ghanaopendata/ghanaian-research-english huggingface dataset:
Freedom of Information: Implications for Records Management in Ghana Lambert Academic Publishing

Many countries including Ghana are adopting freedom of information (FOI) legislation as part of good governance, transparency and public accountaility. This is because FOI is now recognized as a fundamental human right. The existence of an FOI law is based on the principle that the public's right to know is a fundamental element of democratic governance. However, it has been demonstrated that successful implementation of FOI legislation is linked to effective and efficient record keeping praactices. Where record keeping systems are poor or ineffective, the implementation of FOI will either be problematic or fail to achieve the desired results. Information access is impossible without good records management. In public sector organizations in Ghana existing records management systems can not keep pace with modern processes of information needs. Systems of storage, retrieval amd disposition of rrecords leave much to be desired. Record keeping infrastructure must be supported by information culture. Viable record keeping systems are needed to support the implementation of the freedom information legislation.

Source: UG
Freedom, competition and bank profitability in Sub-Saharan Africa

Purpose This paper aims to examine the effects of financial freedom and competition on bank profitability. Design/methodology/approach The study uses system generalized method of moments and data from 139 banks across 11 Sub-Saharan African countries during the period 2006-2012. Findings The results of the study show that higher market power (less competition) is positively related to bank profitability, but operating efficiency is a more important determinant of profitability than market power. Also, both financial freedom and economic freedom show a positive impact on bank profits. The authors find evidence that banks with higher market power operating in countries with higher freedom for banking activities are more profitable than their counterparts in countries with greater restrictions on banking activities. Practical implications The results have shown that allowing banks greater freedom to operate would enhance their performance, without necessarily damaging the economy, as operating efficiency appears to be a more important reason for the observed profitability than market power. Originality/value This study provides insight on the ambiguous relationship between competition and bank profitability by considering the moderating effect of financial freedom which has not been taken into account in previous studies.

Source: UG
Frequent and persistent, asymptomatic plasmodium falciparum infections in african infants, characterized by multilocus genotyping.

The Department of Parasitology conducts research into parasitic diseases of public health importance with the overall goal of reducing their transmission and the heavy disease burden that they impose on affected populations. The Department maintains focus on parasitic diseases in general. These include major diseases such as malaria, and others listed under the Neglected Tropical Diseases (NTD) control initiative such as, lymphatic filariasis, onchocerciasis, schistosomiasis, soil-transmitted helminthiasis, trypanosomiasis and leishmaniasis.

Source: UG
Friend or Patron? Social Relations Across the National NGO–Donor Divide in Ghana

The article examines the institutions governing relations between grant using national NGOs and grant giving international donors in three regions of Ghana (Upper West, Northern and Greater Accra Region). Formal procedural rules and professional norms can be viewed as necessary to minimise opportunities for informal patronage, rent-seeking and corruption made possible by the unequal access to resources. However, semi-structured interviews, life histories and observation high light the positive role informal networks, connections, personal contacts and friend ship play in enhancing collaboration between donors and national NGOs. Friend ships originating in kinship and ethnicity, school links and past collaboration offer opportunities for infuencing and resource mobilisation, but can also weaken NGO sustainability. Informal contacts and face-to-face interactions also build trust and strengthen lines of accountability, with non-adherence to shared norms resulting in sanctions and reputation loss. These findings affrm the positive role of informal relations, and highlight how they can complement formal rules and professional norms governing NGO–donor relations rather than undermining them. It throws a very different light on the role of informal institutions than that fostered by a discourse of clientelism and provides a more nuanced conceptual foundation for assessing ‘formalisation’ as a normative strategy.

Source: UG
From “Man is the Measure of all things” to Money is the Measure of all things: A dialogue between Protagoras and African Philosophy

Protagoras declaration that “man is the measure of all things” is conventionally discussed in the context of epistemology. There was, however, a communal or social dimension to this which, in the process of time, assumed greater intensity and expanded systematically into all aspects of human relations. The centrality of money in these relations speaks to the transition from “man is the measure of all things” to money is the measure of all things. The article proposes to defend this thesis in the context of conceptual orientation of NEPAD and the global economic order.

Source: UG
FROM ‘RECHARGER’ TO ‘GIDI-POWER’: The representation of male sexual power in Ghanaian radio commercials

Gender and advertising research have often centered on gender stereotypes, most of which emphasize the representation of women as ‘sex objects'. The representation of men in sexual stereotypes are often not dealt with, even though an increasing number of advertisements are now showing men as sex objects. In its contribution to gender, language and advertising research, this study looks at how men are represented in sexual stereotypes (not in print media or from the West, which have often been the focus) in Ghanaian radio commercials. Using a Feminist Critical Discursive Approach, six adverts on products for sexual potency are examined. Through the analyses of various linguistic forms, the results show that ‘manliness’ is equated with sexual power, and this is a reproduction of the traditional male power stereotype, that is, the expectation that men are to be powerful. However, this power is subverted since it needs the ‘approval’ of women, thereby representing women as equally powerful (if not more powerful). © 2014 Taylor & Francis.

