Ghana: Reaching out-of-school children in Ghana with multigrade schooling

Source:  id21EducationNews Number 63, April 2008

Reaching out-of-school children in Ghana with multigrade schooling

Northern Ghana has high levels of poverty, scattered settlements and low socio-economic activity. Many of the children in this area would never have been able to attend school if not for the School for Life programme, a model of multigrade schooling. What impact has it had on improving access to basic education?
http://www.id21.org/education/e2aka1g1.html

id21 is a free service that communicates UK-based international development research to decision-makers and practitioners working in developing countries. http://www.id21.org

Ghana to integrate Chinese language in university curriculum

Source: APA

Ghana to integrate Chinese language in university curriculum

APA - London (United Kingdom) The University of Ghana, Legon would, at the beginning of the 2008/2009 academic year, offer courses relating to the Chinese language and culture, sources at the Language and Cultural unit of the Chinese embassy in London said here Friday.

To this effect, a Memorandum of Understanding between the University and the Chinese Language Council in Beijing would be signed in August when a team of Chinese specialists, including lecturers, will head for the West African nation to work out modalities for the commencement of the programme.

Chinese officials hailed the role of University of Ghana as one of the global leaders in higher education, describing it as having a good reputation with its ‘open-door’ policy.

Frequent invitations to external panels to review the institution’s academic and administrative structures, have made recommendations that usher in positive changes reflecting its status.

ME/daj/APA 2008-04-18

Academic paper: Beyond Gumbo - A History of Ghanaian Cookbooks

Source: Betumi Blog

Beyond Gumbo: A History of Ghanaian Cookbooks [1]

Fran Osseo-Asare

Abstract

Despite significant recent research into culinary history, rarely have studies utilized West African cookbooks or cookbook authors extensively. This paper identifies primary Ghanaian/West African cookbooks in English during the latter half of the 20^th century and develops a typology using authors and audiences as a framework for analysis. The cookbooks’ origins, development, and relationship to African-American and African diasporan cookbooks are briefly examined.  Finally, the paper posits the need for the establishment of a West African culinary archive.

Academic paper: Premarital Sex and Schooling Transitions in Four Sub-Saharan African Countries

Source: DG Communities

Premarital Sex and Schooling Transitions in Four Sub-Saharan African Countries

With data from the 2004 National Survey of Adolescents conducted in Burkina Faso, Ghana, Malawi, and Uganda, this paper investigates the timing of two key transitions in adolescence — school exit and premarital sex — among those who remain enrolled in school at the beginning of adolescence (age 12).

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Africa’s success: evaluating accomplishments

Source: ELDIS

Evaluating the seven African success stories

Authors: R.I. Rotberg
Publisher: John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University, 2007

Full text of document

This paper evaluates the seven presumed African success stories: Botswana, South Africa, Zambia, Ghana, Tanzania, Mozambique and Uganda. It gives a detailed analysis of the economic, political, governance and human development scenarios in each country, and identifies the emerging challenges. Although all the seven countries are growing rapidly, they face, among others, the following problems:

• job creation lags behind promises and expectations
• acute shortage of electricity hinders exploitation of newly found resources
• road and rail infrastructure remains inadequate in all expect South Africa and Botswana
• growing indigenous wealth is accompanied by severe income inequalities
• high incidence of tuberculosis, malaria and HIV/AIDS
• high levels of corruption

Chinese influence is growing in the region, mainly in Mozambique and Ghana. Chinese investors are contributing significantly to the growth but colonial methods of Chinese operations characterised by extraction and exploitation have led to serious protests in some areas. Inexpensive Chinese imports are affecting the domestic market.

Ghana, Kenya, Senegal: Mobilize Against Malaria

Source: The Soul Beat

Mobilize Against Malaria

Country

Ghana, Kenya, Senegal

Region

Africa

Programme Summary

Launched in 2007 by Pfizer, Mobilize Against Malaria is a five-year initiative in Kenya, Ghana and Senegal that aims to engage and educate treatment providers and patients to improve the use and effectiveness of malaria treatment and patient adherence. Working in collaboration with implementing partners in each of the countries, the initiative focuses on training and building capacity, as well as providing grants, evaluation support and the technical expertise.

