Syed Taalay Ahmed, who worked for Muslim Television Ahmadiyaa International, was ambushed in Tamale
Tributes have been paid to a British journalist who was killed in an armed robbery in Ghana.
Syed Taalay Ahmed, 31, who grew up in Hartlepool, was working for Muslim Television Ahmadiyaa International (MTA) when he was killed, the station said.
Continue reading...Damage from pandemic could quash ambitions, exacerbate tensions and deepen repression in parts of continent
Analysts and experts are warning of many years of instability across Africa, possibly leading to wars and political upheavals, as the economic impact of the Covid-19 pandemic deepens across the continent.
Though many of the likely consequences are yet to become evident, recent unrest in southern Africa, increased extremist violence in the Sahel and growing instability in parts of west Africa can all be attributed in part to the outbreak, observers say.
Continue reading...Acquittal comes after attorney general said evidence insufficient to prosecute for unlawful assembly
A Ghanaian court has acquitted and freed 21 people who were arrested during a crackdown on homosexuality in May for attending an LGBTQ+ event.
Gay sex is a criminal offence in the west African country and members of the LGBTQ+ community often face discrimination.
Continue reading...Bill could mean 10 years in prison for LGBTQ+ people and those who support their rights
Draft anti-gay legislation submitted to Ghana’s parliament could propose up to 10 years in jail for LGBTQ+ people as well as groups and individuals who advocate for their rights, express sympathy or offer social or medical support, in one of the most draconian and sweeping anti-gay laws proposed around the world.
Support for intersex people would also be criminalised and the government could direct intersex people to receive “gender realignment” surgery, said the draft legislation.
Continue reading...Opening of community space in Accra, which was quickly shut, has been the trigger for new anti-LGBT+ action
“All I wanted to do was help vulnerable people,” said Shaun Apong, tears streaking down his face, from behind the bars of a squalid police cell in Ho City in eastern Ghana.
Apong was one of 21 people arrested in early June, charged with unlawful assembly and accused of spreading an LGBT+ agenda, amid a marked and sudden increase in sensitivities around the rights and advocacy of gay and queer people in the west African country.
Continue reading...In 2016, the US state department said it had uncovered a fake embassy in Accra that had been issuing a stream of forged visas. The story went viral – but all was not as it seemed. By Yepoka Yeebo
Study finds children in Ghana, Nepal and Uganda in dangerous, exploitative work, with long hours and little pay
Gopal Magar’s father has had a drinking problem for as long as he can remember, but when Kathmandu went into lockdown last spring, it got worse. With five members of his family confined to a small room in the south of the city, tempers frayed and the 14-year-old saw his father beat his mother again and again. One day Gopal could stand it no longer. He fought back, and then fled, leaving his parents, and his school, behind.
Gopal now lives with his older brother on the other side of the city, and has swapped his classroom for a construction site. “I have fewer problems now, but I need to work really hard,” he says. He starts work at six in the morning and for the next 12 hours hauls sand, loads bricks and mixes concrete. He earns about £7 a day and sends some of it to his mother to help her buy food and pay the rent.
Continue reading...An idling student enlists the help of a wideboy friend in pursuit of a hot date in a comedy that veers between likable and laddish
Here is a vibrant, idiosyncratic portrait of Ghanaian youth, bursting with wisecracks and a boyish restlessness. There is an amateurish shakiness to the visuals, but the film overcomes this with a lot of charm and an innate understanding of its young subjects.
Related: 20 best African films – ranked!
Continue reading...(Six Degrees)
Sung in little-spoken Ghanaian dialects, these haunting, spontaneous songs by women accused of witchcraft are unlike anything you have ever heard
Now that it is fashionable for aggrieved political factions to dismiss criticism as a “witch hunt”, it’s worth remembering what makes actual witch hunts so pernicious. It’s not that the women thus accused are in fact innocent – it’s that they couldn’t possibly be guilty. In northern Ghana, witch hunts are more than a political metaphor. Even now, vulnerable women are accused of the dark arts because they have a mental illness, a physical disability or simply because their families want them out of the way. They are blamed for infertility, crop failure, bad weather, accidental deaths and much more besides. Lynchings and burnings still occur from time to time. That’s what a witch hunt means.
While belief in witchcraft is not unique to Ghana, witch camps are. These small settlements, which still exist despite government efforts to shut them down, offer accused women safe haven, albeit within the same framework of belief that drove them from their homes: the chiefs claim to ask the local gods to neutralise their powers and render them harmless. Protection assumes guilt. “If we are here, then we must be witches,” one told a journalist a few years ago.
Continue reading...Group of 67 high-profile figures say they are ‘deeply disturbed’ by recent closure of LGBTQ+ centre in Accra
Some of the UK’s most prominent people of Ghanaian heritage have joined together to condemn their former homeland for its stance on gay rights in what will be seen as an extraordinary show of diaspora power.
The influential names in fashion, film and media, including Idris Elba and the Vogue editor-in-chief, Edward Enninful, have signed an open letter in support of Ghana’s LGBTQ+ community. Naomi Campbell, although, not of Ghanaian heritage, has also put her name to the letter.
