Clement Sefa-Nyarko

This study examines the response of women to disruptions caused by COVID-19 in small-scale fisheries (SSF) in the Gulf of Guinea (GOG). It interrogates the concept of resilience and its potential for mitigating women’s vulnerability in times of adversity. We define resilience as the ability to thrive amidst shocks, stresses, and unforeseen disruptions. Drawing on a focus group discussion, in-depth interviews with key informants from Cote d’Ivoire, Ghana and Nigeria, and a literature review, we highlight how COVID-19 disruptions on seafood demand, distribution, labour and production acutely affected women and heightened their pre-existing vulnerabilities. Women responded by deploying both negative and positive coping strategies. We argue that the concept of resilience often romanticises women navigating adversity as having ‘supernatural’ abilities to endure disruptions and takes attention away from the sources of their adversity and from the governments’ concomitant failures to addre...

When peacebuilding and state building are understood and implemented as post-conflict mechanisms alone, they leave out important elements of socio-historical engineering, and historical breaches of trust which, if acknowledged could enhance national cohesion and peace. The paper focuses on three markers of injustice and inequality in Kenya which have generated grievances: the culture of authoritarianism; land ownership and allocation (grabbing); marginalisation and exclusion along ethnic lines, and of minorities/marginalized communities from participation in national affairs. The frustrations of people found their most devastating outlet in the post-election violence of 2007, which claimed 1,133 lives and displaced over 600,000 others

This chapter assesses the impact of varying narratives on Ghana’s post-independence violence on the study of history in schools from 1987 to 2010, a period which has seen drastic restructuring of education by two political traditions – one in support of the legacies of Kwame Nkrumah and the other in support of opposition figures to Nkrumah’s regime. Nkrumah led Ghana to attain independence from Britain in 1957; but there remains controversy around his contribution to the decade of public disorder that led to the fall of his government in 1966. The National Democratic Congress (NDC), which emerged from the Provisional National Defence Council (PNDC), and the New Patriotic Party (NPP) have been vocal in this debate in the last two and half decades. While the NDC identifies Nkrumah as the sole ‘founder’ of Ghana, the leader par excellence, the NPP considers him as a ‘tragedy’ of the twenty-first century Africa, and at best, one among many citizens whose outstanding contributions shaped Ghanaian nationhood at independence. This article explores the impact that this debate has had on narratives of history in social studies textbooks for pupils at junior high schools in Ghana. A sample of social studies textbooks published in 1988, 2005 and 2008 has shown that the choice of words used in descriptions of events of the 1950s and 1960s has been manipulated over the years by the political traditions that led the reforms. It was also found that the various stages of reforms have purified the narratives along a developmental progression to eliminate stereotypes and subjective criticisms. Some educational and security implications of the politicisation of history in pre-tertiary education in Ghana are also discussed.

ABSTRACT This article argues that it is simplistic to attribute the recent civil war in South Sudan to the presence and exploration of crude oil in that country. It links the civil war in South Sudan to the systematic marginalization of the African populations of the Greater Sudan that was initiated by the Southern Policy of the British colonial government in the 1920s and the inability of the new government of South Sudan to address grievances among its citizens. The uncoordinated abrogation of the Southern Policy, the failure of the colonial and postcolonial governments of Greater Sudan to prioritize development of the South, and the unwillingness of successive governments to unconditionally integrate the South into the Sudan polity led to the initiation of a secession agenda that was eventually realized through a referendum in 2011. This north–south tension overshadowed pertinent grievances among southerners that were never addressed by the new government of South Sudan, feeding on political disagreements two years after independence. Using geographical proximity and resource lootability theories, this article shows that the resource-curse theories explain only part of the problem.

