Opposition candidate Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo Addo has been sworn in as Ghana's new president. Beyond the current euphoria sweeping through much of the nation, the winning party is stuck with Ghana’s IMF programme at least for the next two years.  It remains to be seen how they will rise above the country’s worrying high debt ratio, currently around 70 per cent of GDP, to achieve their ambitious campaign promises.

Despite his thoroughly professorial lifestyle, Sam was a lively figure who always made time for his family and a broad range of people. His immense contribution to scholarship, particularly on the thorny land question in Zimbabwe, remains outstanding. His tragic death following a road crash last year points to the fragility of life and to the need for Africa to celebrate its scholars while alive.

The problems facing the utility companies will only end when the economic problems underpinning the cedi slide are addressed. And these go beyond macro-economic stabilisation policies prescribed by the IMF/World Bank. What is needed is transformation of Ghana’s relatively low-value agricultural produce into high-value manufacturing activity.

The idea of indigenisation speaks to the need to put in place policies that anticipate trouble ahead both as the Ghanaian economy becomes more dependent on oil and as land resources dwindle relative to the growing population, projected to more than double to 60 million by 2050.

That population growth is necessarily a bad thing is no longer a sensible theory. It is labour that creates wealth. African nations that are witnessing a youth boom must concern themselves with how to take advantage of this growth.

Two events that caught the headlines in Ghana recently were Founder’s Day and the screening of the judicial bribery scandal video by investigative journalist Anas Aremeyaw Anas. What ideas link the two events?

I believe that Tajudeen loved young people because he could see in them the potential to transform society for the better before it transformed individuals for the worse