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African Media and Malaria Research Network

Source: The Soul Beat

African Media and Malaria Research Network (AMMREN)

Region

Africa

Programme Summary

Launched in 2006, African Media and Malaria Research Network (AMMREN) promotes malaria research communication in Africa by strengthening the capacity of African journalists through training. The network of African journalists and scientists focuses on disseminating information on malaria control initiatives and monitors and advocates for the implementation of malaria policies in Africa. It also advocates and engages policy makers to implement international agreements on malaria control. The network was one of the outcomes of a one-week workshop on malaria research reporting in Africa, for selected journalists from nine African countries: The Gambia, Gabon, Ghana, Kenya, Malawi, Mozambique, Nigeria, Senegal and Tanzania.

Communication Strategies

The network is designed to create a common platform for African journalists and scientists to work together on efforts to eradicate malaria, The network’s top priority is training journalists to report effectively on malaria. According to the organisers, this will develop in the long-term into a Malaria Media Institute, to be hosted by Women, Media and Change (WOMAC). Membership of the network is open to African journalists interested in reporting on malaria. Scientists, malaria experts and community health workers can become associate members.

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African philosophy: Fostering intercultural understanding through dialogue

Source: UNESCO Courier no 9 2007

Kwasi Wiredu : Fostering intercultural understanding through dialogue

© Kwasi Wiredu

If the logical independence of morality from religion were to be generally understood, some of the ferocity of current conflicts might be reduced, says Ghanaian philosopher Kwasi Wiredu.

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Ideally, philosophy is both a critical and reconstructive discipline. Being critical does not just mean being apt to criticize the beliefs and reasonings of other people; it also means being self-critical, in dialogue with oneself. This implies also being in dialogue with others, be they members of one’s culture or one’s school of thought or of other cultures or schools of thought.

In today’s world, dialogue between people of different cultures and schools of thought is an urgent necessity. Dialogue is needed not necessarily to bring about agreement but at least to bring about an understanding of the plurality of belief and non-belief and respect (not just tolerance) for them in principle. Just think of the consequences of the absence of dialogue in international and intra-national conflicts in the world today.

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Dialogue is not just an exchange of ideas

Philosophers need to argue not only the necessity for dialogue but also explain its nature. Dialogue is not just the exchange of ideas. A quarreling group may be actively exchanging ideas, but will be far from dialogue; so would a group indulging in mutual admiration. In both cases the discussions are not dedicated to acquiring knowledge about truth or goodness for the sake of desirable human relations. These, then, are necessary conditions of dialogue. But there are other necessary conditions. Dialogue must be based on rational discussion. Such a discussion is impossible unless the parties acknowledge the possibility that they might be wrong and the other right. We all know this attitude of mind does not come easily.

One of the severest impediments to dialogue is dogmatism, and it is, or ought to be, the role of philosophers to find an antidote to it. Dogmatism is not just holding a belief with a strong conviction; rather it is holding it with a conviction so strong that it rules out the possibility of error. It can be encountered in all spheres of human thinking, including philosophy (in the broad acceptation of this term). And ridding human thought of dogmatism is one of philosophy’s objectives, in the strict conception of the discipline.

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An antidote to dogmatism

As matters stand now, conflicting dogmatisms fight interminably. When, for example, contending parties armed with mutually incompatible divine ‘revelations’ as to the nature of the good life engage each other, the refractory character of the situation is due in large measure to a shared sense of infallibility. There are at least three layers of error here.

First, allegedly infallible individuals are not supposed to have any need of dialogue among themselves, and the fallible, presumably, have no standing before the infallible. But Philosophy has the duty and ability to dismantle the pretensions to infallibility, for the claims here are human, all too human. And the fact is that “To err is human.”

Second, a great many of these conflicts arise when the contingent customs of one group’s life-style are made into universal laws of rectitude mandatory for all. To generate an adequate appreciation of this distinction would be half the battle of intercultural understanding won. This, to be sure, is a philosophical task.

The third layer of error is the most difficult to deal with. It is the subordination of morality to religion, known in contemporary Western philosophy as the divine command theory of morals. In sum, it says that what is morally right is, by definition, what is commanded by God. Socrates in Plato’s Euthyphro tried to discourage such a conception by pointing out, in his dialectical manner, that it involved the absurdity that an action’s moral quality has nothing to do with its nature. On this score, Socrates has been generally persuasive among philosophers, but not among some leaders of opinion.

