ghanaopendata/ghanaian-research-english huggingface dataset:
Discourse of denunciation: a critical reading of Chinua Achebe’s man of the people

Achebe’s narrative text, A Man of The People (1966), is a political satire in which he exposes the intricacies of democratic politics in a Nigerian setting. At the heart of this narrative is a clear denunciation of a bastardized political system in a perverse socio-cultural and economic environment similar to what pertains in Ayi Kwei Armah’s The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born (1968), Ahmadou Kourouma’s The Suns of Independence (1970) and Amu Djoleto’s Money Galore (1975), among many others. Despite the fact that A Man of The people was published in 1966, its central theme, that is politics, corruption and underdevelopment in Africa, is still relevant to contemporary socio cultural, economic and political context in Africa. No doubt the novel is classified among African classics in literary studies, as it is one of the narrative texts studied in universities across Africa and beyond. This study seeks to critically examine the nature of linguistic tools and stylistic detours that define the satiric outlooks of this narrative text of Achebe as a denunciative discourse and its impact on the effective transmission of the message of socio-cultural and attitudinal transformation for sustainable socio-economic and political development. Considering the nature of literature as a social discourse (Fowler 1981), the study will be posited in the theoretical framework of critical discourse analysis CDA (van Dijk, 1993b). Critical discourse analysis is a type of discourse analytical research that primarily studies the way social power abuse, dominance, and inequalities are enacted, reproduced, and resisted by text and talk in the social and political

Source: UCC
Discourses of masculinity in the greater Accra metropolitan area and their use in (re) constructing perceived masculine selves

This study explored the discourses of masculinity employed by men in the Greater Accra Metropolitan Area (GAMA) in (re) constructing their masculinities. It addresses a research gap in the area of gender studies in Ghana, masculinity studies and contributes to the gender and development scholarship deliberations on the importance of researching men and masculinity performance for the achievement of gender equality. Using qualitative methods, the study gathered data from females and males aged between 13 and 70 years who are residents in the GAMA. In all, a total of 29 individual and 15 group interviews were undertaken. The study adopted the symbolic interactionism theory as its theoretical underpinning whilst the discourse analysis and grounded theory approaches were employed in analysing the data. The findings of the study revealed the existence of diverse masculinity discourses available to men in shaping their masculinities. Nonetheless, men differed in which of the discourses they employed in constructing their preferred masculinity. 'Being responsible' was, however, an important discourse preferred by men of all ages and socio-economic background. Peers and male figures were also identified as the most preferred sources of information and guide in fashioning perceived masculinities. The study recommends that gender researchers in Ghana pay attention to masculinity discourses and their interpretation in all aspects of their research on men as a tool for achieving sustainable gender equality.

Source: UCC
Discourses of Masculinity in the Greater Accra Metropolitan Area and their Use in (RE) Constructing Perceived Masculine Selves

This study explored the discourses of masculinity employed by men in the Greater Accra Metropolitan Area (GAMA) in (re) constructing their masculinities. It addresses a research gap in the area of gender studies in Ghana, masculinity studies and contributes to the gender and development scholarship deliberations on the importance of researching men and masculinity performance for the achievement of gender equality. Using qualitative methods, the study gathered data from females and males aged between 13 and 70 years who are residents in the GAMA. In all, a total of 29 individual and 15 group interviews were undertaken. The study adopted the symbolic interactionism theory as its theoretical underpinning whilst the discourse analysis and grounded theory approaches were employed in analysing the data. The findings of the study revealed the existence of diverse masculinity discourses available to men in shaping their masculinities. Nonetheless, men differed in which of the discourses they employed in constructing their preferred masculinity. ‗Being responsible‘ was, however, an important discourse preferred by men of all ages and socio-economic background. Peers and male figures were also identified as the most preferred sources of information and guide in fashioning perceived masculinities. The study recommends that gender researchers in Ghana pay attention to masculinity discourses and their interpretation in all aspects of their research on men as a tool for achieving sustainable gender equality.

Source: UCC
Discriminant analysis of birth registration in Ghana

The objective of this study is to present empirical evidence obtained through household survey in order to understand which factors are associated with children who obtain a birth certificate, and thus realize their right to a name and legal identity. Discriminate analysis was used to determine the factors that explain the differences between households who register their children and those who do not. 13 independent variables were analyzed against two levels of the dependent variable using responses from 3465 households sampled over Ghana. The investigation revealed that the variables; child in household has a vaccination card, level of education attained by household head, location of household, whether household is located in rural or urban community, level of education of mother in household, household’s access to radio and TV imparted on a household’s decision to register a child’s birth or not. The variable, wealth index quintile of household in which a child lives stood out as the most powerful factor that determined whether the child would be registered or not. The evidence from this study indicates that children who have not been registered tend to be in households who are poor and live in rural areas. Such children are likely to have been born by mothers who have low levels of formal education and are less likely to have adequate access to the media.

