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
Category Archives: Ghana
‘I had to step up’: Child labour in poorest countries rose during Covid, says report
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...Lucky review – spirited Ghanaian romcom captures the social media age
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...Witch Camp (Ghana): I’ve Forgotten Now Who I Used To Be review – magical sound of the marginalised
(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...Idris Elba and Naomi Campbell sign letter backing gay rights in Ghana
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...Ghanaian LGBTQ+ centre closes after threats and abuse
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...Ghana receives 600,000 vaccines in first Covax delivery – video
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
- Vaccine diplomacy: west falling behind in race for influence
- Covax delivers first Covid vaccines in ‘momentous occasion’
Elli Glevey obituary
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 obituary
Charismatic military leader and elected president of Ghana who dominated political life in the 1980s and 90s
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...From Burna Boy to Beyoncé: how black culture is embracing its African roots – video
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...Chocolate industry slammed for failure to crack down on child labour
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.
‘Poverty made it seem he wasn’t loved’: one man’s unchaining in Ghana
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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Malaria campaigns fight off Covid disruptions to deliver programmes
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...‘Call it out!’: global voices from George Floyd protests – video
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
- George Floyd killing triggers wave of activism around the world
- What the George Floyd protests have achieved in just two weeks
Experts sound alarm over lack of Covid-19 test kits in Africa
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.
Continue reading...‘A lot of benign neglect’: how Ghana’s social changes are isolating older people
The modernising economy is changing family structures – but can ‘western’ residential homes be accepted culturally?
After breakfast on a Friday morning, a small group of elderly people are engaging in gentle exercises – walking to one end of a walled compound and back. Some of them need the assistance of nurses or walkers, or both, to complete the journey.
“Usually, we do this a couple of times but it is a little bit cold today so we are going just once,” says Henry Ofori Mensah, administrator at Comfort For The Aged, a residential care home in Kasoa, a dormitory town west of Accra, Ghana’s capital.
At the turn of the century, a facility like this would have been hard to imagine in Ghana.
Coronavirus could ‘smoulder’ in Africa for several years, WHO warns
190,000 people could die on the continent in the coming 12 months, agency says
The Covid-19 pandemic could “smoulder” in Africa for several years after killing as many as 190,000 people in the coming 12 months, the World Health Organization has said.
The WHO warned last month that there could be 10m infections on the continent within six months, though experts said the pandemic’s impact would depend on governments’ actions.
Continue reading...Easing of lockdown a relief to Ghana’s poor – despite fears it is premature
As Accra and Kumasi’s markets and shops reopen, government defends decision to partially lift coronavirus restrictions
Since the sudden easing of a three-week lockdown in Ghana’s two major cities, Accra and Kumasi, daily life is gradually returning to normal.
Markets and commercial districts that had ground to an eerie halt have buzzed back to life. Stores and banks have slowly reopened. Modest traffic jams have emerged as many people who had escaped the lockdown return to the cities. But schools, places of worship, restaurants and bars remain shut.
Continue reading...Covid-19 could mark a deadly turn in Ghana’s fight against fake drugs
With substandard medicines already in wide circulation, fears are growing that coronavirus could create a lethal ‘parallel crisis’
When Joana Opoku-Darko’s daughter Anna was 18 months old, she came down with malaria, a disease common in Ghana and especially deadly for children.
She bought medication from a pharmacy in Ghana’s capital, Accra; when Anna’s fever didn’t subside she took her to a hospital, where they ran some tests.
Continue reading...African nations impose stricter measures as coronavirus spreads
Governments warn disease will cause huge challenges for continent’s health services
Countries across Africa have imposed wide-ranging and stringent new measures as the coronavirus begins to spread more rapidly across the continent.
Though the continent is still far behind Europe and Asia in the total numbers of Covid-19 cases, the disease has now reached about half of its countries. Algeria has 48 confirmed cases, Egypt 110, while South Africa has 62, according to the World Health Organization and national governments on Monday. Other countries have fewer cases, mostly in single figures.
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