Over a period of less than ten years, Ghana’s apex court, the Supreme Court, has adjudicated over two major electoral disputes—in 2013 and 2021—between the two major political parties in the country, the New Patriotic Party (NPP) and the National Democratic Congress (NDC). These rulings have come on the heels of almost three decades of successful institutional design, which was implemented in 1992 in the form of the Fourth Republic. The Fourth Republic was established to bring stability to the nation, after many bouts of chaotic identity-driven politics, coup d’états, foreign interference and general governance deficit, factors that had reinforced each other and had undermined the dignity of its citizens for decades. Today, although identity politics is still prevalent among certain sociocultural groups (especially among Asantes in the Ashanti Region and Ewes in the Volta Region, who form up to 25 per cent of eligible voters) and socioeconomic inequality is still high (the Gini Inde...

This paper engages the open governance framework to assess whether and how Ghana's Right to Information Law, 2019 (Act 989) contributes to accountability in petroleum revenue management. The Constitution's freedom of information provision aims to get civil society and other non-state actors to be proactive in exerting public accountability through transparency. However, in the petroleum sector, this has been constrained by the legal and regulatory ecosystems that affect timely access to relevant public information, which is a ‘sine qua non’ for accountability in governance. This constrains non-state actors from tracking the Annual Budget Funding Amount, the only part of petroleum revenue that the government can use to augment its annual expenditure. The 13 exemptions in the Right to Information Law further compound the opacity in the petroleum sector and showcase the ambiguity surrounding the government's commitment to open governance. Adopting the Kantian Publicity Prin...

This paper assesses political allegiances in Ghana, positioning its ethno-political divide into the historical contexts of institutional design and colonialism in Africa. It argues that whilst the colonial policy of Indirect Rule solidified ethnicity in Africa, post-colonial governments used it differently, with varying effects on institutional design and state-building. In concert with other constitutional provisions, Ghana’s Article 55 of 1992 Constitution has curtailed extreme ethnic politics through the limit it places on ethnicity in party politics. Whilst outlawing ethnicity in politics, the constitution provides other depoliticised outlets for expressing diversity, especially through decentralisation and legitimisation of chieftaincy institutions. Despite these safeguarding provisions, the Asantes and Ewes have consistently taken entrenched political positions since 1992, and this article explicates some of the drivers using longitudinal election results. It draws on institut...

This paper argues that it is simplistic to attribute the recent civil war in South Sudan to the presence and exploration of crude oil in that country. It links the civil war in South Sudan to systematic marginalization of the African populations of the Greater Sudan that was initiated by the Southern Policy of the British colonial government in the 1920s; and the inability of the new government of South Sudan to address grievances among the citizens. The uncoordinated abrogation of the Southern Policy, failure of the colonial and post-colonial governments of Greater Sudan to prioritise development of the south, and the unwillingness of successive governments to unconditionally integrate the south into Sudan polity led to initiation of secession agenda that was eventually realized through a referendum in 2011. This north-south tension overshadowed pertinent grievances among southerners that were never addressed by the new government of South Sudan, feeding on political disagreements two years after independence. Using geographical proximity and resource lootability theories, the paper shows that the resource-curse theories only explain part of the problem.

As part of the celebration of World AIDS Day in December 2015, PDA staff interviewed Mr. Brandford Yeboah, a living testimony of how a person living with HIV (PLHIV) can face and overcome the threats of the disease. He has lived with HIV for 24 years, even though he has only been on anti-retroviral drugs for three years. Mr. Yeboah is the national vice president and a pioneer member of the Ghana Network of Persons Living with HIV (NAP+), which was established in 2005. NAP+ comprises 350 member support groups spread across Ghana, with over 240,000 registered members.  NAP+ is governed by a National Executive Committee (NEC) made up of the president, vice president, treasurer and secretary. It also has regional executive committees in every region. The main role of NAP+ is to provide support for efficient management of the disease. Mr. Yeboah has been instrumental in mobilizing PLHIVs at both the regional and national levels. For four years, from 2011 to 2015, the global theme for the celebration of World AIDS day led by UNAIDS has been targeting and achieving zero new infections, zero discrimination, and zero AIDS-related deaths. The following conversation with Brandford Yeboah was initiated by PDA in order to better understand the realities of the most affected populations and thus the need for major stakeholders and all of us to join together to attain the goals of the theme for celebration as a matter of urgency. The conversation thus aims to shed light on the realities and possibilities of living with the disease in Ghana.

