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Northern Ghana (northern + ghana)
Selected AbstractsChild Labour in African Artisanal Mining Communities: Experiences from Northern GhanaDEVELOPMENT AND CHANGE, Issue 3 2010Gavin Hilson ABSTRACT The issue of child labour in the artisanal and small-scale mining (ASM) economy is attracting significant attention worldwide. This article critically examines this ,problem' in the context of sub-Saharan Africa, where a lack of formal sector employment opportunities and/or the need to provide financial support to their impoverished families has led tens of thousands of children to take up work in this industry. The article begins by engaging with the main debates on child labour in an attempt to explain why young boys and girls elect to pursue arduous work in ASM camps across the region. The remainder of the article uses the Ghana experience to further articulate the challenges associated with eradicating child labour at ASM camps, drawing upon recent fieldwork undertaken in Talensi-Nabdam District, Upper East Region. Overall, the issue of child labour in African ASM communities has been diagnosed far too superficially, and until donor agencies and host governments fully come to grips with the underlying causes of the poverty responsible for its existence, it will continue to burgeon. [source] Complexity in local stakeholder coordination: decentralization and community water management in Northern GhanaPUBLIC ADMINISTRATION & DEVELOPMENT, Issue 2 2002Edward T. Jackson Stakeholder coordination is a prominent theme in current development discourse. Experience with decentralization and community water management in northern Ghana highlights the complexities of coordinating stakeholders at the local level. In this case, roles and responsibilities must be clarified between legislated sub-district structures on the one hand, and civic water groups on the other. This is especially important with regard to resolving which party should collect revenues and manage assets and expenditures in the water sector. The key mechanism for addressing these issues is the District Assembly, which is empowered under the decentralization law to coordinate stakeholders, both ,horizontally', across social actors, and ,vertically', between the national and sub-district levels. While such local-level dynamics are indeed complex and challenging, they are at the same time probably more amenable to at least medium-term resolution than stakeholder competition issues at the national level. Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source] Risky Business: Economic Uncertainty, Market Reforms and Female Livelihoods in Northeast GhanaDEVELOPMENT AND CHANGE, Issue 5 2000Brenda Chalfin This article examines the implications of economic uncertainty for rural markets and the livelihoods of female traders. It does so through a case study of a community in northern Ghana caught in the throes of a structural adjustment-driven privatization initiative. In order to fully comprehend the nature of the economic uncertainties in which rural economic actors are enmeshed and the manner in which they resist, engage or engender these conditions, two theoretical lenses are interposed. One, focusing on structural dissolution and an overall process of rural, and especially female, disempowerment, is drawn from recent approaches to African political economy. The other, gleaned from the field of economic anthropology, attends to the agency and knowledge of rural entrepreneurs in the face of unstable and imperfect market conditions. By bringing together these different analytic traditions, the critical significance of uncertainty within the complex process of rural economic transformation and reproduction becomes evident. Rather than functioning as a diagnostic of economic crisis and insecurity, uncertainty can be a strategic resource integral to the constitution of markets, livelihoods and economic coalitions. Such a perspective, privileging the institutional potentials of local social practice, makes apparent the forceful role played by female traders in the structuring of rural marketing systems even in the face of externally-induced and sometimes dramatic shifts in material conditions. [source] VARYING EFFECT OF FERTILITY DETERMINANTS AMONG MIGRANT AND INDIGENOUS FEMALES IN THE TRANSITIONAL AGRO-ECOLOGICAL ZONE OF GHANAGEOGRAFISKA ANNALER SERIES B: HUMAN GEOGRAPHY, Issue 1 2007Samuel Nii Ardey Codjoe ABSTRACT. The transitional agro-ecological zone of Ghana, located between the richly endowed south and the impoverished north, has attracted seasonal and permanent farm migrants, mainly from northern Ghana, who now live side by side with the indigenous people. While migrants have higher numbers of Muslims, indigenous people are mainly Christians. Although the majority of the migrants live in migrant quarters with less favourable socio-economic conditions, they are more successful farmers and therefore wealthier. The objectives are to examine the varying effect of fertility determinants among migrants and indigenous females. This paper uses data collected in 2002 among 194 females aged 15 to 49 years. Multiple regression models are used to assess fertility determinants. Results show that although migrant households were wealthier, migrant females were more traditional. They had more children living in foster care, and a lower proportion of them approved of men participating in household activities. In addition, they were less well educated, recorded higher infant mortality, gave birth earlier and used less contraception. Furthermore, while a female's migration status is statistically significant so far as non-proximate determinants of fertility are concerned, the same variable is not significant with respect to proximate determinants. In addition, a married female migrant would on average have almost one more child compared to her indigenous counterpart, and migrant females who had experienced the loss of a child would on average have 2.5 more children compared to their indigenous counterparts. Finally, more affluent migrant females have 0.08 fewer children compared to their indigenous counterpart. [source] Complexity in local stakeholder coordination: decentralization and community water management in Northern GhanaPUBLIC ADMINISTRATION & DEVELOPMENT, Issue 2 2002Edward T. Jackson Stakeholder coordination is a prominent theme in current development discourse. Experience with decentralization and community water management in northern Ghana highlights the complexities of coordinating stakeholders at the local level. In this case, roles and responsibilities must be clarified between legislated sub-district structures on the one hand, and civic water groups on the other. This is especially important with regard to resolving which party should collect revenues and manage assets and expenditures in the water sector. The key mechanism for addressing these issues is the District Assembly, which is empowered under the decentralization law to coordinate stakeholders, both ,horizontally', across social actors, and ,vertically', between the national and sub-district levels. While such local-level dynamics are indeed complex and challenging, they are at the same time probably more amenable to at least medium-term resolution than stakeholder competition issues at the national level. Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source] |