ghanaopendata/ghanaian-research-english huggingface dataset:
Brokering Colonial Rule: Political Agents in Northern Nigeria, 1886-1914

A group study of African political agents, this work develops the role of the agents as brokers in the British colonial administration of northern Nigeria. African political agents bridged the communication gap between the foreign rulers and the indigenous people, a task only they could perform in colonial administration, owing to their knowledge of the local languages and cultures as well as some English and colonial government conventions. As brokers, political agents controlled communication between the colonial authorities and the indigenous rulers. Agents assisted government diplomacy and helped to establish and maintain relations between the colonial government and the native rulers. Agents gathered information that was needed for policy-making in administration, and many of them would perform administrative duties. In essence, the role of political agents reflects the dynamics of interdependence and power relations in colonial governance and administration in northern Nigeria. Knowledge of agents’ activities is important for the academic community including Africanist scholars, graduate and undergraduate students, as well as educated general readers.

Source: UG
Bromination of double-walled carbon nanotubes

Double-walled carbon nanotubes (DWCNTs) synthesized by catalytic chemical vapor deposition (CCVD) have been functionalized by bromine vapor at room temperature. At least two different bromine species were detected in the product using X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) and thermal gravimetric analysis. The primary form is negatively charged Br 2 molecules exhibiting an intense resonance at ∼238 cm -1 in the Raman spectrum. The electron transfer from the nanotubes to the adsorbed molecules is detected from C 1s XPS and near-edge X-ray absorption fine structure spectra. The optical absorption spectra reveal that although the metallic nanotubes are more reactive to Br 2, the outer semiconducting nanotubes also readily interact with Br 2 adsorbates. The secondary bromine form is attributed to covalent C-Br bonding, and its possible sources are discussed in the light of quantum-chemical calculations. Analysis of the XPS, Raman, and optical absorption spectra of the Br-DWCNTs annealed at 100-170 °C indicates preservation of a part of bromine molecules in samples that affects the electronic and vibration properties of nanotubes. © 2012 American Chemical Society.

Source: UG
Brucella meningoencephalitis associated with cerebrospinal fluid shunt in a child: case report.

Brucella meningoencephalitis is rare in young children. We describe a patient who developed Brucella meningoencephalitis at the age of 20 months while he had a ventriculoperitoneal shunt in situ for treatment of hydrocephalus. This patient was treated with streptomycin and rifampicin. The shunt was left in situ, and all the clinical and laboratory test abnormalities subsided with this management. We propose that in a patient with Brucella meningoencephalitis, the cerebrospinal fluid shunt system can be left in situ and treatment with appropriate combination of antibiotics should prove to be successful.

Source: UG
Building and enhancing library services: Patrons’ awareness of, and engagement with social media in academic libraries in Ghana

This study sought to examine academic libraries’ patrons’ level of awareness of, and engagement with social media in the use of academic libraries services in Ghana. The study employed the cross-sectional survey whereby quantitative data were collected from a total of 417 respondents, who consisted of students and library staff from public, private and technical universities in Ghana. Findings indicated that the academic libraries have adopted and used a number of social media applications, with Facebook and instant messaging as the most popular and frequently used platforms, for the provision and access to library services and resources as well as for contacting the academic libraries. However, the level of awareness, extent of use, as well as the level of engagement with the platforms was low as social media tools adopted by the libraries were not prevalent among the library patrons. Recommendations and conclusions based on the research findings are offered in the paper. This study uses a cross-sectional survey, with the data being collected at a specific point in time. However, due to rapid technological change and trends, future research studies could consider longitudinal studies to investigate the adoption and use of social media in academic libraries across time and environment. The analysis of social media use for academic library services from both the library staff and library patrons’ perspectives will inform decisions on how to improve the use of such platforms for effective and efficient library services delivery and access.

Source: UG
Building and enhancing library services: Patrons’ awareness of, and engagement with social media in academic libraries in Ghana

This study sought to examine academic libraries’ patrons’ level of awareness of, and engagement with social media in the use of academic libraries services in Ghana. The study employed the cross-sectional survey whereby quantitative data were collected from a total of 417 respondents, who consisted of students and library staff from public, private and technical universities in Ghana. Findings indicated that the academic libraries have adopted and used a number of social media applications, with Facebook and instant messaging as the most popular and frequently used platforms, for the provision and access to library services and resources as well as for contacting the academic libraries. However, the level of awareness, extent of use, as well as the level of engagement with the platforms was low as social media tools adopted by the libraries were not prevalent among the library patrons. Recommendations and conclusions based on the research findings are offered in the paper. This study uses a cross-sectional survey, with the data being collected at a specific point in time. However, due to rapid technological change and trends, future research studies could consider longitudinal studies to investigate the adoption and use of social media in academic libraries across time and environment. The analysis of social media use for academic library services from both the library staff and library patrons’ perspectives will inform decisions on how to improve the use of such platforms for effective and efficient library services delivery and access

Source: UG
Building And Sharing Ocean Sciences Capacity Through Project-Based Learning.

