Current Convenience,Desperate Deforestation: Ghana's AdjustmentProgram and the Forestry Sector     

J. Henry Owusu 《The Professional geographer》1998,50(4):418-436

Since the early 1980s, most Sub-Saharan African countries have resorted to structural adjustment programs to reform their ailing economies. Adjustment, however, may provide a convenient means for governments of the adjusting economies and international capital to meet their current economic and political interests, usually by sacrificing the physical environment, with huge environmental costs for the adjusting country. This paper uses Ghana's forestry sector, which has been characterized by a dramatic increase in woodexports since adjustment, to demonstrate a direct link between adjustment and environmental destruction. Ghana's dramatic increase in wood exports, involving a rapid and extensive deforestation, results from the government's need to meet its increasing external debt service obligations, and is exacerbated by the series of massive local currency devaluation required under adjustment “to get prices right.” The systematic reduction in government revenue from devaluation to amortize the increasing debts, keeps the government and indebted wood processing firms on a treadmill of export-based extraction/deforestation.  相似文献   

A Vulnerability Interpretation of the Geography of HIV/AIDS in Ghana, 1986–1995     

Joseph R. Oppong 《The Professional geographer》1998,50(4):437-448

Ten years after the human immuno-deficiency virus (HIV) was first reported in Ghana, it continues to spread throughout the country following patterns that are rare in other African countries. HIV is seen in twice as many females as males, more frequently in rural than urban regions, and regions with high rates of polygamy have significantly lower rates. The evidence presented in this paper shows that HIV diffusion patterns probably reflect the spatial distribution and social networks of vulnerable social groups. While information-based campaigns are still necessary in the fight against HIV/AIDS, they fail to enable or empower vulnerable people to protect themselves against infection.  相似文献   

‘We are at the mercy of the floods!’ : Extreme weather events,disrupted mobilities,and everyday navigation in urban Ghana     

Ebenezer F. Amankwaa  Katherine V. Gough 《Singapore journal of tropical geography》2023,44(2):235-254

This paper examines how extreme weather events affect the mobility of low-income urban residents in Ghana. Bringing together scholarship on extreme weather and mobilities, it explores the differential impact of flooding on their everyday lives as they navigate the cities of Accra and Tamale. A range of qualitative methods were drawn on, including semi-structured interviews, focus group discussions, and follow-along-participant observations in selected communities of both cities. Three key themes emerged: disrupted road and transport infrastructure, everyday mobility challenges, and coping/adaptive strategies. In flooding conditions, residents experienced difficulties leaving/returning home, engaging in income-generating activities, and accessing transport services and other key urban infrastructure. Conceptually, the paper reveals how disruption to urban residents’ daily movements and activities (re)produces new forms of mobilities and immobilities, which have three relational elements: postponed, improvised and assisted. Throughout the analysis, we show how these mobilities/immobilities vary by age and gender: all urban residents, (though women in particular), experience postponed mobility; young people especially engage in improvised mobility; and children and the elderly are in greatest need of assisted mobility. The paper thus contributes to scholarship on extreme weather events and mobility by providing a more spatially nuanced understanding of the multi-faceted domains in which flooding, socio-economic conditions and adaptive strategies intersect to influence urban mobility in resource poor settings.  相似文献   

A spatio-temporal analysis of academic performance at the Basic Education Certificate Examination in Ghana     

《Applied geography (Sevenoaks, England)》2015

Over the last decade, Ghana has more than tripled investment in its basic education system. Consequently, the country has made huge educational gains, primarily in providing universal access to basic education. However, many stakeholders are worried that academic performance is lagging because of disproportional attention to accessing basic education. Discussion of these concerns is hampered by ongoing disagreement about the true trajectory of academic performance at the basic education level and the widespread nature of students' lagging academic performance. In part, this disagreement stems from the failure of empirical studies to comprehensively examine trends in academic performance standards at the basic education level by concurrently considering a geographical and longitudinal perspective. Thus, this study examines the spatio-temporal trends of academic performance at the junior high school level since 2009 by using multilevel growth curve modeling, spatial statistics, and district-level longitudinal data. Results reveal 3 statistically distinct trajectories of academic performance: erratic, accelerating, and decelerating changes. Results also show that rural–urban gaps explain 31% of the performance trajectories, a trend which is expected to persist in the long term. In addition, we find extreme variations in academic performance within rural areas. Given the varying trajectories and geographical variability in academic performance, we suggest a localized approach to addressing challenges of low academic achievement at the basic education level in Ghana.  相似文献   

