ghanaopendata/ghanaian-research-english huggingface dataset:
Africa’s businesswomen – underfunded or underperforming?

Abstract While the recent success of Africa’s ‘Lionesses’ – successful female entrepreneurs – is internationally celebrated, less is known about how liquidity can fuel the success of the ‘Lionesses’ and other businesswomen. Using information from a panel of over 800 male- and female-owned businesses in Ghana (ISSER-IGC survey), we capture a measure of underfunding, in addition to data on supplier credit, equity and other fnance sources. Our regressions reveal a female-to-male productivity gap of between−11 and−19 per cent, values similar to estimates for other African countries. However, when fnancial constraints are taken into account, the gender performance gap disappears. Accordingly, female business owners who indicate that funding is not a problem are associated with higher productivity than males, all things equal. In a fnding new to the literature, our regressions reveal the importance of supplier credit for Africa’s businesswomen. Plain English Summary 300 African Businesswomen in Focus - Suppliers Key to Success. Suppliers to Africa’s businesswomen (e.g. sellers of cloth for garment manufacture) who ofer the possibility for delayed repayment, statistically boost the survival of female-owned businesses. Africa’s ‘Lionesses’ – exceptional businesswomen – are a comparative rarity, a reason we explore the reasons behind their success. Using data from over 800 Ghanaian businesses from 2011 to 2015, we examine the role of funding in explaining why the majority of businesswomen perform so poorly. Our fndings highlight an unusual fact – suppliers to female-owned businesses (e.g. sellers of cloth for manufacture into garments) who ofer their female customers the possibility to delay repayments are enormously benefcial in narrowing the gender gap. Targeting tax-cuts towards such suppliers would boost the emergence of future ‘Lionesses’.

Source: UG
Africa's Environment: A Stressed Biogeographical and Cultural Landscape

Humans are an important component of the biophysical environment in Africa, interacting with its resources through prisms of knowledge structures to harness and manage resources sustainably. A review of the human sphere (e.g., population and migration, land and land use, agriculture, and food security) and the ecosphere (e.g., environmental change, biodiversity, water, and coastal resources) is undertaken. The review suggests an environment which is generally degraded, and blamed on biophysical processes and policy failures. Mainstreaming policies and decision-support systems of different sectors and development processes would help reduce conflicts in resource use toward maintaining the integrity of Africa's environment. © 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Source: UG
Africa's land rush : rural livelihoods and agrarian change

The case studies in this book explore the processes through which land deals are being made; the implications for agrarian structure, rural livelihoods and food security; and the historical context of changing land uses, revealing that these land grabs may resonate with, even resurrect, forms of large-scale production associated with the colonial and early independence eras. The book depicts the striking diversity of deals and dealers: white Zimbabwean farmers in northern Nigeria, Dutch and American joint ventures in Ghana, an Indian agricultural company in Ethiopia's hinterland, European investors in Kenya's drylands and a Canadian biofuel company on its coast, South African sugar agribusiness in Tanzania's southern growth corridor, in Malawi's "Greenbelt" and in southern Mozambique, and white South African farmers venturing onto former state farms in the Congo.

Source: UG
Africa’s NEPAD Vision: Ambiguities, Contradictions and the Crisis of Internalizing External Models of Development

This chapter examined the NEPAD development document adopted by African leaders in the early 2000s against the background of dominant development theories, and argued that notwithstanding the good intentions, the NEPAD vision is not only an attempt to internalize and legitimate western epistemological versions of what constitutes development, but fraught with series of gaps that questions the commitment of the framework to inclusive governance

Source: UG
Africa, the global order and the politics of aid

A strong, but under-explored linkage exists between the current global order, world poverty and the politics of aid. Exploring this linkage, which is the key concern of this article, is crucial for a fuller understanding of the symbiotic injustice of the global order and the politics of aid. Using a conceptual thought experiment that portrays the framework of post-war global order as an intrinsically unjust “Global Games Arena”, I attempt a “vivisection” of the problematic relationship between the global order and the politics of aid. In the real world, I follow decolonial scholars like Adom Getachew and Olúfẹmi O. Táíwò to argue that the modern and current global order and its social, economic and political structures are founded on the unfair gains of trans-Atlantic slavery and colonialism. The empirical and analytical consequence of this situation, the article shows, is that to make aid effective or altogether end its penurious impact in Africa in particular, would require, at first, a jettisoning or remaking of the current international order. In other words, I argue that aid would not be necessary in the absence of a world order that in fact requires aid to maintain a system of global injustice and inequality.

Source: UG
The African AIDS case definition and HIV serology in medical in-patients at komfoanokye teaching hospital, kumasi, ghana.