Even though the subordination of morality to religion is not unchallenged in the Western world and is, in fact, non-existent in some non-Western cultures, such as in at least some parts of Africa, philosophy still has plenty of work to do in this matter. Perhaps, if the logical independence of morality from religion were to be generally understood, some of the ferocity of current conflicts might be reduced.

Kwasi Wiredu, Distinguished Professor in the Department of Philosophy at the University of South Florida, Tampa, Florida.

African technology: ICTs for Education

Source: ID21Education News 59

ICTs for Education: Impact and lessons learned from IICD-supported activities This study reports on Bolivia, Burkina Faso, Ghana, Jamaica, Tanzania, Uganda and Zambia.
http://www.iicd.org/articles/icts-for-education

African technology: Internet ‘necessary’ to Africa’s growth

Continuing the debate about technology, laptop for kids, and Africa, one African internet pioneer gives his opinion why Africa HAS to be in on the internet revolution

Source: BBC NEWS

Internet ‘necessary’ to Africa’s growth

The $100 laptop is one of the ways to give cheaper internet access

A professor whose work in spreading information technology in Africa has been awarded by the Internet Society has hit out at critics who say the continent should focus first on basics like water and sanitation. Nii Quaynor, professor of computer science at the University of Cape-Coast, Ghana, said affordable computing was “necessary” to Africa’s development.

“If the critics did not have any internet, I am sure they would talk differently,” he told BBC World Service’s Digital Planet programme.

“While we need food and we need water, we also need the tools and instruments that will allow us to create food and water and take control of our development.

“Affordable computing is necessary. What is going to power development in Africa is going to be lower-cost user interfaces.”

Reversal of privatisation

Dr Quaynor is chairman of Network Computer Systems and Ghana.com, and pioneered the take-up of the internet around Africa.

He was given the prestigious 2007 Jonathan B Postel Service Award for his “leadership in advancing internet technology in Africa and galvanizing technologists to improve internet access and capabilities throughout the continent”.

He said he did this through an “evangelical way” of encouraging technology workshops, which would then travel the countries sharing that knowledge.

We need to accelerate things like e-commerce and voice-over IP so that we can get the traffic going Dr Nii Quaynor

“After you have created the operators, you help them get going with respect to getting the internet service going,” he said.

“You then have to organise them as a community to begin to support themselves with various best practices.”

He also backed the message from the recent meeting of the international telecommunications union in the Rwandan capital Kigali, which called for Africa’s telecoms to be deregulated to allow individual states to bring ICT in.

“Issues such as shutting down ISPs should be things of the past,” he said.

“Reversals of privatisation policies are, I think, really bad - they affect investor confidence.

“In general, we need to accelerate things like e-commerce and voice-over IP so that we can get the traffic going.

“In so doing we will begin to have a more equitable share of our information society, and feel some sense of ownership and drive towards that growth.”

West Africa: Four West African Countries Join Forces to Fight Avian Influenza

Seen on AI.COMMuniqué - Communication Action, Thinking, and Resources on Avian Influenza July 2007

West Africa: Four West African Countries Join Forces to Fight Avian Influenza This article details the cross-border meeting of the top veterinary officials from Benin, Côte d’Ivoire, Ghana, and Togo, which took place in June 2007 in Ghana. At the meeting, officials agreed to join forces to look for common solutions to combat the spread of avian influenza. The veterinary officers discussed the health communication aspects related to the care of animals, as well as the sharing of samples and compensation for culled birds.
More at: http://www.comminit.com/avianinfluenza/st2007/thinking-2294.html

New Ghanaian Writers

The following article was seen on BBC Africa Beyond
http://www.bbc.co.uk/africabeyond/africanarts/18683.shtml

New Ghanaian Writers

In his travels to Ghana, Koye Oyedeji encountered several members of the new crop of literary talent making their presence felt in the country and beyond.

On the surface, a whole calendar of celebrations dedicated to 50 years of independence in Ghana appears to be the reserve of visitors, tourists and dignitaries. Life for the nationals rolls on without much hue and cry and the measure of change continues to be both a gradual and residual process, like the turn of a season, a foreboding dry period that gently rumbles into rainy downpour. Or perhaps, in Ghana’s case, vice versa.