Escape to victory: Development,youth entrepreneurship and the migration of Ghanaian footballers     

《Geoforum》2015

This article contributes to contemporary debates over the resourcefulness and entrepreneurialism of young people in the Global South by exploring the relationship between development and the migration of male youth within the football industry. Drawing on fieldwork in Accra, the paper reveals how young Ghanaians attempt to enact development as freedom through spatial mobility. Significantly, this is coupled with an awareness that their desired spatial mobility is difficult to attain, thereby inducing a sense of involuntary immobility. For some male youth, the solution to this predicament is to invest in their sporting bodily capital and become Foucauldian ‘entrepreneurs of self’ in the form of a professional footballer. Meanwhile for others, the solution to prevailing economic pressures is to embrace financial risk by becoming entrepreneurs in the form of football club owners, and attempting to profit from the movement of players. The interests of these two sets of entrepreneurs coalesce around the fact that the mobility of footballers is crucial to generating a return on their respective investments. It is argued that the construction of young Ghanaians as responsible for their future life chances, and the growing dissonance between aspirations and the ability to migrate, is a key reason why youth are trying to migrate through football. Problematically, this can foster conditions favourable for irregular migration.  相似文献   

Intergenerational relations and the power of the cell phone: Perspectives on young people’s phone usage in sub-Saharan Africa     

《Geoforum》2015

Cell phones present new forms of sociality and new possibilities of encounter for young people across the globe. Nowhere is this more evident than in sub-Saharan Africa where the scale of usage, even among the very poor, is remarkable. In this paper we reflect on the inter-generational encounters which are embedded in young people’s cell phone interactions, and consider the wider societal implications, not least the potential for associated shifts in the generational balance of power. An intriguing feature of this changing generational nexus is that while many young people’s phone-based interactions, from their mid-teens onwards, are shifting away from the older generation towards friendship networks in their own age cohort, at the same time they are repositioning themselves – or becoming repositioned – as family information hubs, as a consequence of their phone expertise. The paper draws on mixed-methods research with young people aged c. 9–25 years and in-depth interviews with older age-groups in 24 sites (ranging from high density poor urban to remote rural) across Ghana, Malawi and South Africa.  相似文献   

Development and the Household: Missing the point?     

Edward?R.?CarrEmail author 《GeoJournal》2005,62(1-2):71-83

Over the past two decades development has been shifting its focus toward smaller scales and particular problems. As a result, the household has become an increasingly important institution for development, and has come under increased scrunity as development practitioners and scholars seek to better understand this institution’s functions and foundations, trying to ‘get the household right’. These efforts, rather than clarifying the character and the function of the household, have contributed to its indeterminacy by reifying the very institution they seek to analyse. Arguing that these efforts fundamentally miss the point of examining the household, this paper introduces a different framework of analysis that addresses the household not as a fixed object of research, but as a local construction that embodies flows of power and knowledge both within and transcending the local. Using the example of varying constructions of the household in two villages in Ghana’s Central Region, this article illustrates how such an approach allows us to address the various functions of the household as particular embodiments of these flows, an approach that better explains the endurance or ephemerality of these functions. Such an approach provides a stronger foundation for the consideration of how particular constructions of this institution may have troubling implications for issues like gender equity and sustainability.  相似文献   

Vulnerability,Partnerships and the Pursuit of Survival: Urban Livelihoods and Apprenticeship Contracts in a West African City     