Source: UCC
Discriminant Canonical Correlation Analysis Of Time-Dependent Multivariate Data Structure

Canonical Correlation Analysis (CCA), which is a widely used covariance analysis method is a technique that is not fundamentally designed for multivariate multiple time-dependent data (MMTDD) structure that could be suitably partitioned on two subsets of response and predictor variables. This means that for such data problems, the conventional CCA would not yield practical results. The literature also shows scanty work in this area. This study therefore designs and implements grouping scheme discriminant canonical correlation analysis (GSDCCA) for handling this problem so that the time effect is adequately captured in the computation of the correlation coefficient between the two sets of variables. It first identifies key matrices underlying the concert and presents the design in both theory and illustration. Using data on six weather conditions in Ghana spanning the period 2000 to 2021, the demonstrations show that correlation coefficient between heating and cooling sets of weather conditions varies at different time points, and that the overall correlations are quite higher than that obtained from data assumed to be time-independent. The procedure is therefore recommended as an innovative approach for handling MMTDD.

Source: UCC
Discrimination of cocoa beans according to geographical origin by electronic tongue and multivariate algorithms

Electronic tongue as an advanced and novel emerging technology has been successfully utilized for the rapid identification of cocoa beans according to their geographical locations. Seven categories of cocoa beans from Ghana were used in this experiment. Electronic tongue system was used for data acquisition while three patterns recognition methods were applied comparatively to build discrimination model. The performances of the models were cross-validated to ensure its stability. Experimental results revealed that Fisher’s discriminant analysis (FDA) is better than principal component analysis (PCA) for visualizing the cluster trends. K-nearest neighbour (KNN) model was slightly better than FDA model at an optimal performance of 100 % in the training set and 98.8 % in prediction set. Overall, support vector machine (SVM) was superior to both FDA and KNN with 100 % discrimination rate in both the training and prediction set at five PCs. This finding proves that electronic tongue technology coupled with SVM technique can rapidly, accurately, and reliably discriminate cocoa beans for quality assurance management

Source: UCC
A discursive profiling of news values in Ghanaian radio news broadcast

Over the past decades, studies on the language of broadcast media have favored patterns of the lexicogrammar over patterns of prosody. The present study examines the patterns of intonation deployed to structure information during news broadcasts by English-medium Ghanaian radio stations and the communicative meaning those patterns are expected to evoke to the listeners. The data for the study comprised two stories: one each from Joy FM’s News Night and Citi FM’s Eyewitness News, on the same event of a suspected case of COVID-19 and were dated March 6, 2020. The study relied on Systemic Phonology and Discursive News Value Analysis (DNVA) as a theoretical lens. Employing a qualitative content analysis, the study revealed that the data were predominantly constructed using complex units, particularly clause complexes and group complexes, a pattern of configuration typical of written texts rather than spoken texts. Another key finding of the study was that the texts were predominantly marked for tonality and tonicity. The information units, on average, were relatively shorter than the clauses, and their integration into the patterns of the grammar realized new forms of meanings and grammatical association. In addition, the tones used to construe interpersonal and logical meanings predominantly derived their associated functional meaning from the lexical items they fell on and/or from their association with other tones from other information units. The major implication of the study is that it supports the claim that a prosodic analysis offers an additional line of interpretation of media texts, which is otherwise lost when focus is given to just the patterns of the lexicogrammar.

Source: UCC
A discursive representation of the gitmo-2 and the relationship between Ghana and America in Ghanaian newspapers

The main thrust of this study is to examine the linguistic resources that are used to represent the Gitmo-2 and to construct the Ghana-America relationship in Ghanaian media. The lack of research on modern forms of imperialism from the linguistic point of view in Ghana motivated the study. A corpus of 139,668 words of media articles and reports comprising editorials, opinion pieces, and Facebook posts and comments on the Gitmo-2 for the periods first quarter of 2016 and last quarter of 2018 was built. The CDA approach, DHA, together with Cohen’s Moral Panic theory were employed in the analysis. The study reveals that discourses on the Gitmo-2 embedded other discourses such as political and religious issues. Again, grammatical forms such as nominals, adjectival modifiers, and parallelism, are employed to represent the Gitmo-2 as terrorists/criminals, a threat to Ghana’s security, and undesirables; whereas nouns, adjectives phrases, and clauses are used to construct the complicated Ghana-America relationship. The study finds that resistance discourse in the media occurs subtly, therefore shedding some light on the language use in the media as not only performing the informative function but also as a manipulative tool. The findings and conclusions drawn from the study highlight the need to study language use in the media to unravel hidden ideologies.