Source: UG
From ‘traitors’ to ‘saviours’: A longitudinal analysis of Ethiopian, Kenyan and Rwandan embassies’ practice of digital diaspora diplomacy

Recent years have seen the emergence of relational approaches to diplomacy that centre on diplomats’ use of social media to foster relationships with foreign publics. Yet social media may also prove useful in building relationships with diasporas, now viewed by some states as ‘saviours’ who may contribute to the economic prosperity of origin countries. This article sought to examine how Ethiopian, Kenyan and Rwandan embassies employ social media when communicating with diasporas. The article proposes a conceptual framework for digital diaspora diplomacy which consists of relationship building, community strengthening and relationship leveraging. An analysis of 830 Facebook posts, published in 2016 and 2020, suggests that evaluated embassies use social media to interact with Facebook followers, respond to online criticism, publicise offline events and publish information that is of interest to diasporas. Thus, African embassies may be able to leverage diasporic ties towards the improvement of their nation’s socio-economic status.

Source: UG
&quot;From a real nody, which was there, proceed radiations which ultimately touch me, who am here&quot;: An encounter with a missionary portrait of a precolonial akan court official

Following Barthes' striking insights, this essay attempts an encounter with a portrait of an Akan court official on the Gold Coast taken in about 1890. The missionary photographer is given his due in the analysis, but Barthes is taken as urging us to take the signals from the photographed "object" seriously when analyzing portraits, and as having liberated us to use the complex of visual perceptions which people with long experience in a region call up when they encounter someone unknown to them. This train of thought allows us to see the official as a representative of a functioning political community with reforming intentions and an ability to absorb many of the impulses a resident Mission brought into the area. The essay is also a by-product of the effort which has been put into getting the main body of historical photographs in the Basel Mission archive catalogued to a satisfactory degree of local precision, to serve the interest in African History among the Mission's African partners, and the new Centre for African Studies at the University of Basel.

Source: UG
From Aspiration To Achievements: Exploring The Motivational Drives Behind Female Graduate Nursing Students' Pursuit Of Higher Education In Ghana.

Background: The nursing and midwifery professions are predominantly female. In Sub-saharan Africa, especially in Ghana, females have traditionally been perceived as homemakers who do not require higher education to play their roles. This phenomenon perpetuates gender inequality, underutilises talents, and denies women opportu nities for personal and professional growth. Aim: This study explored the motivational factors influencing the uptake of higher nurse education among female nurses in a resource-constrained setting. Methods: An exploratory, descriptive qualitative approach was adopted with purposive sampling method to re cruit 20 nurses pursuing a postgraduate programme in nursing from October to November 2022. Inductive thematic analysis approach was used to analyse the data. Result: Two main themes and six subthemes were developed from the data. Female graduate students believe the reasons to pursue higher nursing education are attributed to one's workplace, friends and family's demands. Participants pursuing higher education think it will earn them higher-paying jobs. Their primary motivation to pursue higher education was to earn titles like ‘doctor’, ‘the degree nurse’, and ‘the specialist nurse’. Other motivations for some participants include the impact of their higher education, which ranges from workplace promotion to family prestige. Conclusion: Ghanaian female graduate nursing students' motivation to pursue higher nursing education is threefold: personal gains, corporate gains, and family fame. Educational institutions need to assist these nurses with the requisite knowledge to excel in their areas of work, get the maximum benefit they expect from schooling, and make their families and communities proud as expected.

Source: UG
From Cape Coast to Coomasie, a narrative of the Ashantee War.

The foregoing statement is an outline of the history to be related in our present narrative. But the more detailed account of those transactions may be suitably preceded by a short description of the British establishment on the Gold Coast, the Fantee tribes around them, and the Ashantee kingdom, as hitherto known from travellers' reports. These subjects will therefore occupy our first attention. The Gold Coast was visited so long ago as 1364 by some French merchant adventurers of Rouen and Dieppe.

Source: UG
From Condemnation to Understanding: Views on Suicidal Behavior in Ghana in Transition

The cultural context in which suicide occurs has been emphasized as critical in understanding the act and informing prevention. Yet the penchant of psychiatrizing suicidality in mainstream suicidology relegates cultural issues to the background. Through the lenses of critical cultural suicidology, the authors have re-emphasized the importance of culture by reviewing the two major meanings of suicide as observed in our 8-year study in Ghana: moral transgression and life crisis. They have also showed the usefulness of the life crisis perspective of suicidality in reducing stigma and sustaining advocacy in decriminalizing attempted suicide in the country.

