A very dry spell preceding the floods affected the whole country, almost leading to the closure of the hydroelectric dam at Akosombo in the south-east; this facility is fed from the north by the Volta River. Then, in late August, came the rains, deluging the Northern region and the Upper East and Upper West regions, also in the north. The downpours forced families. who had been battling with the drought, to deal with a different type of natural disaster, with many fleeing their homes.

On 13 September 2007, Asana Gordon, central regional correspondent of the Accra-based privately owned daily newspaper Daily Dispatch, was barred from covering the Central Regional Health Service awards ceremony to honour stakeholders in the health sector by Clarence Lartey, the public relations officer of the Central Regional Coordinating Council (RCC).

The Institute for Social, Statistical and Economic Research (ISSER) is based at the University of Ghana in Legon and has a long track record of research on regional economic and social issues in West Africa. The Regional Institute for Population Studies (RIPS), also at Legon specialises in the demography of West Africa. All internship applications should be sent to Meera Warrier at [email][email protected] by Monday, 3 September 2007.

The Centre on Housing Rights and Evictions (COHRE) filed a request for inspection of the World Bank's Kwabenya landfill project in Accra, the capital of Ghana. They argued that the project would displace a significant portion of the Agyemankata community and cause health problems for residents, who were not adequately consulted.

Ghana and the rest of Africa can make significant progress in developing high-tech export products industry to boost trade if attention is given to the development of scientific and industrial research base. According to reports and supported by evidence collated by the World Bank a number of countries in Africa have a low research. Analysts believe that the trend was attributable to the minimal number of scientists and engineers available on the African continent.

n 31 July 2007, three men accompanying Sherry Ayittey, a functionary of the National Democratic Congress (NDC), Ghana's main opposition party, forced a photographer of the "Daily Guide", a pro-government newspaper, to remove images of Ayittey from his camera. Policemen from the Striking Force Unit of the Ghana Police Service prevented the three men from further harassing journalist Ken Yankah.

Ghana's newly appointed Chief Justice Georgina Theodora Wood has reaffirmed her commitment to ensure that issues involving women and children were "speedily dealt with at the law courts." Ms Wood is the first female Chief Justice to take office in Ghana.

A National Business plan competition and Entrepreneurship Development Programme, Believe Begin Become (BBB) has awarded a 32 year old teacher of Damongo Secondary School (DASS), Prince Yakubu Tahiru an amount of US $400,000 to establish an ICT centre in Damongo, the West Gonja District capital of the Northern Region.

The Program Manager will oversee and manage all Ghana-based field activities of the Urban Renewal Implementation and Learning Initiative focusing on urban renewal in select cities in Ghana. Strong background in urban and slum upgrading, community development, local economic development and/or public administration. Minimum 7 years experience in program management in domestic and/or international contexts. Strong track record of working with various government and foundation donors and NGO implementing partners.

The criminalization of Female Genital Mutilation, part of some of the cultural inhibitions stifling Ghana’s progress, by the Parliament of Ghana, indicates attempts to rediscover the state from its roots. It raises the fact that, unlike years ago, the elected representatives are expanding their thinking in relation to Ghanaian norms, values and traditions in Ghana’s progress. The act simultaneously touts the good aspects of the Ghanaian culture and also attempts to refine the ancient cultural inhibitions that have been stifling Ghana’s development process. At deeper level, there is clear demonstration that the law-makers, as the key face of Ghanaian elites and prominent directors of progress, are increasingly having fuller grasp of Ghana’s development process.

Still, by this act, including the heated debate it generated, as the Ghana News Agency (June16, 2007) reported, the elites are “rediscovering the state,” from the roots of its original Ghanaian indigenous values, and “starting to consider the challenges ahead,” as the inhibitions within the values of the 56 ethnic groups that make-up Ghana nation-state pop up now and then in the drive for progress. The Ghana nation-state cannot work harmoniously if there are huge in-built unrefined inhibiting values that stifle it. The attempts are not only to refine the inhibitions within the culture but intellectualize it, enlighten it, as Prof. Kojo Yankah, of the University of Ghana, would say, for progress. For years, such inhibiting cultural practices such as the destructive Pull Him Down syndrome (Prof. Kwesi Andam, of University of Science and Technology, thinks is partly responsible for the decline of the once prosperous Fanteland); immense dabbling in the irrational juju-marabout mediums that twists reasoning(coup-makers used this and nearly blew Ghana into pieces); human sacrifice (there are campaigns Africa-wide to stop this practices); and the excessive interpretation of events as caused by witchcraft and not human agency, have impacted negatively on Ghana’s progress.