In 914 consecutive medical admissions to Komfo Anokye Teaching Hospital, the prevalence of infection with Human Immunodeficiency Virus type I (HIV-I) and Human Immunodeficiency Virus type 2 (HIV-2) was 12.6%. The prevalence in females was twice that found in males. The infection rate was maximum in the age group 25-29 years for females (45%) and 30-34 years for males (29%). There were 7 cases infected with HIV-2 alone, 55 cases infected with HIV-I alone and 53 cases with dual infection. The cases with HIV-2 infection tended to be older than those with HIV-I infection. For detecting HIV seropositivity in our patients the World Health Organization recommended case definition for AIDS in Africa gave a sensitivity of 32%, a specificity of 93% and a positive predictive value of 42%. The case definition gave the highest specificity and positive predictive values when cases of tuberculosis were not included in the analysis.

Source: UG
African ancestry and higher prevalence of triple-negative breast cancer: findings from an international study

BACKGROUND The study of breast cancer in women with African ancestry offers the promise of identifying markers for risk assessment and treatment of triple-negative disease. METHODS African American and white American women with invasive cancer diagnosed at the Henry Ford Health System comprised the primary study population, and Ghanaian patients diagnosed and/or treated at the Komfo Anokye Teaching Hospital in Kumasi, Ghana constituted the comparison group. Formalin-fixed, paraffin-embedded specimens were transported to the University of Michigan for histopathology confirmation, and assessment of estrogen and progesterone receptors and HER-2/neu expression. RESULTS The study population included 1008 white Americans, 581 African Americans, and 75 Ghanaians. Mean age at diagnosis was 48.0 years for Ghanaian, 60.8 years for African American, and 62.4 for white American cases (P =.002). Proportions of Ghanaian, African American, and white American cases with estrogen receptor-negative tumors were 76%, 36%, and 22%, respectively (P < .001), and proportions with triple-negative disease were 82%, 26%, and 16%, respectively (P < .001). All Ghanaian cases were palpable, locally advanced cancers; 57 (76%) were grade 3. A total of 147 American women were diagnosed as stage III or IV; of these, 67.5% (n =46) of African Americans and 44.6% (n = 29) of white Americans were grade 3. Among palpable, grade 3 cancers, Ghanaians had the highest prevalence of triple-negative tumors (82.2%), followed by African Americans (32.8%) and white Americans (10.2%). CONCLUSIONS Our study demonstrates progressively increasing frequency of estrogen receptor-negative and triple-negative tumors among breast cancer patients with white American, African American, and Ghanaian/African backgrounds. This pattern indicates a need for additional investigations correlating the extent of African ancestry and high-risk breast cancer subtypes

Source: UG
African And International Financial Markets Interdependencies: Does Covid-19 Media Coverage Make Any Difference?.

This study examines the co-movement and time-varying integration between equity, exchange rate, and inter national market volatility indices across different time–frequency domains using - bi-partial wavelet, - supple mented by dynamic conditional correlation-generalised autoregressive conditional heteroskedasticity (DCC GARCH), - and BEKK GARCH model for selected African countries. First, the findings indicate that the co movement between equity and exchange rates during the pandemic was exacerbated by global COVID-19 media coverage. The findings indicate that there has been a substantial risk transfer between exchange rates and stock returns during the COVID-19 pandemic, resulting in a decline in domestic stock returns and subsequent capital outflows, which in turn increased the exchange rate. Given the growing difficulties in diversification, specific information on the volatility of financial market connectedness is required to plan hedging strategies. To explore the influence of global market volatility on Africa’s equity and currency markets, it is crucial to analyse the relationship between regional and global market fluctuations, especially given the negative impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. Our empirical research demonstrates that the VIX and OVXCL indices play a significant role in transmitting spillovers to currency and equity markets in Africa. This suggests that the sentiment indicators provided by the VIX and OVXCL can be useful in predicting the behaviour of Africa’s currency and equity markets.

Source: UG
African and non-African concepts of time: to contrast or not to contrast? The geo-political convenience of dichotomization, Thought and Practice

This critique offers analytic reasons for suspecting that political economics drives the enduring philosophical debates concerning a purported contrast between ‘African’ and ‘Western’ concepts of time. In particular, the essay illuminates flawed and self-refuting assumptions underlying the recurrent hypothesis that certain metaphysical beliefs peculiar to Africans are causally responsible for the poor quality of development policy as practiced by Africans. Such a hypothesis neglects how economic conditions actually result from what people think and do. It is shown that drawing a causal connection from culture-specific metaphysical beliefs to economic practices is a mistaken project, flawed both by its logical incoherence and by overlooking the structure of individual intentions which comprise some component of the causal sequences involved in the practice of developmental economics, if it is driven by individuals’ beliefs. These results achieved a-historically suggest why a prevailing intercultural debate explicitly focused on the practical aspects of divergent beliefs about the nature of time, may be implicitly an enduring conflict about control over its use