The same you could argue could be said of Ghana’s great literary canon. The changing of its guard will not be marked by calendar. A corpus of works by such names as Ama Ata Aidoo , Ayi Kwei Armah , Kofi Awoonor and Kofi Anyidoho amongst others will not be replicated overnight.

In the fervour of a week in which Accra was hosting dignitaries from all over Africa and the rest of the world, I went off in search of those quiet individuals that were hinting to have big voices in years to come.

In Accra I meet the talented Mamle Kabu , born in Ghana; she studied in the UK and spent ten years there before returning home in 1992. A writer of Ghanaian and German descent, she had been writing fiction and poetry for over ten years now but feels that more opportunities arose with the rise of the internet, “Its relevance is even more to us [Ghanaians], because we are less connected to an international scene”.

African language policy: Ghana and Burkina Faso

The following dissertation is available through Perdue University

http://docs.lib.purdue.edu/dissertations/AAI3191431/

A benchmarking study of West African language policy: Focus on Ghana and Burkina Faso
James Kwaku Bukari

Date: 2005
Advisor: Alan Garfinkel

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Abstract
This study examined the social attitudes of Ghanaians towards the French language in order to determine whether or not they believe Ghana needs to implement a new language policy in which the French language is given a more prominent legal status and made a compulsory subject in Ghanaian schools. The study deployed a mixed methods approach in which surveys were administered to 130 Policy Makers, 25 Policy Implementers, 24 Parents, 41 Students, 19 Business Executives, and 15 Officials of Non-Governmental Organizations. A Likert scale was used to analyze participants’ responses to the surveys. In addition, seventeen interviews were conducted with the foregoing participants. The interviews were audio taped and transcribed verbatim. Furthermore the study deployed the strategy of benchmarking to compare the language policies of Ghana and Burkina Faso and suggested ways in which the two countries can learn from one another’s language policies for the improvement of their future language policy decisions.

Results of the study indicate that a majority of participants believe that based on the geopolitical situation of Ghana knowledge of the French language will yield economic, politico-diplomatic, socio-cultural, and technological benefits to Ghana.

Subject Area
EDUCATION, BILINGUAL AND MULTICULTURAL (0282); EDUCATION, CURRICULUM AND INSTRUCTION (0727)

Promotion of Ghanian languages must be prioritised now

The following article from the Statesman Online (Ghana) was seen on the Language Policy Maillist

http://www.thestatesmanonline.com/pages/news_detail.php?newsid=3242&section=6

Promotion of Ghanian languages must be prioritised now

Ayuure Kapini Atafori , 21/04/2007

Surprising it may not be for many to know that language is the soul of every culture of a people. Since time immemorial, archaeologists, anthropologists, sociologists, psychologists, philosophers and, especially linguists, have established the natural centrality of language in culture.

Edward Burnett Tylor and other anthropologists accept that language is inseparable from culture. In fact, it is an essential part of culture.
Language, like culture, is diverse, cumulative and dynamic. Based on the affinity between language and culture, an 18th century German philosopher, L W Herder, held the view that people use language as the key to find what makes culture what it is.

Though Herder’s opinion may be a bit exaggerative, it is quite impossible to conceive of the origin or development of a culture apart from language; for it is that part of culture which enables human beings to make their own experiences and learning continuous as well as to participate vicariously in the experiences and practices of other persons. According to the American linguist Edward Sapir, language is a guide to social reality.

Sapir assumes that human beings do not live in the objective world alone, nor in the world of social activity because they are very much at the mercy of a particular language which has become the medium of expression for their society. A language is a cultural system which more or less faithfully reflects the structuring of reality which is peculiar to the group that speaks it. Thus, linguistic systems inter-penetrate all other systems within a culture.

Language is the principal source of the emergence and perpetuation of culture. It is a vital source of people”s collective culture: their past present and future experiences and identity. People who, therefore, speak the same language are more likely to share common beliefs, values and interests than those who do not share a language. It is an empirical reality that people express sympathetic sentiments towards others who speak the same language.

Language is also an essential source of a peoples collective consciousness, since there are certain experiences which may be only comprehensible to people who speak the same language. Linguists find a close and dynamic relationship between language and thought. For, it is in language that custom, tradition, ethics, poetry, history, religion and rituals are incarnated.

The universality of language makes it unique to some elements of culture.
A languag