The challenges facing the ocean and its resources have become increasingly complex and transboundary, requiring coordinated efforts for effective management and sustainable use. However, this coordination is currently hindered by the uneven distribution of capacity and equipment, particularly in developing regions. This article discusses project-based learning (PBL) as a pathway to transferring and sharing capacity in global ocean sciences. It highlights a successful PBL program, as well as challenges encountered and lessons learned. Addressing these obstacles is crucial for ensuring equity in solving issues that impact the ocean.

Source: UG
Building and utilising resilience: The challenges and coping mechanisms of care leavers in Ghana

Each year, some young people leave children's homes or orphanages in Ghana to start life on their own. However, little is known about their challenges and the factors that influence their coping mechanisms. Data were collected through interviews with 23 care leavers and analysed using the framework analysis. The findings show that the care leavers were experiencing challenges with employment, housing, and social integration. Risk factors included having inadequate social and cultural skills and leaving care without employment. The protective factors that influenced the participants' ability to cope with challenges after leaving care were social support and self-reliance. Recommendations for practice and policy include extending services for young people leaving care, having a national campaign to reduce stigma towards care leavers, and ensuring adequate cultural socialisation for children and young people in residential care facilities.

Source: UG
Building and utilising resilience: The challenges and coping mechanisms of care leavers in Ghana

Each year, some young people leave children's homes or orphanages in Ghana to start life on their own. However, little is known about their challenges and the factors that influence their coping mechanisms. Data were collected through interviews with 23 care leavers and analysed using the framework analysis. The findings show that the care leavers were experiencing challenges with employment, housing, and social integration. Risk factors included having inadequate social and cultural skills and leaving care without employment. The pro tective factors that influenced the participants' ability to cope with challenges after leaving care were social support and self-reliance. Recommendations for practice and policy include extending services for young people leaving care, having a national campaign to reduce stigma towards care leavers, and ensuring adequate cultural socialisation for children and young people in residential care facilities.

Source: UG
Building capacity through a collaborative international nursing project

Purpose: To discuss: (a) physical, human, organizational, social, and cultural capital and (b) empowerment as two theoretical foundations for building capacity. Methods. These theoretical notions are examined in an analysis of a joint project between the Department of Nursing, University of Ghana and the Faculty of Nursing at the University of Alberta, Canada. Findings: Capacity for the management of international development projects was enhanced at both sites. Building capacity required mutual trust, tolerance of ambiguity, and a willingness to step into the unknown. © 2003 Sigma Theta Tau International.

Source: UG
Building cardiovascular disease competence in an urban poor Ghanaian community: A social psychology of participation approach

This paper describes conceptual, methodological, and practical insights from a longitudinal social psychological project that aims to build cardiovascular disease (CVD) competence in a poor community in Accra, Ghana's capital. Informed by a social psychology of participation approach, mixed method data included qualitative interviews and household surveys from over 500 community members, including people living with diabetes, hypertension, and stroke, their caregivers, health care providers, and GIS mapping of pluralistic health systems, food vending sites, bars, and physical activity spaces. Data analysis was informed by the diagnosis-psychosocial intervention-reflexivity framework proposed by Guareschi and Jovchelovitch. The community had a high prevalence of CVD and risk factors, and CVD knowledge was cognitive polyphasic. The environment was obesogenic, alcohol promoting, and medically pluralistic. These factors shaped CVD experiences and eclectic treatment seeking behaviours. Psychosocial interventions included establishing a self-help group and community screening and education. Applying the “AIDS-competent communities” model proposed by Campbell and colleagues we outline the psychosocial features of CVD competence that are relatively easy to implement, albeit with funds and labour, and those that are difficult. We offer a reflexive analysis of four challenges that future activities will address: social protection, increasing men's participation, connecting national health policy to community needs, and sustaining the project.