Source: UG
The African Belief System and the Patient’s Choice of Treatment from Existing Health Models: The Case of Ghana

This paper presents a narrative review including a case study of the African Belief System. A strong belief in supernatural powers is deeply rooted in the African culture. In Ghana, there is a spiritual involvement in the treatment of illness and healthcare. The new health model in the African culture therefore can be considered to be the Biopsychosocial(s) model-with the s representing spiritual practice-compared to the biopsychosocial model in Western culture. The case study on dissociative amnesia illustrates that Africans consider spiritual causes of illness when a diagnosis of an illness is very challenging. The causes of mental health conditions in particular seem challenging to Africans, and therefore are easily attributed to spiritual powers. The spiritual belief in African clients should not be rejected but should be used by caregivers to guide and facilitate clients’ recovery from illness. The spiritual belief provides hope. Therefore when combined with Western treatment, this belief can quicken illness recovery.

Source: UG
African Business Enterprise A Study of a Group of Traders in Kumasi Part II

The Akan peoples, to which the Ashanti belong, are closely allied linguistically, share many common traditions, and are contained largely within the boundaries of Ghana, in the central and southern areas of the country. The matrilineal system embraces the Akans and sane other geographically proximate groups. Most of the business men covered in this survey were Akans and some of the problems of business development can be related to -their matrilineal system of inheritance. These are not problems which are shared by patrilineal tribes, so that in Gham they are largely peculiar to the Akans, who constituted over 40% of t re total population in the 1948 Census of Population. But since cocoa i s to a considerable extent in t he hands of matrilineal peoples, they are among the wealthiest sections of the nation, and a large proportion of Ghanaian business enterprise certainly springs from them.

Source: UG
The African corporate culture: An obstacle to effective strategic planning in Ghanaian university libraries

Cultural practices are defined in the context of this paper as being the way things are done in an organisation. Aspects of cultural practices that may affect strategic planning are explored in a study of stakeholders of five Ghanaian university libraries and two senior civil servants. Points discussed include organisational values and beliefs, tribalism and organisational behaviour. © 2001, MCB UP Limited

Source: UG
African Countries and the Green Box

The paper argues that the green box subsidies of the WTO’s Agreement on Agriculture provide African countries the policy space to implement measures to support agriculture. Evidence from African countries that notify the WTO of their domestic support to agriculture suggests that a large proportion of this support falls under the green box. In addition not all the available green box measures are used by African countries or may be considered priorities at this point in time. The categories of spending that may be considered priorities to African agriculture are all available under the green box measures with limited restrictions on their use. The effective use of spending on green box measures will go a long way to reduce the constraints facing African farmers.

Source: UG
African Dilemmas

Two moons contest the tide of British policy in Africa. One is our need for a new world to cultivate, if not to conquer: a need sharpened by withdrawal from the East and by the pinch of dollar famine. That moon pulls up the African shore a tide of British interest, money, skill, expectation. Its rival sucks African hope and effort away from British mastery, as from all European hegemony. It gathers a tide of self-determination, of nationalism, which we ourselves blow forward with ever greater force to bring about se)f-rule, and with it our own impotence. So one tide drives us hard towards the continent and the other repels us. Are we going forward or pulling back? In the same year we have launched the groundnut scheme in Tanganyika and brought into being in Nigeria a constitution that gives Africans a majority in the legislature. Both are acclaimed as examples of progress, and each point in an opposite direction.

Source: UG
African Ethics and Online Communities: An Argument for a Virtual Communitarianism

A virtual community is generally described as a group of people with shared interests, ideas, and goals in a particular digital group or virtual platform. Virtual communities have become ubiquitous in recent times, and almost everyone belongs to one or multiple virtual communities. The onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, with its associated national lockdowns, has made virtual communities more essential and a necessary part of our daily lives, whether for work and business, educational purposes or keeping in touch with friends and family. Given these facts, how do we ensure that virtual communities become a true community qua community? We address this question by proposing and arguing for a ‘virtual communitarianism’—an online community that integrates essential features of traditional African communitarianism in its outlook and practice. The paper’s position is that virtual communitarianism can make for a strong ethical virtual community where members can demonstrate a strong sense of group solidarity, care and compassion towards each other. The inclusion of these virtues can bring members who often are farapart and help create a stronger community bond. This will ensure that the evolution of virtual communities does not happen without the integration of progressive African communitarian values.

