Tertiary institutions and capacity building in Ghana: challenges and the way forward

The last two decades have seen tremendous growth in tertiary education in Ghana. The prevailing consensus is that universities play a crucial role in development by making it possible to generate human capital in key areas such as health, agriculture, and engineering, also contributing to the attainment self-sufficiency. Whilst contributing to capacity building, this paper argues that universities in Ghana have had to contend with a number of challenges: low female access to universities, especially in science and technology-related courses; inadequate funds; poor research activity; and large class sizes. Making research a priority, designating strategic planning teams with appropriate institutional and financial support, developing cooperation with private universities, expanding access through the use of external degree centres and distance learning, and deepening universities’ relevance to societal needs, are identified as central to the enhancement of capacity building in Ghana.     

The Politics of Administrative Reforms in Ghana: Perspectives from Path Dependency and Punctuated Equilibrium Theories

Since 1957, various Ghanaian governments have made, and continue to make, attempts to reform the administrative state for development. In spite of this, not much seems to have been achieved over the years. Why has the passion of successive governments for reforming the administrative system failed to yield the desired outcomes? What is the nexus between regime turnover and frequent administrative reforms? Where do we want to go, and what will take us there or at least close to our intended destination? What approach is likely to maximize the chances of success and minimize those of failure? We argue that administrative reforms in Ghana have been consistently undermined by the discontinuity of reform initiatives undertaken by successive governments; the inability to have a “national agenda for development”; continuous reliance on expatriates as consultants and advisers; over-reliance on multinational institutions for financial support; and by the absence of a “developmental state.”     

An Ethical Governance Perspective on Anti-Corruption Policies and Procedures: Agencies and Trust in Cameroon,Ghana, and Nigeria Evaluation

The purpose of this research is to state that ethical governance is important, because it concerns the right thoughts (values) and elements (mechanisms) needed for a successful anti-corruption crusade. Trust is strongly linked to performance; ethical governance can help in actualizing anti-corruption agencies’ expected or desired performance. The subjects of the comparative research are the anti-corruption agencies of Cameroon, Ghana, and Nigeria. A qualitative analysis of documents and interviews and a triangulation approach are used in arriving at research results, because policies and procedures are studied through anti-corruption agencies documents and public trust is investigated through expert interview. Ghana represents the strong case and best practices, because it has anti-corruption policies and procedures that agree more with ethical governance, followed by Nigeria, which is the moderate case, before Cameroon, which is the weak case. “Independence” as an ethical mechanism occupies the strongest position to achieving result in anti-corruption related crusade.     

Political parties in Ghana: agents of democracy?

Political parties are generally thought of as agents of democracy that fulfil a range of functions, such as policy formulation, interest aggregation and articulation, social integration, and elite recruitment. However, given the weakness of many African parties, are they able to contribute positively to democracy? This article seeks to answer this question by using Ghana – one of Africa's most successful democracies – as a case study. It is found that parties in Ghana are comparatively strong and do indeed mobilise large numbers of voters. They even expose a degree of ideological competition and have successfully adapted their strategies to the local context. On the other hand, they expose serious weaknesses in the field of social integration and interest representation. Against this background it is argued that even in procedurally well-functioning democracies like Ghana, political parties can be instruments of elite competition that contribute to the exclusion of the poor from decision-making.     

Far from basic rules: social dynamics,legal regulations and access to household water in Northern Ghana, 1965–2012

Northern Ghana has been a pilot region for implementing drinking water programs. The Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA) has acted as a key player in constructing hand pumps and small-town water systems, as well as in designing institutional frameworks for their delivery and management, which have been subsequently up-scaled to national level. Water rights are neither uniform nor immune to institutional drawbacks. The ethnographic study analyzes the history of water supply in a rural settlement from the mid-1960s through to 2012, and outlines the evolution of local law. It shows that water development is a non-progressive, multi-directional and hegemonic process that is driven by institutional bricolage and rule making in external and local political arenas.     