Source: UG
From condemnation to understanding: Views on suicidal behavior in Ghana in transition.

The cultural context in which suicide occurs has been emphasized as critical in understanding the act and informing prevention. Yet the penchant of psychiatrizing suicidality in mainstream suicidology relegates cultural issues to the background. Through the lenses of critical cultural suicidology, the authors have re-emphasized the importance of culture by reviewing the two major meanings of suicide as observed in our 8-year study in Ghana: moral transgression and life crisis. They have also showed the usefulness of the life crisis perspective of suicidality in reducing stigma and sustaining advocacy in decriminalizing attempted suicide in the country.

Source: UG
From cross-cultural to cultural thinking in psychological research and practice in Ghana.

The importance of cultural factors has been a contested issue in psychological research and practice around the world. This paper argues for the importance of conducting psychological research and practice with respect to the cultural context of Ghana. The first part of this article focuses on definition of culture as a concept in psychology and the challenges and theoretical positions of the relationship between culture and psychology. The essay further focuses on the factors necessitating the shift from cross-cultural thinking to cultural thinking in psychological research and practice in the country. The final part of the essay examines the implications of cultural thinking for research methodologies in psychological research and practice in Ghana. It assertively concludes that psychological science can aid service users better if its Westernized focus is challenged and realigned with the cultural context of the country.

Source: UG
From dialogues to action: commitments by African governments to transform their food systems and assure sustainable healthy diets

The 2021 United Nations Food Systems Summit (UNFSS) and associated dialogues brought together diverse food system actors and stakeholders from across the globe to take action on transforming food systems. These actions included pledges and expression of commitments from both state and nonstate actors to transform their food systems. State actor commitments are visions of what governments expect of their food systems by 2030, and their aspirations to achieve those expectations. This paper reviews pledges made by African Heads of State at the 2021 UNFSS and examines how responsive those commitments are to three dimensions of sustainable healthy diets, namely, nutrition and health, socio economic, and environmental. Second, the paper assesses how responsive the commitments are to the World Health Organization’s “priority food systems policy actions” that include nutrition labeling, marketing regulation, public food procurement, fiscal policies, food fortification, reformulation, and food safety. We operationally define responsiveness as alignment or relatedness of the commitments to the dimensions of sustainable healthy diets, or the priority policies. We contextualize our appraisals using available literature on the subject

Source: UG
From Dystopia to Utopia, Mythopoeia to Ethiopia: The Narrative of Dis/Placement and pan African Zionism in the Root Reggae Lyrics of Joseph Hill

This paper discusses the poetics of the lyrics of the Jamaican root reggae star, poet and cultural icon, Joseph Hill, within the purview of postcolonial diaspora critical concepts such as: dystopia writing, mythopoeia and utopia. While critical discourse on diaspora literary expressions often privilege high canon literary outputs of mainstream authors like Samuel Selvon, Derek Walcott, V. S. Naipaul etc., the passionate pan African rhetoric and lyrical aesthetics of pop culture reggae icons such as Bob Marley and Joseph Hill are either underrepresented (in the case of the former) or overlooked (in the case of the latter). Claiming affinity between black diaspora and the Jewish dispersion, Rastafarian reggae artistes have adopted Nathan Birnbaum’s neologism, “Zionism,” to reconstruct a pan African “alter/native” narrative that embodies the anguish of “displacement” and the burden of identity construction in their lyrics. This enterprise has been labelled black Zionism by Marcus Garvey. Proclaimed as the “Keeper of Zion Gate,” one of the foremost disciples of Marcus Garvey, Joseph Hill, established himself as the most doctrinal pan African reggae artiste and lyrical aesthetician. This paper is a discourse on how the prolific lyrical outputs of Hill offer rich insight on postcolonial narrative strategies of dystopia, mythopoeia and utopia. Indeed, the enterprise of “dismantling… structures of colonial control” (Childs and Williams 1997) is not the preserve of high canon literature. To the Rastafarian reggae poet/singer, singing to destabilize Western hegemonic metanarratives is a way of life, a culture, a religion, an obsession. I conclude that Hill’s lyrics constitute a postcolonial “alter/native” narrative which aims at deconstructing the “master codes” (Ato Quayson) of western cultural universality, and reconstructing an “alter/native” pan African narrative of authenticity and liberation.

Source: UG
From farmer participation to pro-poor seed markets: The political economy of commercial cereal seed networks in Ghana

The current agricultural policy discourse in Ghana emphasises 'pro-poor market' approaches to seeds and input delivery systems by creating public-private partnerships and an enabling environment for agri-business. This has resulted in a particular configuration of actors and interests that define the country's emerging Green Revolution agenda, of which certified seed is a critical component. This article draws on the results of a political economic analysis of Ghana's cereal seed system to examine how influential alliances of public and private actors have constructed a particular vision of the future of agriculture in the country which serves a narrow set of political interests and constrains local innovation and opportunity in the seed sector. It highlights how this universalising 'consensus' is acting to close down efforts to establish more pluralistic, participatory approaches in favour of a single, dominant, commercially oriented model of agricultural development. © 2011 The Author. IDS Bulletin © 2011 Institute of Development Studies.