Source: UG
African Families at the Turn of the 21st Century

The institution of family has been central to the well-being of African societies over the years. African families have undergone significant transformation caused by the interplay of indigenous, Arabic/Islamic, and European/Christian cultures. The juxtaposition of these three cultures in the lives of African peoples captures the triple-heritage image of the continent. At the same time, modernization, urbanization, and migration have played and continue to play significant roles in the transformation of families across the continent. While it is true that the traditional family has changed in many ways and that African families are continuously confronted with new challenges, the renowned contributors to this volume recognize that the African family continues to adapt to emerging structural changes. In the new millennium, a host of issues and challenges has emerged, each with the potential to weaken or threaten the survival of the traditional African family. These include the HIV/AIDS pandemic; a growing elderly population; declining governmental support; and economic decay. How the post-colonial family reacts to these threats and challenges has the potential to either maintain or undermine the family's role as a major organizing principle in Africa.

Source: UG
An African Feminist Perspective on the Sex Trade in West Africa: A Case Study Of Ghanaian Women

Women who make the choice of commercial sex work do so because patriarchal structures embedded in cultural practices that limit the employment opportunities available to women. These socio-economic and political dynamics stipulated by patriarchy, lead some women into practicing prostitution in various forms. The implications of the sex trade related to the education, employment and political participation as they affect women, is complex and multifaceted. This study examines the international sex trade and, especially, the involvement of Ghanaian women. The study is based on the premise that unless the sex trade is understood from the African feminist's perspective, we will possibly fail to address the serious socioeconomic and socio-political problems of the sex trade in West Africa. The analysis of interviews of the sampling population of Ghanaian prostitutes attests to this. Prostitutes who are trafficked and those who make the choice themselves are victims of the neglect of African women since colonial times through the capitalist transition of their societies. They lack higher level of education and therefore find it difficult to find employment. The study concludes that most prostitutes are not promiscuous or lovers of "plenty sex perse". They rather are victims of a patriarchal society, which limits the advancement of women. The answer to the sex trade problem lies in an understanding of the issues from an African feminist' perspective and the attempt to correct the anomaly.

Source: UG
African Folktales and Sculpture (Series XXXII)

The two parts of this book, folktales and sculpture, coincide and interrelate only in part. The great sculpture area of native Africa encompasses practically all of the West Africa of the true Negro and most of the Bantu-speaking region centering in the Congo. For reasons not entirely understood, almost no plastic art of much interest has come from the Nilotic, the eastern and southern Bantu, and the Bushman-Hottentot areas. But for the folktale this does not hold. Rich stores of the folktale are encountered everywhere. This volume contains only a selection.

Source: UG
African Glory the Story of Vanished Negro Civilizations

The present study is an attempt to present certain aspect Negro history; and as Africa is today generally regarded as home of the Negro, the present study has taken on, in Some aspect at least the character of African history. To attempt a presentation of Negro history, or indeed of African history in in so small a volume to undertake an impossible task yet it is a task that must be attempted. Mr Thomas Hodgkin, former Secretary to the Oxford University Delegacy for Extra-Mural Studies and a Fellow of Balliol College, Oxford, writing in the Highway of February 1952, had this to say about Africa

Source: UG
African Innovations in Harnessing Farmer Assets as Collateral

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to document and appraise two innovations by which nontraditional forms of collateral are being used to make smallholder crop and livestock farmers bankable in Ghana and Zimbabwe. Design/methodology/approach The setup and operations of the warehouse receipt system (WRS) in Ghana were evaluated for the extent to which the WRS was meeting crop farmers’ expectations and the WRS’s own objectives. Owners of the WRS, a certified warehouse operator in a big city, and two operators of certified community warehouses in farming communities were interviewed. Two focus group discussions with crop farmers were also held. Information about the setup and operations of the Tawanda Nyambirai Livestock Trust (TNLT) Private Limited in Zimbabwe (TNLT) and extent of serving the credit needs of livestock farmers was obtained by telephone from the managing director. Data were gathered in April 2014 and were analyzed later. Findings Due to low output no smallholder farmer targeted by the WRS had been issued with a tradable certified warehouse receipts to serve as collateral to potential lenders. Grain aggregators (non-farmers) have aggregated enough grains from farmers to be issued warehouse receipts. Grain farmers report substantial reduction in post-harvest losses when they lodge farm proceeds with certified community warehouses. For the TNLT, more than 140 farmers had deposited 700 cattle and had been issued with tradable certificates of deposit within one year of TNLT to obtain revolving credit from one bank. Other benefits and challenges are highlighted. Originality/value Both approaches have potential of helping to solve liquidity constraints of farmers.

Source: UG