Source: UG
Building disaster anticipation information into the Ghana development and poverty mapping and monitoring system

The Centre for Remote Sensing and Geographic Information Services (CERSGIS), a self-supporting, no-profit organization within the University of Ghana is an implementing agency an European Union supported project for Establishing Mapping and Monitoring System for Development Activities in Ghana (EMMSDAG). The current EDF-funding cycle of three years covers the Rural Phase of the EMMSDAG. The goal of the Rural Phase of the EMMSDAG is an on-line multi-functional/multi-application ArcGIS-driven government-owned data sets on social infrastructure facilities for rural community development projects and impact monitoring and evaluation. Five frontline government institutions are the primary stakeholders of the EMMSDAG - Ministries of Finance and Economic Planning, Local Government and Rural Development, Project Monitoring and Evaluation Unit of the Office of the President, National Development Planning Commission and House of Parliament. These are to be connected on-line through wide area network for direct use of the data resources of the EMMSDAG Laboratory at the CERSGIS. The project should facilitate widespread use (by government and nongovernmental organizations, donors, investors and the private sector in general) of the GIS-driven socio-economic databases to be sustainably maintained by CERSGIS. It will be the primary task of CERSGIS to assist potential and real users in defining profitable/practical uses of the data for problem-searching/defining and problem-solving. The National Disaster Management Organization (NADMO) will be one of the expected users of the EMMSDAG's data resources. © 2005 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.

Source: UG
Building military influenza surveillance capacity in West Africa

Most research activities involve the use of molecular methods such as regular PCR (PCR), quantitative PCR (Q-PCR), genomic sequence and analysis using different software, genetic engineering, probe hybridization techniques, biological and molecular cloning, evaluation of immune markers for laboratory diagnosis of infections, serological assays involving the use of rapid tests, ELISA-based evaluations and immunofluorescent assay techniques.

Source: UG
Building Policy Coherence for Sound Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment Management in a Developing Country

This article explores the compatibility of Ghana’s e-waste policy (Act 917) in the country’s socioeconomic context. Our article starts with two main questions based on our empirical engagements with the act which, contextually, mimics the extended producer responsibility. First, we question the pessimistic imaginaries about the e-waste industry that seeks its outright trade ban or promotes a single version of recycling. Second, we query if the underlying assumptions and basic mechanisms of extended producer responsibility can create the enabling environment to actualize sound e-waste management. Based on prevailing context, the imaginaries appear socially peripheral, isolated, and powerless, and we call for a broader, unbiased, in-depth, critical systems thinking for understanding the complexities and multidimensional nature of the waste electrical and electronic equipment industry. We suggest that it is by fostering the positive synergies across sectors and among policies that environmentally sound e-waste policy outcomes can be achievable

Source: UG
Building the adaptive capacity for livelihood improvements of Sahel Savannah farmers through NGO-led adaptation interventions

The paper explores the extent to which NGO-led interventions on climate change adaptation over the years have developed the adaptive capacity of farmers in Ghana. Drawing on the experiences of farmers from the Savelugu Municipal Assembly in Ghana, the paper investigates whether the adaptation practices by NGOs are localized and sufficiently progressive to ensure sustainable adaptation. The study is situated within the interpretive paradigm using a qualitative approach. Data was collected through interviews and focus group discussions with NGOs and farmers in the municipality. The study finds that institutions, particularly international NGOs and the various interventions they led, have been very critical for developing potential of farmers to be actively involved in the processes of change to minimize the negative impacts of climate change. They provide direct and indirect capacity building activities such as providing farmers with information on climate change and its impact on their yields and livelihoods, building farmers skills and knowledge to deal adequately with climate variability, laying the foundations for individuals to build various capitals, directly assisting in coping and adaptive livelihood activities, financial assistance to build livelihood capitals and engaging in impact offsetting strategies. These determinants of the adaptive capacity provide interesting input in terms of guidance for management options to enhance the adaptive capacity of the communities in the face of climate change. Such results are significant in informing policy and practice at the national and local levels.

Source: UG
Building the research culture in an African business school: An intervention model and a research agenda

