The policy prescriptions of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF) have failed to change the fundamentals of the economies of African countries and must be re-examined for the continent to develop, says a Professor of Law. 'The fundamentals remain unchanged. That the structure of African economies remains unchanged means that there will be no meaningful development,' Prof. Akilagpa Sawyerr, a member of the Council of State, said at the launch of 'The Oxford Companion to the Economics of Africa' in Accra.

Ghana’s health authorities officially declared a cholera outbreak in the country April. According to the country’s health service, as of 24 April 2012, over 1,570 cases and 21 deaths have been recorded in the Greater Accra and Eastern regions. This outbreak is linked to poor sanitation conditions and migration from affected regions to other regions.

This report covers the findings of the third week (April 15 to 21, 2012) of monitoring language use on radio under Media Foundation for West Africa’s project on: Promoting issues-based and decent language campaigning in Ghana’s 2012 elections, funded by STAR-Ghana. For the week under review, indecent expressions were recorded on a total of 14 programmes aired on 11 out of the 31 radio stations being monitored under the project.

The Secretary General of the Trade Union Congress-Ghana (TUC), Brother Kofi Asamoah, has regretted that despite the laudable economic achievements made by Ghana in recent times, the fact remains that joblessness is on the ascendency in the country. 'The reality is that the unprecedented growth rate has failed to create decent jobs for Ghanaians.'

The Media Foundation for West Africa (MFWA) has presented the maiden report of its language monitoring project, which is aimed at promoting issues-based and decent language campaigning in this year’s elections. The first report was based on monitoring for the first week of April (April 1 to 7, 2012). The report covers findings on the second week of monitoring (April 8 to 14, 2012). In all, monitoring reports were received from 15 out of the 31 selected radio stations that are being monitored under the project. This report is, therefore, based on data gathered from the 15 radio stations, which have been named in the report.

Ghana has become the first country in Africa to start protecting children against two of the continent's deadliest infant diseases with simultaneous vaccinations. The diseases targeted are rotavirus, which causes diarrhoea, and pneumococcal, both of which kill more than 2.7 million children worldwide each year. The project is backed by the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunisation.

A diary belonging to Ghana’s first President, Dr. Kwame Nkrumah, which dates from the mid-1960s, and has been at the centre of a long legal battle between an American businessman and an African scholar from Kenya, will soon be returning home. The Kenyan, who describes himself as Africa’s 'Indiana Jones' has convinced the Eastern District Court of Pennsylvania in the US that the diary rightly belongs to Ghana and to the Nkrumah family and should be returned to Africa.

Whether on billboards along the roads or embroidered on shirt collars, mining companies are ubiquitous in this jungle hub of Ghana's Western Region. 'They take the gold and leave these kinds of things,' says Daniel Owusu-Koranteng, executive director and co-founder of the Wassa Association of Communities Affected by Mining (WACAM).

Parliament is supposed to play a key oversight role in budgeting, but that is not the case in Ghana. This is one of the areas of institutional reform that need urgent attention.

Newmont Gold has allocated around 20 per cent of its 'core assets' to two projects in Ghana - both of which have now come under fire from local communities. Human rights abuses have been reported from the Ahafo mine. And, in February, the people of Yayaaso, Adausina, Ntronan and surrounding communities in the Birim North District, eastern Ghana, carried out a peaceful demonstration against Newmont' proposed Akyem project.

Every year on 8th March the world celebrates International Women’s Day. This year, celebrate International Women’s Day with the African Women's Development Fund (AWDF) and our partner, Alliance Francaise (Ghana).

Ghana is embroiled in a corruption scandal that ruling party MPs believe won't effect how people vote. Think again.

It is a financial controversy that has already led to the sacking of an attorney general; the resignation of a former attorney general; the arrest and appearance before court of two top civil servants and a businessman. In 2009, the businessman managed to convince the then attorney general that the government of Ghana owed him money. According to him, a contract he had to build football grounds was cancelled illegally by the previous government of then-President John Kufuor. The businessman then went to court to seek compensation - by which time the sum of money he was claiming had undergone many inexplicable upward changes. The attorney general decided not to contest the claims, and the businessman emerged from court a much richer man.

Some young citizens in Ghana have never witnessed water flowing from the taps in their homes, reports Global Press Institute. As the water shortage here persists, families bemoan expensive and time-consuming alternatives. Meanwhile, public officials say they are doing their best with the current supply and implore residents to do their part to help them.

The President of Ghana, John Evans Atta Mills, has stated that as a responsible leader he will ensure that gay marriages are never legalised in the country and on the African continent as a whole. President Mills’ comments come after the UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon addressing the Heads of States at the African Union Summit at Addis Ababa in Ethiopia called on African leaders to respect gay rights in their respective countries.

Members of the Ghana Community Radio Network (GCRN) and the Coalition for Transparency of the Airwaves (COTA) have demanded that government answer to the limited frequency allocation being given to community radio stations. Across the country, there are 11 community radio stations on air with 14 more waiting to receive their frequency.

Ghana’s President John Atta Mills on 25 January announced a cabinet reshuffle that saw two ministers - Health minister Joseph Yieleh Chireh and Information minister John Tia – lose their jobs. The reshuffle had been speculated about over the past several months following revelations that a leading member of the ruling National Democratic Congress had been awarded millions of dollars in court-approved debt payments that went against the government.

A spokesman for Ghana’s Education Ministry has told the Accra Mail he is confident a programme in which teachers warn students of the 'adverse consequences' of being gay will make it 'a thing of the past'. LGBT Asylum News points out that the deputy director general of the country’s education service said in an interview this year that homosexuality 'started with single-sex schools'.

With a national vote set for 2012, Ghana is already in pre-election posture, and the concept of purely reflective media could prove increasingly dangerous as the vote draws nearer, says this article on Al Jazeera. 'Politicians have been boiling over with dangerous remarks - that the election period will be like the Rwandan genocide, for example - and the media is over-reporting these statements, handing out public platforms without adequate consideration for the consequences. While there is debate and dialogue about all the inflammatory rhetoric, no one has seriously implicated the media in the overall mix.'

The President of Ghana, John Evans Atta Mills, intends to pull Ghana out of the International Monetary Fund in a final bid to end moves by the Christine Largarde-led funding agency to suffocate the US$3 billion loan the NDC government wants from the China Development Bank (CDB). With just a little over a year left of its four-year mandate, and following what appears to be deep-seated challenges that have crippled the roundly marketed STX housing project, analysts say the Mills government badly needs huge foreign capital injection if it is to honour a string of mouth-watering campaign promises on whose back it rode to political power in January 2009.