Over the past three decades, the cereal subsector in Ghana has contributed immensely to food security in the country. However, limited evidence exists on the production performance of this subsector, particularly in terms of heterogeneities across agro-ecological zones. This paper analyzes the production technology and performance of the cereal subsector in Ghana using a nationally representative data set from 26,449 cereal farms and the meta-stochastic frontier approach. The empirical results suggest that the estimated factor inputs contribute substantially to cereal output, with land and seed exerting the highest impacts across all agro-ecological zones. The evidence further shows that the agro-ecology of cereal farms plays a crucial role in the performance of the subsector. The mean technical efficiency estimates strongly suggest that cereal farms in all agro-ecologies exhibit some degrees of production inefficiency. The findings further reveal total output from the meta-frontier to be much superior to those generated by cereal farms in all agro-ecologies of Ghana, indicating the existence of opportunities for cereal output gains in all agro-ecologies. We find heterogeneities in farm management practices and production technology across the various crops and agro-ecological zones to be relevant sources for cereal productivity growth in Ghana.

Cleaner cooking is an important policy objective in the bid to achieve sustainable development. Despite efforts to encourage cleaner cooking fuel use, biomass fuel is still widely used in many developing countries. This study investigates the role of behavioral factors, particularly risk aversion, in the choice of cooking fuels in Ghana. In addition, we investigate how the improvement of supply infrastructure and services mitigates the impact of risk preferences in fuel choices. By employing data from the recent round of the Ghana Living Standards Survey, we find that risk-averse households are less likely to choose liquified petroleum gas as their cooking fuel. However, the effect is mitigated for households located in districts with more supply infrastructure. Additional analyses reveal the influence of risk and time preferences in other household behavior.

Postcolonial Ghana faced many challenges, which led to a hunt for saboteurs of Black liberation epitomized in anti-Americanism. In 1964, Adger Emerson Player, an African American, rescued the United States flag from a Ghanaian anti-American demonstration. The differing interpretations of Player’s deed by Ghanaians and Americans reveal the contestation between racial and national identities, which is also a facet of the broader diasporic African identity dilemmas. Amoh examines this incident within the context of post-independence Ghana and the U.S. Civil Rights struggle to highlight the complexity of diasporic Africans’ relations with Africa and ongoing debates on the substance of pan-Africanism and global Blackness.

Scholars of women and girls in African history, focusing on gender and power within religious or colonial (slavery) contexts, have drawn our attention to sexual violence against girls and women. Despite what historians of slavery and imperial violence have noted about their vulnerability and survival strategies in ‘colonial’ and ‘postcolonial’ contexts, questions remain about sexual predation and slavery in earlier periods. In the Mina (Gold) Coast, there is little known about the lived experiences of enslaved and ‘freed’ girls and women in the sixteenth century, and this is especially true for females held captive or in proximity to Portuguese slaving and gold trading bases of operation. Although only three inquisitional trials exist, sources which provide rare African female voices in the Portuguese colonial and evangelical world, their unprecedented baseline evidence for those under Portuguese slaving and religious authority tell us much about sexual violence, slavery, and religious orthodoxy.

The law on the availability of restitution in the context of illegal contracts is unclear. Several irreconcilable approaches have been proposed at common law in search of a solution to the question of whether or not a party to an illegal contract who has benefitted from the contract has any right to restitution. This article examines the Ghanaian judicial approach and ascertains the extent to which it sheds light on this difficult issue. It does so by examining the evolution of judicial solutions in English common law and, in that context, evaluating the approaches adopted by the Ghanaian courts.

This paper examines the intertemporal choice preference for long-term savings of cocoa farmers in Ghana. We test the uptake of two pension products: with one, famers are free to withdraw 50% of their savings with no penalties prior to retirement age; with the other, only 30%. Using a randomised controlled trial we test the difference in uptake of two pensions products where we vary the flexibility of cash withdrawals from the pension account. We find an overall higher uptake of the more flexible pensions account, especially for women, who cannot inherit land titles in Ghana.

The present study reports on the effect of study abroad on the choice of request perspectives in formal and informal situations using the intermediary of an open role play test. The study is a longitudinal one involving 24 Ghanaian L2 French learners. At least 12 out of the 24 did a study abroad in France and the other 12 in Benin. Both groups studied for a duration of 10 months in their respective contexts. Additional data included learner’s self-reported volume of interaction in French per day. The main results show that the effect of formality of the context on the choice of request perspectives is only observed after study abroad. This seems to be as a result of their interaction with L1 speakers during study abroad leading to the adoption of native-like use of request perspectives in formal and informal situations.

Anecdotal evidence suggests that non-communicable diseases (NCDs) contribute substantially to mortality, morbidity and disability in Ghana. Nonetheless, no data are presently available on Ghanaians with disability from major NCDs, such as hypertension, diabetes and stroke. Using data from the 2007/2008 Ghana World Health Organization Study on Global Ageing and Adult Health (SAGE) and applying ordinary least squares techniques, the prevalence of and associations between activity limitations and participation restrictions in Ghanaians with NCDs are examined in the present study. The results show stroke is the major contributor to activity limitations and participation restrictions among the Ghanaian population with NCDs. The study results further revealed that respondents with higher education reported high levels of disability compared to those with no education. The results suggest that functioning can be restored by providing assistive technologies, such as wheelchairs, prosthetic limbs, walking aids, etc., that can enhance participation of persons with disability in society.

