Country joins growing list of African nations free of capital punishment, but execution remains for high treason
Ghana has become the 29th country in Africa to abolish the death penalty in a move hailed by human rights activists.
The decision means that the 176 people currently on death row, including six women, are likely to have their sentences commuted to life imprisonment.
Continue reading...The Ghanaian playwright and novelist, who also served as her country’s education minister, focused on the modern African woman
The Ghanaian writer and academic Ama Ata Aidoo, whose work focused on the modern African woman, has died aged 81.
Ata Aidoo, whose fans included Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, rejected the idea of what she described as a “western perception that the African female is a downtrodden wretch”, said the BBC.
Continue reading...With 100 tonnes of clothing from the west discarded every day in Accra, ‘fast fashion’ brands must be forced to help pay for the choking textile waste they create, environmentalists say
A group of secondhand clothes dealers from Ghana have visited Brussels to lobby for Europe-wide legislation to compel the fashion industry to help address the “environmental catastrophe” of dumping vast amounts of textiles in the west African country.
The traders from Kantamanto in Accra, one of the world’s largest secondhand clothing markets, met Alice Bah Kuhnke, an MEP with Sweden’s Green party, environmental organisations and representatives from the European Commission and the European Environment Bureau to argue that proposed extended producer responsibility (EPR) regulation should ensure Ghana receives funds towards managing the 100 tonnes of clothing discarded at the market every day.
Continue reading...Global trade in chocolate, worth more than $1tn a year, is leading to widespread deforestation in Ivory Coast and Ghana
The world’s hunger for chocolate is a major cause of the destruction of protected forests in west Africa, scientists have said.
Satellite maps of Ivory Coast and Ghana showed swathes of formerly dense forest had become cocoa plantations since 2000, according to a study.
Continue reading...Breakthrough hailed as highly effective R21 vaccine is cleared by west African country but questions remain over funding
Ghana has become the first country to approve a highly effective malaria vaccine developed at Oxford university in the UK.
The R21/Matrix-M vaccine, the first to exceed the World Health Organization’s target of 75% efficacy, has been cleared for use by Ghana’s Food and Drugs Authority in children aged 5-36 months, the group at highest risk of death from malaria.
Continue reading...Minute’s applause held at St James’ Park, where Ghanaian footballer spent five years
Tributes have been paid to the Ghanaian and former Premier League footballer Christian Atsu, who was found dead under the earthquake rubble of his home in Turkey.
There was a minute’s applause for Atsu on Saturday at St James’ Park before Newcastle United’s game against Liverpool, which his wife and children attended. Atsu spent five years at Newcastle from 2016 to 2021.
Continue reading...Ghanaian photographer’s crowdfunded project won support of Humans of New York author and boasts more than 30,000 books
The largest photography library in Africa has opened in Ghana’s capital, Accra, showcasing the work of the continent and diaspora’s forgotten, established and emerging talent.
Founded by Ghanaian photographer and film-maker Paul Ninson, the Dikan Center houses more than 30,000 books he has collected. The first of its kind in Ghana, a photo studio and classrooms provide space for workshops while a fellowship programme is aimed at African documentarians and visual artists. An exhibition space will host regular shows, the first of which is Ahennie, a series by the late Ghanaian documentary photographer Emmanuel Bobbie (also known as Bob Pixel), who died in 2021.
Continue reading...Dmitry Sytii under US sanctions for links to mercenary group founded by Yevgeny Prigozhin, who is close to Vladimir Putin
A Russian businessman believed to be a close ally of Yevgeny Prigozhin, the Wagner Group founder, has been taken to hospital in Central African Republic (CAR) after an “assassination attempt”, the RIA Novosti news agency has reported, citing the local Russian embassy.
Dmitry Sytii, who officially works as head of the “Russian House” culture centre in CAR’s capital, Bangui, had sanctions imposed on him by the US in September 2020 for his alleged links to Wagner Group, a private military group that has deployed more than 1,000 fighters in the unstable country to fight rebels.
Continue reading...Police investigating how man got into restricted area at Accra zoo
A lion in a zoo in Ghana has killed a man who scaled a fence and landed in its enclosure.
The incident happened at Accra zoo on Sunday. “The intruder was attacked and injured by one of the lions within the inner fencing of the enclosure,” the Forestry Commission said.
Continue reading...No treatment or vaccine exists for Marburg, which can spread from infected animals such as bats
Two cases of the deadly Marburg virus have been identified in Ghana, the first time the Ebola-like disease has been found in the west African nation.
Earlier in the month, blood samples taken from two people in the southern Ashanti region suggested they had the Marburg virus.