Source: UCC
Disease Pattern And Diagnostic Accuracy Of Th 1 And Th 2 Cytokines In Hepatitis B Virus Infected Patients: A Case Control Study In Ghana

Background: The host immune response to hepatitis B viral (HBV) infection affect the clinical outcome. Cytokines inhibit HBV replication and influences the clinical outcome of HBV infection. This study sought to determine the disease pattern of Th1, Th2 and immunosuppressive cytokines and their diagnostic accuracy in classifying or staging HBV infection. Method: In a case control study, patients with HBV infections and healthy blood donors were screened for HBsAg profile, HCV and HIV. Those positive with HCV and HIV were excluded. Finally, 120 HBV infected patients and 105 healthy blood donors were recruited as cases and control. Th1 cytokines (IL- 12p70, IFN-γ and TNF-α), Th2 cytokines (IL-4, IL-6) and immunosuppressive cytokine (IL-10) were assayed by ELISA. Their diagnostic performance were determined using the ROC curve. Results: The HBsAg serological profile results gave 3 acute infections, 12 HBV recovery, 5 positive chronic hepatitis B (CHB) and 100 negative CHB. Median levels of IL-12p70, TNF-α and IFN-γ were elevated in HBV infections compared to controls (p>0.05). Median levels of IL-4 was significantly elevated in HBeAg negative CHB and HBV recovery compared to controls (p=0.0196) whilst IL-10 was significantly elevated in HBeAg negative CHB infection (p=0.0253). At 95% confidence interval, the best diagnostic markers with AUC, sensitivity and specificity were IL-10 (0.72, 66.67% and 86.67%) for acute infection and 0.66, 67.0% and 60.0% for HBeAg negative CHB. IL-4 (0.72, 66.67% and 84.44%) for HBV recovery and IL-6 (0.75, 80.0% and 71.1%) respectively for HBeAg positive CHB respectively. Conclusion: Th2 cytokines (IL-4, IL-6) and immunosuppressive cytokine (IL-10) are better diagnostic markers for classifying the various stage of HBV infections. Increased IL-4 is associated with both HBV recovery and HBeAg negative CHB whilst increased IL-10 is related to HBeAg negative CHB. The measurement of these cytokines may lead to improvements in the clinical management of HBV infected patients based on their defined cytokine profiles.

Source: UCC
Disobedient Asante shall die, but Okomfo Anokye will live forever! A Note on an Asante Eschatological Response to the Mystery of Death

Emanating from the contexts of history, cultural studies, and religious studies, this work explores oral history about Okomfo Anokye, the legendary priest of the Asante people, to investigate the meaning and representation of death within the milieu of indigenous Asante cosmology. The Asante are an aboriginal group, within the larger Akan ethnic group, in Ghana, West Africa. Asante became a polity in the second half of the seventeenth century and a supreme West African chiefdom by the end of the eighteenth century. The confederacy started under two leaders – Osei Tutu, the first chief, and Okomfo (Priest) Anokye, the spiritual advisor and high priest. These “almost apotheosised” men used pragmatic politics, diplomacy and magico-religious means to engineer an Asante history, culture, and national image. Moreover, Okomfo Anokye’s legendary mysticmagician personae inscribed in Asante oral history and traditions certain myths for the explanation of the mystery of life and death. Renowned African philosophers such as Danquah,1 Wiredu2 and Gyekye,3 have discussed Asante and Akan philosophical responses to death. Conversely, this essay explores Asante conceptions and rationalisation of death within the context of an Okomfo Anokyecentred and inspired myth. This study will unpack the narrative of this indigenous myth and present a hermeneutics of inner ideas therein which enable Asante to personify death, interpret its pervasiveness and invincibility, and explain physical expiration of bodily (transient) life as an inevitable transit into another type of life, the spiritual. This showcases an indigenous people’s contribution to the larger discourse on humankind’s attempt to deal with the reality of death.