The explosion of Ghanaian Reggae-Dancehall reflects the influence of Jamaican-inspired popular culture in Ghana today. This subculture is championed by local Rastafarians and by youth from the zongos (internal migrant, largely Islamic, unplanned neighborhoods). Suffering social alienation, many zongo artists have adopted postures similar to their Jamaican counterparts—mirroring Rasta and rude identities as counter-hegemonic resistance. Alleyne explores several artists variously located between the zongo, the Reggae diaspora, and the Ghanaian state, examining how subjects rework Jamaican tropes and voice their aspirations within a globalizing Ghana and rethinking the zongo as space of rousing diasporic consciousness.

Juju-related child homicide or ritual paedicide (i.e. killing children for ritual or occult purposes) has been the subject of many media reports in Africa. The present study explores the evolution, magnitude, motivations and primary features of ritual paedicide, and identifies the socio-cultural, religious and economic contexts of this crime in contemporary Ghana. An in-depth analysis of ritual homicide cases/reports publicized in three local Ghanaian media outlets between 2013 and 2020 was carried out to realize this aim. Semi-structured interviews involving 20 participants were then conducted to gain additional insights into key aspects of the results of the media content analysis. The data demonstrate that juju-involved murders are widespread in Ghana, and the worst victims are children of low socio-economic backgrounds in rural communities. Poor parental supervision is a significant risk factor for ritual paedicide. Perpetrators and prime suspects are predominantly young adult males, aged between 20 and 39 years, unemployed or on a low income. Most perpetrators are motivated by financial gain. The study highlights the need for economic improvement and promoting formal and public education. It also stresses the need to bring juju practitioners under closer scrutiny and criminalize some of their activities.

This article takes a health assets approach to extract policy lessons for Ghana’s present Child and Family Welfare Policy, introduced in 2014. We examine the role of Ghanaian adolescents’ socioeconomic status and family social capital in their subjective well-being using data obtained from a representative survey of adolescents (aged 13-18 years) in Ghana’s Upper West Region. Our empirical results revealed that various sub-components of family social capital, including family sense of belonging, autonomy support, control, and social support, varied with adolescents’ self-reported life satisfaction and happiness after controlling for their family socioeconomic status and other personal characteristics. Once family social capital was controlled for, socioeconomic status explained adolescents’ life satisfaction, but not their happiness. These findings confirm existing studies suggesting that family social capital can function as a protective ‘safety net’ for adolescents with low SES in the specific Ghanaian context. Consequently, this study contributes to the literature by arguing that, in order to develop Ghana’s Child and Family Welfare Policy further, adolescent ‘social empowerment’ ought to be accentuated alongside its current focus on enhancing household ‘economic empowerment’ via social protection interventions.

Research indicates that social capital can influence the extent to which socio-economic status (SES) and information and communications technology (ICT) affect mental health. This study uses empirical data to examine the veracity of this claim by examining the effect of SES and ICT use on the mental health of older persons in Ghana, as well as the moderating role of bonding (i.e. strong ties) and bridging (i.e. weak ties) social capital in these associations. Data were drawn from 409 older persons from four regions in Ghana as part of a broader cross-sectional survey. Ordinal logistic regression analyses showed that SES and ICT use had positive associations with mental health after adjusting for other socio-demographic factors. Bridging social capital modified the association between SES and mental health positively. Bonding social capital also moderated the relations between ICT use on mental health positively. We argue that the prevalent nature of resources embedded in strong ties and the diversity of support that emerge from weak ties account for the difference in their influence observed in this study. Thus, while advances in socio-economic and technological conditions can enhance older persons’ mental health, equal attention must be paid to the characteristics of their strong and weak ties as they possess the resources to make socio-technological policies even more meaningful.

Set in a context where material accumulation is valorized, this article analyzes narratives of sika bone (bad money) as expressions of economic uncertainty by market women operating in an era of increased financialization. The ethnographic evidence supports previous arguments about the impact of economic change in this millennium, a change that fosters both rationality and superstition in equal measure. Salifu proposes that sika bone indicates a sense of uncertainty fostered by economic change in the supply of cash and formal credit, a sentiment that is expressed by applying old notions about occultic means of accumulation to new and equally enigmatic circumstances.

Do discriminatory US immigration policies affect foreign public opinion about Americans? When examining negative reactions to US actions perceived as bullying on the world stage, existing research has focused either on US policies that involve direct foreign military intervention or seek to influence foreign countries’ domestic economic policy or policies advocating minority representation. We argue that US immigration policies – especially when they are perceived as discriminatory – can similarly generate anti-American sentiment. We use a conjoint experiment embedded in a unique survey of Nigerian expatriates in Ghana. Comparing respondents before and after President Trump surpisingly announced a ban on Nigerian immigration to the United States, we find a large drop (13 percentage points) in Nigerian’s favorability towards Americans.