Continue reading...Cambridge doctoral student Oliver Barker-Vormawor says ‘trauma is still there’ as he files lawsuit
A prominent Ghanaian activist has accused authorities of subjecting him to a violent assault and illegal detention after he criticised the government in a series of Facebook posts.
Oliver Barker-Vormawor, a doctoral student at the University of Cambridge who founded the prominent “fix the country” protest movement, was arrested after he landed at Kotoka airport in Accra in February on a flight from the UK.
Continue reading...People are buying less, costs are up, and profits are dwindling for traders at Kaneshi market in Accra
On a quiet stretch amid the sprawling buzz of Kaneshie market in Accra, a group of traders sheltering under canopies from the blazing sun sell yams stacked along the roadside.
Rita Oboh, 32, has worked the spot, or one nearby, since she was six, following in the footsteps of her mother who also traded yams. “My mother lived good, really good,” Oboh says with pride. “She built houses, she looked after everybody, her family, people who relied on her. She was successful.”
Continue reading...Covid, climate, stability and violence contributing to young people feeling pessimistic about future, survey of 15 countries suggests
African youth have lost confidence in their own countries and the continent as a whole to meet their aspirations and a rising number are considering moving abroad, according to a survey of young people from 15 countries.
The pandemic, climate crisis, political instability and violence have all contributed to making young people “jittery” about their futures since the Covid pandemic began, according to the African Youth Survey published on Monday.
Continue reading...Gesture announced at Copenhagen sustainability summit earns praise – and some cries of ‘greenwashing’
Chinese fashion behemoth Shein might be the organisation least expected to win applause at an international conference on fashion sustainability, but that’s what happened at this week’s global fashion summit in Copenhagen.
The industry’s largest forum for sustainable progress saw the ultra-fast fashion brand praised for making a donation of $15m (£12m) over three years to a charity working at Kantamanto in Accra, the world’s largest secondhand clothing market.
Liz Ricketts, director of the Or Foundation, a Ghana- and US-based not-for-profit working with Accra’s textile waste workers, announced the fund, tearfully telling the audience that the workers are doing “backbreaking” work.
Britain stirred up tensions, chaos and violence in Africa, the Middle East and Asia, according to declassified papers
The British government ran a secret “black propaganda” campaign for decades, targeting Africa, the Middle East and parts of Asia with leaflets and reports from fake sources aimed at destabilising cold war enemies by encouraging racial tensions, sowing chaos, inciting violence and reinforcing anti-communist ideas, newly declassified documents have revealed.
The effort, run from the mid-1950s through to the late 70s by a unit in London that was part of the Foreign Office, was focused on cold war enemies such as the Soviet Union and China, leftwing liberation groups and leaders that the UK saw as threats to its interests
Continue reading...A new TV documentary alleges that children as young as 10 are using machetes to harvest pods
The food giant that owns the Cadbury brand is embroiled in fresh allegations of employing child labour after an investigation obtained footage of children working with machetes on cocoa farms in its supply chain.
Children as young as 10 have allegedly been found working in Ghana to harvest cocoa pods to supply Mondelēz International, which owns Cadbury. Campaigners say the farmers are being paid less than £2 a day and can’t afford to hire adult workers.
Continue reading...A massive crater has been formed in the ground following an explosion in Ghana's rural west. The explosion happened when a truck carrying explosives to a gold mine collided with a motorcycle. Multiple people are believed to have been killed. Footage shows widespread damage to houses nearby
Continue reading...The blast, which flattened hundreds of buildings, followed a collision between a truck carrying mining explosives and a motorcycle
At least 13 people have been killed after a truck carrying mining explosives collided with a motorcycle in western Ghana, sparking an explosion that has left hundreds of buildings destroyed.
The accident happened around noon in Apiate, near the mining city of Bogoso, 300km (180 miles) west of the West African country’s capital, Accra.
Continue reading...MPs grappled with each other in a fight in Ghana's parliament during a proposed tax debate for electronic transactions on Monday.
The 1.75% e-levy, which would include taxes on mobile money payments, has been challenged by the opposition for weeks, pushing the national budget announcement back.
Members of parliament rushed to the front of the chamber and started fighting each other after deputy speaker Joseph Osei-Owusu suggested the tax be debated in an urgency procedure
Continue reading...As the sea claims more of the west African shoreline, those left homeless by floods are losing hope that the government will act
Waves have taken the landscape John Afedzie knew so well. “The waters came closer in the last few months, but now they have destroyed parts of schools and homes. The waves have taken the whole of the village. One needs to use a boat to commute now because of the rising sea levels,” he says.
Afedzie lives in Keta, one of Ghana’s coastal towns, where a month ago high tide brought seawater flooding into 1,027 houses, according to the government, leaving him among about 3,000 people made homeless overnight.
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