Dakar, 27 October, 2008— Some of the biggest development and humanitarian NGOs are laying off staff or revising programmes for 2009 as their income streams flatten because of the global financial crisis. Fundraising experts of three of the world’s top NGOs – Oxfam GB, Save the Children UK and World Vision USA – said programme
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Last week, when he trudged a 100-meter alleyway in Abeka, the well-known suburb of Accra, a Ghana News Agency (GNA) reporter commended him for defying the scorching sun, almost as if to suggest that his presidential campaign competitors had been, somehow, inexplicably exempted from the tropical Ghanaian laws of Nature. Barely 24 hours later, he
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For the most part, I have carefully steered clear of the raging debate on the relevance or, for that matter, otioseness of the traditional Ghanaian institution of the monarchy. The disdain of Western-European colonizers for their African subjects – or more aptly, captives – precipitated the linguistic degradation of this primal and civilized institution into
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Baghdad, 23 October, 2008— At least 17 percent of piped water nationwide, and one-third of the water in Baghdad, is not potable, according to a survey by the Iraqi Health Ministry. “The percentage of dirty water not fit for human consumption could lead to diseases more dangerous than cholera, such as some kinds of life-threatening
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Nairobi, 23 October, 2008— Every year, hundreds of thousands of people are forced to flee their homes to escape war or natural disasters. Displaced within their own country and having lost loved ones, livelihoods and belongings, they face terrible hardships. Around the world there are as many as 70 million of them and their plight
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Johannesburg, 21 October, 2008— Models to predict the impact of climate change on potable water and the management of wastewater are needed to deal with the expected increase in water-related illnesses as result of global warming, says a new policy brief by the United Nations University (UNU). “We need greater investment in the development of
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Abidjan, 21 October, 2008— Rapes of women and girls are common in western Côte d’Ivoire and generally go unpunished, said residents of the region. “These days nearly every time we hear of armed robberies in homes, on the roads or on plantations, we hear of rape,” said a resident of the western town of Duékoué
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Abuja, 21 October, 2008— The Nigerian Ministry of Health is trying to determine what caused a gastroenteritis outbreak that has claimed 120 lives in northern Nigeria’s Sokoto state and dozens more in the northwest, according to national health statistics. “Unfortunately, it is the environment,” said the Ministry of Health’s deputy director, Abdul Nasidi. “The environment
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Kampala, 21 October, 2008— About 5,600 people who fled clashes in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) have crossed into neighbouring Uganda, according to the UN Refugee Agency, UNHCR. Some 4,000 are staying with relatives in Kisoro, in western Uganda. Another 1,680 Congolese refugees have moved to Nakivale settlement camp in central Uganda. While representatives
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Thirty-six years after his demise, the first Prime Minister of Ghana, later Life-President, continues to engage the imagination of many an African intellectual and scholar. The tragic reality, however, is that such engagement has tended to heavily involve non-Ghanaian Africans even as most astute Ghanaian intellectuals and scholars who had a first-hand experience of the
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