Purpose – This paper aims to report the efforts to reverse a dire research output trend at a Ghanaian Business School, following a similar effort at a business school in New Zealand in the 1990s. African universities are often challenged by resource constraints, ageing faculty and low compensation regimes. The consequences of these challenges are particularly felt in the area of the research output of faculty members in the business and management area. The problem of low research output has been written about by management scholars who lament the weak showing of African management faculty in reputable journals and top-notch conference presentations. Design/methodology/approach – This is a qualitative and phenomenological study of an applied intervention. Using a combination of open-ended questionnaires as well as open forums attended by faculty members of the business school, views, perceptions and opinions on factors mitigating research and issues onresearch culture were collected and analysed. Descriptive analyses were usedto collate the dominant views and frequency of mention of such views. Findings – Using the descriptive accounts of faculty of the Business School, the research fnds that a research-oriented culture expressed through factors such as leadership, institutional support, articulation or otherwise of relevant values have signifcant impacts on research output. Research limitations/implications – Based on the impacts reported here, this paper advances an intervention model to assist efforts towards improving the research culture and scholarly outputs in business schools in Africa. The paper also proposes a conceptual and research framework for examining and infuencing the organisational and research culture of universities in Africa. Originality/value – This paper is perhaps the only attempt to examine research culture in an African business school. It suggests that the research culture in a business school or faculty can be developed, reinvented or infuenced and that research in African universities will not “just happen”, it has to be carefully planned for, nurtured and built into the fabric of university culture. This has signifcant implications for the growing effort to bring African scholarship in the management areas upto the point where it can more directly impact management thinking. © Emerald Group Publishing Limited

Source: UG
Built‑in Flood Risk: the Intertwinement of Flood Risk and Unregulated Urban Expansion in African Cities

Urban flood risk is significantly shaped by ground conditions and the built environment, which are constantly modified and transformed by human actions. This paper examines the intertwinement of flood risk and unregulated urban expansion processes in three selected sites in Accra’s expanding periphery. All three sites have been included in Accra’s urban extent since the 1990s, but differ with regard to the timing of development and socio-economic characteristics of residents. The research illuminates how flood risk is produced and “built-in” to the urban fabric through widespread practices associated with unregulated urban expansion processes, especially the persistent encroachment on water retention areas, wetlands and riparian zones and the highly fragmented provision of transport infrastructure in emerging residential areas in the periphery. Such harmful development practices are neither confined to homebuilders from poorer segments of the urban population nor spatially concentrated in low-income areas. The research highlights how the actions and inactions of a wide range of social groups and actors engaged in urban land administration and development contribute to flood risk in various ways, making flooding an increasingly alarming issue of citywide concern. Different stakeholders highlight fragmented urban governance as an underlying root cause for the obstruction of sustainable land and water management. Overall, the study calls for a more robust recognition of spatial planning and transport infrastructure provision in flood risk mitigation and highlights the urgent need for planning and governance practices that challenge the existing fragmentation of urban governance systems.

Source: UG
The bulk fluorescein diacetate assay (FDA) as a technique for evaluating biotic impacts of crude oil to coastal sediments

This study adapted the bulk fluorescein diacetate (FDA) assay to evaluate the impact of crude oil on biological activity levels in marine sediments. Sediment cores from the Elkhorn Slough, California were incubated with different levels of sweet crude oil (Deepwater Horizon, Macondo Prospect) in the Moss landing Marine Laboratories aquarium facility over a 30-day period. During this period, the amount of fluorescein released, concentration of oxygen in overlying waters, and flux of oxygen into the sediments were monitored. For all treatments a strong negative correlation between added oil and FDA production was observed (p < 0.05). The concentration of oxygen in the first 2 mm of sediment cores decreased linearly with the addition of crude oil and correlated positively with fluorescein released (p < 0.05). A linear increase in sediment oxygen flux was also observed upon crude oil addition. The miniaturized bulk FDA assay could be powerful in evaluating oil spill impacts in coastal systems. © 2018, Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature.

Source: UG
Bulk genetic characterization of Ghanaian maize landraces using microsatellite markers

Maize (Zea mays L) was first introduced into Ghana over five centuries ago and remains the most important cereal staple, grown in all agro-ecologies across the country. Yield from farmers' fields are low, which is attributed in part to farmer's preferences and/or reliance on local landraces for cultivation. Efforts are underway to improve some of these landraces for improved productivity. Seeds of maize landraces cultivated in all agro-ecologies were collected for genetic characterization using a bulked fingerprinting technique and 20 SSR markers. In all, 20 populations of 15 plants each from Ghana and 4 control populations from Latin America were characterized. The cluster analysis grouped the 20 landraces into two major groups corresponding to the vegetation/climatic conditions of the north and south of the country. Genotypes from Ashanti, which is centrally located, fell into both major clusters, which suggest its importance in maize seed distribution in Ghana and also the diverse climate/vegetation. A Structure analyses grouped the genotypes into two major clusters similar to the UPGMA cluster, and populations were not fully distinct according to F statistics. The results suggest that breeders should make performance data available to seed dealers for better productivity.

Source: UG