Suchergebnisse

Ghana's Livelihood Empowerment Against Poverty (LEAP) programme provides conditional cash transfers to poor households in deprived communities. Beyond the potentiality of the LEAP programme to reduce poverty, its implications for shaping state–citizen relations and inclusive citizenship have been largely ignored. This study explored the implications of the programme on notions of citizenship among cash recipients. The findings indicate that the programme generates interfaces that strengthen state–citizen interaction and serves as a promising avenue for reintegration. However, it is also characterised by undue delay in cash payment and weak institutional capacity to mediate interactive processes and grievances, which suggests that the contractual relationship and the state's accountability are weak. Furthermore, the programme has negatively influenced community social relations, limiting the forms of agency beneficiaries exercised. The study concludes that although LEAP represents a landmark in Ghana's quest for inclusive citizenship, it undermines social relations and citizens' rights to hold the state accountable, which unavoidably limits effective state building.

This case study draws on research experiences from my PhD study on sexuality and youth cultures at the University of Cambridge in the United Kingdom as well as various international and national youth-centered research projects on which I have collaborated since completing my PhD studies in 2010. I have collaborated in research projects with some UK based institutions on different aspects of youth, sexuality, and HIV/AIDS studies. These include, first, the African Sexual Knowledges and AIDS research project (ASKAIDS) carried out between 2010 and 2012 under the leadership of the Centre for Commonwealth Education of the University of Cambridge's Faculty of Education in six African countries. Second, the case is informed by a 3-year collaborative project between the Department of Sociological Studies of the University of Sheffield and the University of Cape Coast on gender and sexual identity acquisition and violence among children and young people in Ghana. These projects which were qualitative in orientation with multiple research methods designs have exposed me to innovative research methods such as drawings, essays or write ups, photovoice, and recently body-mapping in research. This methods case study explores some of the tensions experienced and resultant lessons learned from applying such novel and unfamiliar research methods in the Ghanaian context. It also shares the prospects and challenges derived from employing such methods in oral and communal societies for research purposes.

The private sector involvement in public service is intended to achieve efficiency gain and better service quality through increasing private sector finance and expertise. However, these benefits are most often not achieved in developing countries due to investment risk of private finance, and problems of capacity and regulation of the private sector. This book examines private sector involvement (PSI) in solid waste collection by exploring the influence of private sector capacity and Local Governments' regulations on private sector performance in terms of productivity and service quality. PSI

Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to compare the sustainability dimensions reported on the websites of public and private universities in Ghana, an emerging economy.


Design/methodology/approach
The universities in Ghana were categorized under public and private universities. The top five under each category were chosen (by Edu Rank's ratings), and data was gathered from the websites of the sampled universities. Data analysis was conducted using Global Reporting Initiative (GRI-G4) framework and sustainability tools for campus assessment. Findings were then analyzed through stakeholder theory's lens and organizational characteristics such as ownership, students' acceptance ratios, performance, size and age.


Findings
This study's results show that the key aspects of sustainability disclosed on the websites of the sampled private and public universities in Ghana are more of economic and campus sustainability assessment indicators than the social and environmental dimensions. Contrary to the popular notion that private sector organizations do more sustainability reporting than those in the public sector, in the case of Ghana, the sampled public universities reported more than the privately owned universities. This study attributes the extent and variations of sustainability reporting among the public and private Ghanaian universities to the universities' characteristics such as students' acceptance ratios, performance, size, ownership and age.


Practical implications
The findings from this study indicate that in improving the value of sustainability reporting, stakeholders of the educational sector in emerging economies should encourage universities to adopt the GRI-G4 framework and campus sustainability assessment indicators in disclosing their sustainability initiatives.


Originality/value
To the best of the author's knowledge, this paper is the first study to compare the extent and variations in sustainability reporting between public and private universities in an emerging economy.