Kobena?HansonEmail author 《GeoJournal》2005,62(1-2):163-179

This paper analyses local level apprenticeship contracts and networks to highlight informal urban livelihoods within the context of socio-economic vulnerability and wider contemporary changes taking place in Koforidua, Ghana. It does so by specifically examining the complex entanglements of interpersonal relationships that characterize apprenticeship contracts within which home-based entrepreneurs and artisans in Koforidua engage in to sustain both current livelihoods, as well as to shore themselves against socio-economic vulnerability triggered in part by adjustment. As a result of the changing geography of the city, network entanglements, comprising resilient ties and egalitarian relations, have become vital to urban livelihoods in this community. However, apprenticeship contracts and the networks they engender can be a double-edged sword. For instance, demands of reciprocity or support from co-network members, neighbours and family, can be so taxing that some individuals opt out of the network. This tension notwithstanding, this paper contends that apprenticeship contracts and the network spaces they create have created a new social cohesion and community that transcend the traditionally known spaces of social support, i.e. ethnic ties, family ties or even institutional support.  相似文献   

Fluid inclusion studies of the Abawso gold prospect,near the Ashanti Belt,Ghana   总被引：1，自引：0，他引：1  

Sven?E.?WilleEmail author  Reiner?Klemd 《Mineralium Deposita》2004,39(1):31-45

The major Ghanaian lode gold deposits are preferentially aligned along the western and eastern contacts of the Kumasi Basin with the Ashanti and Sefwi Belts, respectively. The investigated area of the Abawso small-scale concession, covering the workings of the old Ettadom mine, is situated 3 km west of the lithological contact of the Birimian metavolcanic rocks of the Akropong Belt in the east with the Birimian metasedimentary rocks of the Kumasi Basin in the west. The rocks of the Abawso concession represent a steeply NW-dipping limb of a SE-verging anticline with an axis plunging to the SW. Quartz veining occurs predominantly in the form of en échelon dilatational veins along NNE–SSW-striking shear zones of a few metres width and shows evidence of brittle and ductile deformation. Also stockwork-style quartz veining occurs in the vicinity of the main shaft of the old Ettadom mine. Hydrothermal alteration includes sericitisation, sulphidation and locally carbonatisation. The auriferous quartz veins mainly follow the trend of brittle to ductile deformed quartz veins; however, some occur in stockwork. Fluid inclusion studies reveal a large number of H₂O inclusions along intragranular trails in auriferous quartz vein samples, as well as an overall dominance of H₂O and H₂O-CO₂ inclusions over CO₂ inclusions. Textural observations and physico-chemical fluid inclusion properties indicate post-entrapment modifications for all quartz vein samples due to grain boundary migration recrystallisation. This process is interpreted to be responsible for the generation of the CO₂ inclusions from a H₂O-CO₂ parent fluid. In comparison with mineralisation at the Ashanti and Prestea deposits, which are characterised by CO₂±N₂ inclusions, the observed inclusion assemblage may be due to a shallower crustal level of mineralisation, or different degrees and styles of recrystallisation, or a less pronounced development of laminated quartz veins due to comparably restricted pressure fluctuations. Furthermore, the microthermometric observations allow the reconstruction of a possible retrograde P-T path, depicting near-isothermal decompression in the P-T range of the brittle/ductile transition.Editorial handling: E. Frimmel  相似文献   

Between structure and agency: Livelihoods and adaptation in Ghana's Central Region   总被引：2，自引：0，他引：2  

Edward R. Carr   《Global Environmental Change》2008,18(4):689

This article examines adaptation decision-making through a diversified livelihoods strategy that distributes risk across market and subsistence production in Ghana's Central Region. Specifically, it asks how this strategy, which is an adaptation to a relatively recent convergence of economic and environmental uncertainty in this context, is accepted and reproduced by society at large, even as this adaptation results in unevenly distributed benefits and costs. An examination of the case in question suggests that the persistence of this adaptation has little to do with its material outcomes. This adaptation persists because, despite its unequal and less-than-optimal material outcomes, it is rooted in the ability of men to link this adaptation to existing gender roles, thereby legitimizing the adaptation and the gendered roles it relies upon. This finding calls into question the very idea of a successful adaptation, and suggests that much more attention must be paid to the persistence of particular adaptations if we are to understand existing adaptations and build upon them to enhance local capacities for managing economic and environmental change.  相似文献