This article explored one of the “secrets” of Ghana’s political stability since the 1990s from the perspectives of history, memory and remembrance. Undemocratic regime changes have characterized post independence sub-Saharan Africa, both during and after the Cold War. Coup d’etats especially characterized the era immediately before and after the end of the Cold War. Just like the mechanisms of the victor’s narrative in all post-conflict societies, coup makers manipulate history to sustain their agenda. Military and police elements staged the first coup d’etat in Ghana in 1966 to overthrow Kwame Nkrumah’s regime. Despite Nkrumah’s dominance in Ghanaian post-independence nation-building and his immense global appeal, the 1966 coup makers and subsequent regimes made efforts to erase his memory in Ghana until the 1980s. This was a period of aggravated culture of silence imposed on the memory and legacies of the First Republic. The transition that led to his remembrance helped Ghanaians to purify the memory of violence and atrocities during the First Republic. In contemporary Ghana, Nkrumah has become a source of conflict and consensus, fostering national conversation (controversies) that ironically promotes social cohesion and political stability. This political conversation highlights the disagreement and consensus around Nkrumah, overshadowing sectarian, ethnic and religious tensions to a large extent; which has had positive impact on political stability. This article has explored some of the contours of agreement and disagreement about Ghana’s past, and discussed their impact on its nascent democratic regime.

The central argument of this paper is that domestic political and economic factors are not exhaustive in unraveling the root causes of insecurity and underdevelopment in oil-producing countries. Empirical evidence shows that oil-producing countries in sub-Saharan Africa are either plunged into civil war, have low human development indicators, have high records of corruption, have high human rights abuses, or have a mixture of those. The resource curse thesis blames the large sums of oil revenue which accrue to governments as the main trigger which create unique political economy for corruption and mismanagement, which in turn heightens inequality. Consequently, poverty rates increase, and rebellion become rampant, as a result of which some regimes use heavy-handed security apparatus to suppress grievances. However, this paper uses examples from sub-Saharan Africa and other developing countries to demonstrate that, these domestic political factors notwithstanding, the role of multinational oil companies (MNCs) in a globalised world play some important roles in exacerbating the problem. It also argues that if the discourse of the resource curse is to reflect the reality in sub-Saharan Africa, it should avoid generalization and consider each case as unique. This is because in cases like Nigeria and Chad, some of the problems predate the production and export of crude oil. It means that socio-historical and other environmental concerns in specific contexts should also be given prominence in the discourse. The case-specific context of Nigeria‟s Niger Delta has also been extrapolated to provide some important lessons for Ghana, which is a new oil-producer in sub-Saharan Africa.

This chapter assesses the impact of varying narratives on Ghana’s post-independence violence on the study of history in schools from 1987 to 2010, a period which has seen drastic restructuring of education by two political traditions – one in support of the legacies of Kwame Nkrumah and the other in support of opposition figures to Nkrumah’s regime. Nkrumah led Ghana to attain independence from Britain in 1957; but there remains controversy around his contribution to the decade of public disorder that led to the fall of his government in 1966. The National Democratic Congress (NDC), which emerged from the Provisional National Defence Council (PNDC), and the New Patriotic Party (NPP) have been vocal in this debate in the last two and half decades. While the NDC identifies Nkrumah as the sole ‘founder’ of Ghana, the leader par excellence, the NPP considers him as a ‘tragedy’ of the twenty-first century Africa, and at best, one among many citizens whose outstanding contributions shaped Ghanaian nationhood at independence. This article explores the impact that this debate has had on narratives of history in social studies textbooks for pupils at junior high schools in Ghana. A sample of social studies textbooks published in 1988, 2005 and 2008 has shown that the choice of words used in descriptions of events of the 1950s and 1960s has been manipulated over the years by the political traditions that led the reforms. It was also found that the various stages of reforms have purified the narratives along a developmental progression to eliminate stereotypes and subjective criticisms. Some educational and security implications of the politicisation of history in pre-tertiary education in Ghana are also discussed.