Source: UG
From Free Binding Energy Calculations of SARS-CoV-2—Receptor Interactions to Cellular Immune Responses

Our study focuses on free energy calculations of SARS-CoV-2 spike protein receptor binding motives (RBMs) from wild type and variants of concern (VOCs), with emphasis on SARS-CoV-2 Omicron. Our computational analysis underlines the occurrence of positive selection processes that specify Omicron host adaption and bring changes on the molecular level into context with clinically relevant observations. Our free energy calculation studies regarding the interaction of Omicron’s RBM with human angiotensin converting enzyme 2 (hACE2) indicate weaker binding to the receptor than Alpha’s or Delta’s RBMs. Upon weaker binding, fewer viruses are predicted to be generated in time per infected cell, resulting in a delayed induction of danger signals as a trade-off. Along with delayed immunogenicity and pathogenicity, more viruses may be produced in the upper respiratory tract, explaining enhanced transmissibility. Since in interdependence on the human leukocyte antigen type (HLA type), more SARS-CoV-2 Omicron viruses are assumed to be required to initiate inflammatory immune responses, and because of pre-existing partial immunity through previous infections and/or vaccinations, which mostly guard the lower respiratory tract, overall disease severity is expected to be reduced.

Source: UG
From freshwater anammox bacteria (FAB) to marine anammox bacteria (MAB): A stepwise salinity acclimation process

An investigation into the effect of stepwise saline introduction (3–20 g·L−1 NaCl) on the anaerobic ammonium oxidation (anammox) process in a lab-scale sequencing batch reactor was carried out for 252 days by evaluating the changes in influent and effluent nitrogen concentrations, conductivity, microbial extracellular polymeric substances' (EPS) ionic content, as well as stresses due to salinity, via microbial ATP analysis. It was observed that, effluent nitrogen concentrations remained stable at low saline levels of 3 g·L−1 to 10 g·L−1. Nonetheless, midway through 10 g·L−1 and the preliminary phase of 15 g·L−1 salinity presented a very unstable, highly fluctuating aswell as deteriorating effluent nitrogen concentrations. A more satisfactory nitrogen removal efficiency of 83.7±5.9%was obtained at higher saline concentrations implying that, the adaptation mechanismto tolerate increasing salinitywas taking place. Saline induced stress,which measures the variation in viable anammox bacteria, was correlative to the formation of EPS and changes in its cationic contents along the increasing salinity. Although the specific anammox activity (SAA) dropped by approximately 15% fromthe beginning of the process to themidpoint, the drop in SAA after the midpoint was not as drastic as the initial phase. A change in microbial aggregation and dominance proved the existence of newsaline-dependent species that canwithstand high saline stresses. Recovery from abrupt high saline shocks in batch experiment was seen to be almost impossible.

Source: UG
From Handmaidens to POSH Humanitarians: The Case for Making Human Capabilities the Business of I-O Psychology

Industrial-organizational (I-O) psychology has begun to shed its reputation as a handmaiden to corporate and managerial interests, in part, through its engagement with humanitarian concerns. However, as highlighted by recent commentary, I-O psychology still has a decidedly POSH perspective on the world; that is, it has focused on Professionals who hold Official jobs in a formal economy and who enjoy relative Safety from discrimination while also living in High-income countries. This POSH perspective reflects an underlying bias away from people living in multidimensional poverty. We empirically illustrate some of the connections between a POSH perspective and poverty by reviewing 100 years of research in I-O psychology, and then we make a case for why a neglect of people living in poverty undermines the discipline's science, its practice, and its humanist charge. As moral justification for greater engagement with humanitarian concerns and as a guide to navigate the difficult ethical quandaries involved in doing so, we suggest that I-O psychologists should consider the capability approach. We discuss the concept of human capabilities, relate it to I-O psychology, and demonstrate its utility in the form of three hypothetical scenarios. Perhaps our most controversial claim is that there is a moral imperative for I-O psychology to overrepresent people living in the deepest forms of poverty in both its science and practice. © 2017 Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology.

Source: UG
From library and archival studies to information studies: A convergence

This chapter traces the history and development of education for Libraries. Archives and Information Studies in Ghana. It provides the circumstance that led to various changes in the names, curricula and programmes in the Department as well as challenges faced by the Department in developing the profession in Ghana. The writers are of the view that the Department has made a lot of impact on the profession, internationally and nationally and changing conditions might require more adaptations to the curriculum in the future.

Source: UG