As the main centre for national reasoning and reflection, as the fountain of human rights, effectively human refinement, as the key forum of national struggles, and the main juggler of the contending issues of a nation-state slightly founded on the wrong footing, the Parliament of Ghana refracts both the inhibitions and the positive parts of Ghanaian values and traditions, its ex-colonial legacies and the deftness to appropriate as much as practicable global development values for Ghana’s progress. In this sense, the Parliament has huge task, unlike years past, to deal with not only the emerging challenges but the good parts of Ghanaian values and the inhibiting parts such as a shrine near Kumasi ritually sacrificing deformed babies for host of material demands from juju-marabout-minded Ghanaians. How do you change such thinking in the larger development process?

Such long-running counter-productive cultural practices have led some critical observers to question African elites inability to boldly attempt to refine them and led to all sort of views about Africa’s values, especially as science grow globally and certain human events are thought not to be caused by demons, divine feat, evil spirits, or unforeseen forces. From afar and inside Africa, some observers have argued that Ghanaian/African elites cannot think and have no confidence in their own values as critical domains for progress. The German thinker, Friedrich Hegel, thought that Africans cannot think or are philosophically weak. The late Senegalese President, Leopold Senghor, perhaps influenced by Hegel, thought Africans cannot think and brought in Europeans when he has developmental challenges. The Ghanaian law-makers are saying today that both Hegel and Senghour were wrong, that Africans can think from within their values in the global perspective in the context of their norms, values and traditions. Hence, the criminalization of FGM.

Either from the twisted views of Hegel or Senghor, which pretty much reflected the jaundiced European views of Africa’s values and traditions, as the French would tell you with their warped view that Africans needed to be “civilized” because they cannot think and are “primitive,” there have been long-running perception that African elites, after freedom from colonial rule, have not been able to intellectually come out with the thinking that allows them to model their progress from within their norms, values and traditions, and deal with the emerging development challenges effectively. When Ghana’s Dr. Y.K. Amoako, ex-chair of the Addis Ababa-based UN’s Economic Commission for Africa, observed that Africa is the only region in the world where its development paradigms are foreign dominated, Dr. Amoako was effectively saying that Africa’s elites have not being able to overturn the European views of the fact they are so weak that they cannot think from within their values and need foreign values and traditions to develop. Pretty much disturbing! The contention is how Ghanaian/African elites can think through their values and traditions to come out with development paradigms that reflect their environment as the Southeast Asians and other prosperous nation-states throughout the world have done and are still doing a la globalization.

One mistake Ghana’s Founding Fathers did was failing to structure and direct the nation-state from within Ghanaian values and traditions. If the Founding Father had examined the contradictions and atrocities within the values and traditions and laid them out for rigorous refinement in Ghana’s progress, as the current law-makers are attempting to do, the Founding Fathers would have set the path, long ago, for enlightened processes for progress. The criminalization of FGM, in the broader context of nation-building, represents a rebirth – indeed, a reconnection between the “state” (as the political authority) and “nation” (as the root, values and traditions) – since there are conscious attempts to awaken the long-suppressed values, appropriate the good parts and refine the inhibiting aspects for national development.

Management and Board of the Gender Development Institute (GDI) invites participation in the 4th International Gender Conference. The theme for this conference has been chosen because Sexual and Gender-Based Violence is a major Public Health and Human Rights problem throughout the world.

Timelines and the method for Africa’s integration are to be set out according to the Accra Declaration, adopted late on Tuesday night by the 9th Ordinary Session of the African Union Heads of Summit.

“We emerged from the Grand Debate with a common vision,” AU Chair John Kuofor and President of Ghana said on Tuesday, minutes before midnight.

The Accra Declaration was (www.pambazuka.org/aumonitor/images/uploads/ACCRAJuly2007AUSummitDECLARA…) adopted by Heads of States at the conclusion of the African Union Summit. The Declaration reflects some of the demands of civil society, particularly in regards to “the importance of involving the African peoples in order to ensure that the African Union is a Union of peoples and not just a “Union of states and governments”, as well as the African Diaspora in the processes of economic and political integration of our continent” and the need for “freer movement of persons, goods, services and capital” as were elaborated in the final CSO Communique on the Grand Debate (www.pambazuka.org/aumonitor/images/uploads/Final_Accra_CSO_communique.p…).