Continue reading...Founder says community centre in Accra was closed pre-emptively to protect its staff
A community centre for LGBTQ+ people in Ghana has been closed, following a wave of protest against the rights of sexual minorities in the country.
In recent weeks government ministers and religious groups had demanded the closure of the centre, intended to be a safe space for LGBTQ+ people to meet and find support. Yet since the opening in January of the centre in the capital, Accra, many people have received death threats and online abuse.
Continue reading...Covax has delivered its first Covid-19 vaccine doses to Ghana as part of a programme to ensure equitable distribution to poorer countries. Anne-Claire Dufay, of Unicef, said it was ‘an historic moment’.
Covax aims to distribute enough vaccines over the next six months to inoculate 3% of the population of 145 countries and tens of millions more by the end of the year
My friend Elli Glevey, who has died aged 62 of cancer, was a passionate educator and philosopher dedicated to building links between the UK and Africa. Through his work at the Institute of Education, in London, Elli made a real impact in the field in the UK, but he was determined equally to make a contribution in his home country, Ghana.
Born in Accra, shortly after Ghanaian independence, Elli was the son of Gabriel Gleveh, an official in Kwame Nkrumah’s government, and Gladys (nee Atta Nee Boleh), who ran an import business. Elli’s first passion was music, starting with highlife and moving on to jazz. He came to London in 1977 and, along with various odd jobs, played saxophone as a session musician. As well as music, he wrote poetry and sketched throughout his life.
Continue reading...Jerry Rawlings, the former military leader then twice-elected president of Ghana, who has died aged 73, dominated the country’s political life for two decades in the 1980s and 90s.
In May 1979, Flt Lt Rawlings of the Ghanaian air force burst on to the country’s political scene. With a handful of officers, he launched an unsuccessful coup d’etat against a corrupt and discredited military government headed by Gen Fred Akuffo, shortly before a planned election.
Continue reading...In recent years, Africans on the continent and in the diaspora have become leading voices in black culture – in music, film, fashion, social media, comedy and even our memes. When Grace Shutti was growing up, black culture usually referred to African Americans. But from Beyoncé's visual album, Black is King, to Marvel's Black Panther and musician Diddy executive producing the Nigerian pop star Burna Boy's album, the shift to embrace African art has been seismic. Grace investigates how this came about
Continue reading...Children as young as five still exposed to hazardous work in countries including Ghana and Ivory Coast, report reveals
Nearly 20 years after the world’s major chocolate manufacturers pledged to abolish employment abuses, hazardous child labour remains rife in their supply chains, a new study finds.
Research from the University of Chicago finds that more than two-fifths (43%) of all children aged between five and 17 in cocoa-growing regions of Ghana and Ivory Coast – the world’s largest cocoa producers – are engaged in hazardous work.
In total, an estimated 1.5 million children work in cocoa production around the world, half of whom are found in these two west African nations alone. Hazardous work includes the use of sharp tools, working at night and exposure to agrochemical products, among other harmful activities.
The report, commissioned by the US Department of Labor, notes that the overall proportion of children working has gone up by 14 percentage points in the past decade. The increase is accompanied by a 62% rise in production over the same period.
The findings raise difficult questions for industry in particular. Back in 2001, big brands such as Nestlé, Mars and Hershey signed a cross-sector accord aimed at eliminating egregious child labour. Despite missing deadlines to deliver on their pledge in 2005, 2008 and 2010, they continue to insist that ending the illegal practice remains their top concern.
In response to the scathing report, US chocolate giant Mars reiterated that child labour has no place in cocoa production and said it had committed $1bn to help “fix a broken supply chain”.
Campaign groups dismiss such comments as a duplicitous smokescreen. Indeed, a lawsuit stating that international chocolate manufacturers knowingly profit from abuses against children is currently being heard in the US supreme court.
The story of Baba, chained to a tree for three years, moved people around the world to help. Mental health nurse Stephen Asante witnessed his journey to freedom
Last November I travelled with the Guardian to the upper-east region of Ghana. Our aim was to see how mental illness is treated in communities that have scant access to health services.
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Almost all planned work against the disease has gone ahead this year, delivering nets, drugs and the world’s first malaria vaccine
More than 90% of anti-malaria campaigns planned this year across four continents are on track, despite disruptions caused by the coronavirus pandemic, according to new research.
The delivery of insecticide-treated nets and provision of antimalarial medicines in the majority of malaria-affected countries across Africa, Asia and the Americas were still going ahead, a high-level meeting organised by the RBM Partnership to End Malaria heard on Thursday.
Continue reading...Floyd’s death in Minneapolis has been the trigger for a global wave of activism against prejudice and police brutality that has spread to more than 50 countries, becoming a mirror for racism and inequality in societies around the world. In Australia and Papua people protested for indigenous rights, as people took up the cry against injustices in New Zealand, Ghana, France, Germany and the UK
Global competition for kits and national constraints cause concern as lockdowns ease
Public health experts have warned about the risks of low supplies of coronavirus test kits as lockdowns in African countries begin to ease and urban populations become more mobile.
Different countries on the continent have adopted a range of testing strategies, but international competition for test kits and a lack of global coordination of resources have meant many African countries are testing with significantly limited reach.
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