Autonomy or organisation? Reforms in the Ghanaian internal revenue service

Autonomous Revenue Authorities (ARAs) have recently become a popular organisational reform to improve revenue collection in developing countries. The success of ARAs is commonly attributed to ‘autonomy’ which reduces political interference, and increases financial independence and managerial freedom. This article examines the case of the Ghanaian ARA – the Internal Revenue Service and argues that its strong performance is the result of not ‘autonomy’, but other more nuts and bolts reforms, specifically: (a) strategies designed to direct the focus of the IRS to different taxpayer segments, particularly the informal sector and (b) significant attempts to bring the tax administration closer to the taxpayer through decentralisation and improved taxpayer services. To the extent that autonomy enables ARAs to undertake these other reforms it forms an important piece of the picture, however, they do not require autonomy – they could well be adopted under traditional tax administrations. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Unemployment trends and labour market entry in Ghana: job search methods perspective

ABSTRACT

Statistical information is critical for both government and the general public for monitoring, evaluation, and implementation of employment policies and programmes. This paper revisits the labour market trends between 2012 and 2016 and discusses the importance of job search methods for labour market entry in Ghana. We explored job search methods (Formal and Informal Methods) used by 235 participants from seven regions of Ghana. Results revealed that many of the participants highly relied on informal job search methods to secure jobs across all demographic variables. This has been the case in Ghana when unemployment continues to increase leading to a difficult labour market entry. Our findings, therefore, suggest that in such a restricted labour market, employment success is likely to be determined by ‘whom you know’. The results offer practical recommendations for private and public employment consultancies, as well as policymakers to institute impactful intervention programmes for job seekers on the efficient ways of developing and sustaining meaningful social capital/networks to enhance their chances of finding employment.     

Ghana's elections of 7 December 2016: A post-mortem

Ghana went to presidential and parliamentary polls on 7 December 2016, leading to the defeat of President John Mahama and the National Democratic Congress government by the opposition, the New Patriotic Party led by Nana Akufo-Addo. The outcome of the elections therefore followed in the same vein as those held in Ghana in 2000 and 2008, in which the incumbent party lost to the opposition. This article is based on a desk study review of the 2016 elections. There is a brief overview of the state of affairs in Ghana's electoral politics, followed by a discussion of Ghana's electoral reforms, the organisation and management of the elections, the candidates and the campaigns, and the outcome of the elections, as well as some of the challenges that faced the transition process.     

Digital dilemmas: the unintended consequences of election technology

Digital technologies are increasingly used in elections around the world. Where the resources and capacity of the state are limited, some have argued that such technologies make it possible to rapidly “leapfrog” to cleaner and more credible elections. This article argues that the growing use of these technologies has been driven by the fetishization of technology rather than by rigorous assessment of their effectiveness; that they may create significant opportunities for corruption that (among other things) vitiate their potential impact; and that they carry significant opportunity costs. Indeed, precisely because new technology tends to deflect attention away from more “traditional” strategies, the failure of digital checks and balances often renders an electoral process even more vulnerable to rigging than it was before. These observations are not intended as a manifesto against the digitization of elections; apart from anything else, we argue that the drivers of the adoption of these new methods are too powerful to resist. But the analysis draws attention to the importance of more careful assessments of the problems, as well as the benefits, of such technologies – and to the need for more careful planning in their deployment.     

Representative Bureaucracy in the Public Service? A Critical Analysis of the Challenges Confronting Women in the Civil Service of Ghana

In the public administration literature, the debate concerning the representation of minorities in the public bureaucracy continues to attract attention. The idea is that passive representation may lead to active representation with the later helping to develop policies and programs that will benefit minorities. Consequently, a number of governments have been implementing policies to enhance the involvement of minorities in public services. The Ghana government has not been left out in this endeavor. Since 1957, it has continued to institute measures to ensure a fair gender representation in the bureaucracy. This notwithstanding, the upper echelons of the bureaucracy continue to be dominated by males despite the over representation of women at the lower levels. What are the challenges confronting women in the public sector that make it difficult to achieve active representation? In this article, we examine the challenges confronting women to achieve active representation from a representative bureaucracy perspective.