As African Union ambassadors on Tuesday conclude the first of three high level meetings on Africa's proposed integration, ordinary Ghanaians are actively involved in discussions on the matter. Over 60 years ago, late Ghanaian President Kwame Nkrumah rallied his fellow African leaders, then members of the Organisation of African Unity (OAU), to dissolve the artificial and in some cases, arbitrary borders demarcated by European colonial powers in 1884.

Ghanaian civil society groups have proposed the setting up of a legislating African Parliament directly elected by universal suffrage based on proportional representation as one of the means of establishing and consolidating United States of Africa.

The convener of Ghana- African Union Civil Society Coalition, Emmanuel Akwetey, on behalf of the coalition, also proposed the expansion of the Executive Council of the African Union to include chairpersons of the ministerial conferences.

Participants at an interactive session on the AU Grand Debate on the Continental Union Government have called for the adoption of the Union Government proposal to be tabled at the African Union’s July Summit in Accra, Ghana. Under the theme “Informing Ghana’s Position on the AU Grand Debate”, the forum organized by the Institute for Democratic Governance (IDEG) and the Ghana AU Civil Society Coalition with support from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Regional Integration and NEPAD had three main objectives: (a) to find out Ghana’s official position, if any, on the Grand Debate; (b) collect and collate civil society’s views on the matter; and (c) to provide a platform for civil society-Government engagement on the issue, aiming to impact the formulation of Ghana’s official position on the Debate.

The University of Ghana is forging a gender advocacy trail in West Africa by setting up a sex-assault crisis center, forming a policy on harassment and improving the campus culture for women.

The Government of Ghana in collaboration with the Economic Commission for Africa (ECA) and the African Development Bank will convene a high-level conference ‘Financing for Development’, in Accra, Ghana, on 30-31 May, under the theme 'Infrastructure for Growth – The Energy Challenge'.

Participants will include African ministers of finance as well as ministers of Energy and senior officials from the donor community. The main focus of the meeting will be directed at the energy sector, particularly its financing needs and how to maximise its contribution to the growth agenda required to meet the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) by the 2015 target date.

Energy plays a critical role in advancing efforts to achieve the MDGS and improving the lives of poor people across the world. Lack of access to adequate affordable, reliable, safe and environmentally benign energy is a severe constraint on development.

The meeting is therefore expected to come up with sustainable approaches to improving energy access and the complimentary financing options, including viable private-public partnerships.

At the same time, the Accra Conference will take stock of progress achieved by African countries and donors in respect of the undertakings and commitments made at recent high-level meetings in Gleneagles, Abuja and Singapore. In that regard, particular attention will be paid to the commitments made in the areas of costed multi-year educational plans, financing of education, and mainstreaming of education in national budgets.

For further information on the Accra Conference as well as an ECA perspective on the current financing for development issues and challenges in Africa, go to the websites below:

http://www.uneca.org/atpc/Work%20in%20progress/48.pdf

Background

Many African countries are confronted with development challenges. Key among these is the lack of basic infrastructure to drive the development process. As part of efforts to overcome these challenges, African ministers of Finance met at a first conference in Abuja, Nigeria in May 2006 to dialogue on the way forward to address these developmental issues.

The Abuja meeting marked an important milestone in international discussions on development finance. Discussions dwelt largely on the challenges remaining in converting aid commitments into development, and ways to operationalise the 2005 Gleneagles G8 summit and 2005 UN General Assembly commitments in support of the MDGs in Africa.

As a follow up to the first conference in Abuja, Ghana is set to host the second segment in the series of conferences to further deepen the dialogue on Financing for Development. ECA is providing secretariat and technical support to the conference.

The Ghanaian Chronicle reports that NGOs in Ghana have urged the government to play a greater role in regulating and mitigating the adverse impacts of mining on local communities. Ghana’s Food First Information and Action Network (FIAN) and Wassa Association of Communities Affected by Mining (WACAM) held a press conference in Ghana’s capital, Accra, arguing that gold mining seriously threatens the environment and livelihoods in areas of mining operations.

Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST) has become the first tertiary institution in Ghana to acquire the services of e-campus network facility to support learning and research work among students and lecturers. The facility would also serve as a platform for distance learning and enhance research between the university and other academic institutions in Europe and North America through advanced technologies such as the Voice Over Internet Protocol (VOIP) aided communications.