000)

This study examines Ghana’s foreign aid utilization for the period 1982 to 2000 under the PNDC and NDC administrations led by Flt Lt. J.J. Rawlings in relation to economic growth and development, based on the dependency theory. The study employs primary and secondary data in examining aid in Ghana. Ghana, in the 1980s, became one of the firm economic reformers in Sub Saharan Africa. From a declined economy, Ghana recovered with improved growth under the Provisional National Defense Council (PNDC). This exceptional record in Sub-Saharan Africa came along with increased foreign aid receipts from the donor community. Aid utilization was executed by high level of technocratic policymakers under one political leadership. However, the slow pace of economic development in the 1990s coincided with calls for strong institutional capacity and increased democratization. Under the National Democratic Congress (NDC), economic growth was unimpressive. Utilization of aid under this period recorded relatively lower gains as ownership of programmes waned to a considerable degree.

Source: UG
Examination of globalisation’s clouts on Ghana’s tertiary education policy

The paper examined and analysed the extent globalisation and its dimensions impinged Ghana’s tertiary education policy landscape in global and national historical and contemporary perspectives. Historical and contemporary policy documents and articles, that help to understand how glob alisation and its antecedents have interwoven and permeated the dynamics underpinning Ghana’s tertiary education policy, were used as conduits for the analysis. Within the context of structural adjustment and democratisation juggernauts triggered by the West, neoliberal reforms were initiated in the early 1990s. They were characterised by the liberalisation of the sector for the establishment of private tertiary education institutions, creation of buffer agencies to ensure ef fective stakeholder control in policy and quality assurance of those institutions, initiating laissez-faire financial reforms and incorporating non-governmental financial responsibility. Nonetheless, they concomitantly spurred the tertiary education institutions to drift towards entrepreneurialism and innovation through activities such as research, fee policies and collaborations with vital stake holders. Although the reforms were geared towards market, the Ghanaian system of tertiary education remains a quasi-market system with substantial governmental control

Source: UG
An examination of hospital governance in Ghana

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to examine the nature of governance structures in Ghanaian hospitals by comparing the governance systems in public and private hospitals. Design/methodology/approach – This study employs a comparative case methodology. It compares the governance structures in private hospitals to that of public hospitals in Ghana to ascertain whether they exhibit different or similar governance systems. The results obtained are analyzed and discussed to ascertain the extent to which the governance structures in these hospitals conform to Taylor's principles of good governance. Findings – The results of the study revealed numerous differences in the governance structures in private and public hospitals in Ghana. From the review of Taylor's principles of good governance and the comparative case analysis, it was observed that some of the principles are not present in the current hospital governance systems. Originality/value – The findings of this paper have important implications for proper governance and management of the Ghanaian health institutions.

Source: UG
An examination of national climate policy integration at the local level of development in Ghana

This paper assessed the extent to which local government authorities have mainstreamed climate change adaptation strategies in their development policies in selected districts in Ghana, using a qualitative case study design within the phenomenological epistemology. Forty-four respondents studied from the decentralized departments of local authorities key informant interviews (KIIs) were used for data collection in the study areas. The study findings revealed that climate policy integration at the study districts was done as a compliance measure rather than a response to the real needs of the districts. A gaping chasm therefore exists between stated and actual climate change-related goals. Lack of collaboration, weak coordination of sector plans and weak community and private sector engagement were identified as the causal factors of the gap between the rhetoric and the reality of integrating climate change concerns into the district development plans in the study areas. Further, competing local priorities on the district agenda, institutional capacity constraints and information and technological constraints were identified as major barriers for the local authorities in adaptation to climate change. It is concluded that although climate change and its related policies have been integrated into the various national development policies, climate policy integration remains a challenge at the district level.

Source: UG
An examination of pharmaceutical supply chain for artemisinin-based combination therapies in Ghana

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to examine the pharmaceutical supply chain for artemisinin-based combination therapies (ACT) in Ghana. Design/methodology/approach: This study employed an inductive approach in examining the dynamics of the pharmaceutical supply chain. The study also used analytical hierarchical process in identifying factors that are detrimental to the ACT supply chain. Findings: The study revealed that there are basically two main supply channels through which ACT enters the Ghanaian pharmaceutical system - private and public. The ACT network depicts a strong evidence of actor interdependence and long-term relationships. However, the key supply chain enabler - the use of information technology - was found to be lacking, leading to delays and disruptions in the supply chain system. Disruption was found to be the main detrimental factor to the supply chain although delay was found to be occurring more frequently. Price increases indicated a low effect on the supply network at the pharmacy level, but the general price of the highly subsidised effective ACT (Coartem) remains very high. Research limitations/implications: Owing to constraints in accessibility, it was challenging to contact all the actors in the network individually, especially the consumer. Drugs considered in the study were the WHO approved ACT, even though efforts were made to compile available anti-malarial drugs on the market. Practical implications: This study has provided insights into the supply chain for ACT. The findings of the study are relevant in improving the supply chain system. Originality/value: The paper brings to the fore the need for a proper pharmaceutical supply chain management in the health sector with regards to one of the world's most infectious and deadly diseases - malaria. © Emerald Group Publishing Limited.

Source: UG
An examination of the association between risky sexual behaviors and suicidal behaviors among adolescents: Findings from the 2017 Youth Risk Behavior Survey

Although various studies have examined the association between risky sexual behaviors and mental health outcomes, few studies have investigated the association between risky sexual behaviors and suicidal ideation and suicide attempts among adolescents. The objective of this study was to investigate the association between risky sexual behaviors and suicidal ideation and suicide attempts among adolescents from the United States. Data for this study came from the 2017 Youth Risk Behavior Survey. An analytic sample of 5,125 adolescents aged 14–18 years (50.1% female) who have ever had sexual intercourse was analyzed using binary logistic regression. The outcome variables examined were suicidal ideation and suicide attempts, and the main explanatory variable was risky sexual behaviors. Among the 5,125 adolescents who have ever had sexual intercourse, 22.8% experienced suicidal ideation, and 11.6% attempted suicide during the past 12 months. In the multivariable logistic regression, adolescents who had unprotected sexual intercourse had 1.24 times higher odds of reporting suicidal ideation (AOR = 1.24, p < .05, 95% CI = 1.01–1.54). In addition, adolescents who had four or more sexual partners in their lifetime had 1.61 times higher odds of making a suicide attempt (AOR = 1.61, p < .001, 95% CI = 1.25–2.07). Other significant factors associated with suicidal ideation and suicide attempts include being a sexual minority, being a victim of sexual violence, experiencing school bullying and cyberbullying victimization, having symptoms of depression, and misusing prescription pain medication. The findings of the present study highlight the association between risky sexual behaviors and suicidal ideation and suicide attempts among adolescents.

Source: UG