s large tracts of fertile land, the west African country has a long history of food insecurity. Millions in the south are no longer at risk, but the number of vulnerable people in the more arid north has increased in recent years . The government says that is why Ghana became one of the first six African countries to sign up to the G8 New Alliance for Food Security and Nutrition in 2012. Under the...
s story – whether from its palaces or slums. Komla respected the rich and the poor, the powerful and the helpless, and those in between, in equal measure. He was the anchorman on many big stories, from the 2010 World Cup in South Africa to the shootings on the Norwegian island of Utøya in 2011; from President Barack Obama's trip to Africa to the funeral of Nelson Mandela last year. His interviewees...
s performance. And like the World Bank , the UN is worried about the risks associated with a possible bumpy exit from quantitative easing programmes by the US Federal Reserve that have pumped money into the global economy. "Our forecast is made in the context of many uncertainties and risks coming from possible missteps as well as non-economic factors that could stymie growth," Shamshad Akhtar, UN...
leading light of African journalism' BBC TV presenter Komla Dumor, one of Ghana's best-known journalists, has died suddenly at his home in London at the age of 41, the corporation has announced. Ghana-born Dumor was remembered by broadcaster and BBC Radio 4 Today presenter Mishal Husain as "one of our brightest and best". Peter Horrocks, the BBC's global news director described him as "a leading light...
s layout or plan. We either map the city in its fullness or we produce something useless. If we only map the 24% legal buildings the map is of no value." Although the answer I gave was very straightforward, the question cut to the core of one of the quandaries we face in development today. I am currently overseeing a project funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation which involves mapping the...
s roads. Compulsory first aid training for new drivers would dramatically cut deaths The number of deaths resulting from road accidents in Africa is on the rise. The continent currently has the worst death rate for road accidents in the world – almost 250% worse than Europe – with over 151 people killed per 10,000 vehicles in Uganda alone . Road accidents are predicted to become the biggest killer...
urban fantasies' ill-designed for African market, warns professor Hope City does not yet exist, except as shimmering images of giant beehive towers bathed in a golden light. But Ghana is pressing ahead to build this $10bn (£6.6bn) technology city outside the capital, Accra. Designed by OBR architects, the city will consist of six towers, including a 75-floor, 270m-tall (885ft) building, the highest...
s green and mountainous eastern region, straggly wires protrude from the empty shell where electrical sockets should be. The landlord decided halfway through building their two-bedroom home that he did not want to pay to complete the wiring and so Enoch, his parents and his elder sister have no lights at home. Enoch sleeps on a grubby mattress on the floor by the front door. He has no desk, so he does...
s vast dumping site for electronic waste, where everything is smeared and stained with mucky hues of brown and sooty black. A woman kneels among the carcasses of discarded computer monitors, scooping the fruit's flesh for workers hungry from a morning's work scavenging to eat. If the appliances at Agbogbloshie were not being dismantled – plucked of their tiny nuggets of copper and aluminium – some...
s eastern region, dozens of children wearing yellow and brown uniforms line up in the dusty school yard, their voices becoming a deafening roar as they perform marching drills into their classroom. Like many schools in Ghana, Suhum has struggled with a chronic lack of textbooks and poor literacy among students. But now, beside the knobbly tree trunks and in the densely packed classrooms , something...
s famished Ethiopia of 1984 has become a nation achieving 93% GDP growth in six years, finds study "Dawn. And as the sun breaks through the piercing chill of night on the plain outside Korem it lights up a biblical famine, now, in the 20th century. This place, say workers here, is the closest thing to hell on earth." That television news report by the BBC's Michael Buerk in 1984 framed Ethiopia for...
s handful of full-time staff is boosted by dozens of local casual workers, who come to pick the cashew windfalls, separating the nut from the fruit. "Picking the cashew is a lot of work," says Obeng-Nketiah. "We hire young people from the local area to do the picking. We pay them per kilo picked – for every 10 kilos they collect, we give them the value of one kilo." The recruitment of children in cashew...
Cashew is a $4bn global business that provides jobs for millions in developing nations, particularly in Africa and India Lucy Lamble Rich Harris Guardian Interactive team Afua Hirsch Iain Chambers ...
s all right", I responded – even though I hadn't quite heard what he had said. "Ah. I was asking because Ghanaians can get very defensive." Now he had my full attention. "Yes", I agreed. "We get defensive because people like you come here and just spend all your time criticizing us. If Ghana was such a bad place would you have come here?" He responded: "This is exactly what I'm talking about. You're...
A key medical centre based in the country's capital, Accra, is offering guidance and support on sexual health matters to female porters ...
s capital, Accra, two men and a woman in their 20s stand in front of a slick ad featuring a large plane in mid-flight. They are pitching a business idea for a website that would allow travellers to compare ticket prices, then book and pay for airline tickets on domestic flights. The pitch has sparked a lively debate among the pupils who sit in a darkened classroom, with the words "generosity, positivity,...
s largest recycling companies has imported thousands of banned second-hand fridges into Ghana, according to the west African country's energy regulator. Thousands of fridges discarded by British households have been shipped to Ghana by Environcom, which describes itself as the UK's largest electrical re-use and recycling company, flouting rules designed to protect the country's environment against...
Ivoire was, after independence from France, regarded as an "economic miracle" – the financial powerhouse of west Africa, a label which glossed over the potential, eventually realised, for electoral and ethnic disputes to send it into a downwards trajectory of civil war from which it is still recovering. In some respects, the net beneficiary of instability elsewhere in west Africa is Ghana. Only in...
s economic productivity is under threat because workers are spending too much time at all-night church services, according to a senior cleric. Reverend Dr Frimpong Manso, the head of the Assemblies of God church, criticised the growing popularity of prayer services that last through the night, saying employees were arriving at work feeling weak. Manso's comments come as authorities have increasingly...
s slum dwellers On Ghana's salt-swept coast, three scaffold-encased towers loom above the Atlantic. Soon they will become luxury apartments, sold at luxury prices – $500,000 (£309,000) for a first-floor flat, with use of a walking track, tennis court, basketball court, swimming pool, gymnasium, steam and sauna room, and cafe bar. A sky-view apartment, one grade above the penthouse, will set you back...