Source: UCC
Disparate on-site access to water, sanitation, and food storage heighten the risk of COVID-19 spread in Sub-Saharan Africa

COVID-19 is an active pandemic that likely poses an existential threat to humanity. Frequent handwashing, social distancing, and partial or total lockdowns are among the suite of measures prescribed by the World Health Organization (WHO) and being implemented across the world to contain the pandemic. However, existing inequalities in access to certain basic necessities of life (water, sanitation facility, and food storage) create layered vulnerabilities to COVID-19 and can render the preventive measures ineffective or simply counterproductive. We hypothesized that individuals in households without any of the named basic necessities of life are more likely to violate the preventive (especially lockdown) measures and thereby increase the risk of infection or aid the spread of COVID-19. Based on nationally-representative data for 25 sub-Saharan African (SSA) countries, multivariate statistical and geospatial analyses were used to investigate whether, and to what extent, household family structure is associated with in-house access to basic needs which, in turn, could reflect on a higher risk of COVID- 19 infection. The results indicate that approximately 46% of the sampled households in these countries (except South Africa) did not have in-house access to any of the three basic needs and about 8% had access to all the three basic needs. Five countries had less than 2% of their households with in-house access to all three basic needs. Ten countries had over 50% of their households with no in-house access to all the three basic needs. There is a social gradient in in-house access between the rich and the poor, urban and rural richest, male- and femaleheaded households, among others. We conclude that SSA governments would need to infuse innovative genderand age-sensitive support services (such as water supply, portable sanitation) to augment the preventive measures prescribed by the WHO. Short-, medium- and long-term interventions within and across countries should necessarily address the upstream, midstream and downstream determinants of in-house access and the full spectrum of layers of inequalities including individual, interpersonal, institutional, and population levels

Source: UCC
Dissolved organic matter in hand dug well water as groundwater quality indicator: assessment using laser induced fuorescence spectroscopy and multivariate statistical techniques

In groundwater, dissolved organic matter (DOM), a complex material, is a contaminant of concern owing to its ability to infuence water quality and stimulate microbial metabolism. Using a 445-nm diode laser-induced fuorescence (LIF) spectroscopy, DOM contamination levels have been investigated of well water samples fetched from ten privately owned hand-dug wells during dry and wet seasons of 2016, 2017 and 2018, in Ghana. The results showed spatio-temporal heterogeneities in the LIF spectra, and the fuorescence intensity peaks were generally higher and broader during the wet season than the dry season. In this study, DOM fuorescence spectra at an emission wavelength band of 460–650 nm showed two distinct broad peak shoulders within 480–500 nm and 550–570 nm, engulfng the water Raman peak at 527 ± 2 nm for all the water samples studied. Furthermore, principal component analysis and cluster analysis were used to diferentiate the 2016 water samples based on their DOM contamination levels. In each case, three groups or clusters were identifed based on their similarities and dissimilarities. The study revealed humic DOM substances as the most typical well water fuorophores. Applying the K-nearest neighbour algorithm as a classifer method for the classifcation of 30 water samples studied in 2016, 16.7% (5/30) were classifed as very good drinking water, 46.7% (14/30) as good, 26.7% (8/30) as fairly good, and 10% (3/30) as bad drinking water samples. In general, levels of dissolved organic matter contamination increased over the study period during the rainy seasons for wells situated in close proximity to septic tanks, refuse dumps, public toilets and in wetlands. Thus, in the study the fuorescence intensity depends on the sampling site and the season, and indicates the DOM contamination level

Source: UCC
Dissolved organic matter in hand‑dug well water as groundwater quality indicator: assessment using laser‑induced fluorescence spectroscopy and multivariate statistical techniques

In groundwater, dissolved organic matter (DOM), a complex material, is a contaminant of concern owing to its ability to influence water quality and stimulate microbial metabolism. Using a 445-nm diode laser-induced fluorescence (LIF) spectroscopy, DOM contamination levels have been investigated of well water samples fetched from ten privately owned hand-dug wells during dry and wet seasons of 2016, 2017 and 2018, in Ghana. The results showed spatio-temporal heterogeneities in the LIF spectra, and the fluorescence intensity peaks were generally higher and broader during the wet season than the dry season. In this study, DOM fluorescence spectra at an emission wavelength band of 460–650 nm showed two distinct broad peak shoulders within 480–500 nm and 550–570 nm, engulfing the water Raman peak at 527 ± 2 nm for all the water samples studied. Furthermore, principal component analysis and cluster analysis were used to differentiate the 2016 water samples based on their DOM contamination levels. In each case, three groups or clusters were identified based on their similarities and dissimilarities. The study revealed humic DOM substances as the most typical well water fluorophores. Applying the K-nearest neighbour algorithm as a classifier method for the classification of 30 water samples studied in 2016, 16.7% (5/30) were classified as very good drinking water, 46.7% (14/30) as good, 26.7% (8/30) as fairly good, and 10% (3/30) as bad drinking water samples. In general, levels of dissolved organic matter contamination increased over the study period during the rainy seasons for wells situated in close proximity to septic tanks, refuse dumps, public toilets and in wetlands. Thus, in the study the fluorescence intensity depends on the sampling site and the season, and indicates the DOM contamination level

Source: UCC