This study investigated the role of local government in local economic development (LED). Local governments in the developed world have been promoting the LED of areas under their control for decades unlike their counterparts in the developing world. With the advent of decentralisation in many countries of the developing world, many of their local governments have also gotten involved in promoting LED. Despite this, their contributions have been negligible if not totally absent. As the implementation and practice of decentralisation deepens in Ghana, local governments, locally called District Assemblies have the responsibility of ensuring the total development of the areas under their jurisdiction. Despite the ample evidence indicating their increasing effectiveness in delivering social services, they have not been able to effectively promote LED. This study therefore set out to find out why these local governments are not able to effectively promote LED at the local level in Ghana. This study was necessitated by the fact there exist few and less comprehensive studies in LED with regards to the involvement of local governments in the country. There is also the need to examine the persistent ineffectiveness of local governments in LED, their challenges, basic conditonalities, and the critical way forward to mitigate these. The Ejisu-Juaben Municipal Assembly (local government) of the Ejisu-Juaben Municipality of the republic of Ghana was the case studied. The study analysed how the local government carried out its LED promotional drive, its capacity, the involvement of other stakeholders and other factors influencing its involvement in the process. It employed the use of mainly qualitative research methodology. The case study approach was adopted as the research strategy. Both primary and secondary sources of data were used and a variety of methods including interviews, documentary analysis, observations, group discussions and questionnaire administration were employed to ensure triangulation and the quality of data collected and analysed. The study revealed that, though the local government played several roles in LED, these were mainly traditional and not directly effective to rapidly address the LED needs of the municipality. The various strategies and tools applied were also limited in scope. The local government was also less committed to the implementation of programmes and projects stated in its development plans that were of direct benefit to economic entities in municipality. More so, it had inadequate capacity in terms of funds, logistics and human resources. In addition, it depended to a larger extent on the central government for most of its capacity needs. It also had a weak institutional set-up for LED promotion which affected negatively the coordination of LED initiatives. The LED process was also not well integrated into the local government's development planning process. Moreover, the local government's involvement of other stakeholders in its LED process was limited to informing and consulting. It maintained a weak relationship with local stakeholders and a higher one with external stakeholders. There was also the absence of a clear platform for stakeholder engagement by the local government in its LED process. Other external factors influencing its performance in the LED process included the absence of a national policy framework to guide its involvement in LED, hindered access to the utilisation and control of certain local resources and the inadequate capacity of local economic entities in the municipality. The study therefore recommends that for the local government to be effective in the process of LED, it must put in pragmatic and relevant strategies and tools, have the needed capacity, a strong institutional set-up and should consciously involve all the necessary and potential stakeholders in all the stages of the LED process. This should also be complemented by efforts of the central government to strengthen the local government in the process of LED.

This is a conference paper. ; This paper discusses institutional arrangements for private sector involvement in urban solid waste delivery and provides understanding of the institutional gaps in Ghana context. Five cities in Ghana (Accra, Tema, Kumasi, SecondiTakoradi, and Tamale) were selected for the study. This study suggests there were institutional arrangements – legal, regulatory and financial arrangements – for private sector involvement in solid waste collection. These arrangements include both service contracts for communal collection with subsidy paid by local government Assemblies and franchise contracts for housetohouse service with or without subsidy from the Assemblies. The involvement of private sector in solid waste collection had increased the collection rate and the proportion of housetohouse collection service without subsidy from the government. The major constraints were the inadequate capacity of the Assemblies, the long delay in paying for the contracts, low user charges and inadequate monitoring of quality of service.

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This is the introductory article for a special issue edited by Irene van Staveren, Abena Oduro and Caren Grown. Abstract: Despite Africa's relatively commendable growth performance since 2000, growth has not been accompanied by structural transformations. First, there has been little diversification from agriculture into industry, particularly manufacturing. Second, the poverty headcount and inequality remain high in many countries, even as African countries continue to rank lowest on the United Nations Development Programme's Gender Inequality Index. This contribution goes beyond the individualistic approach of supply-side policies and unveils deeper mechanisms that need to be tackled for the two transformations (diversification and inequality reduction) to occur. It demonstrates that gender inequality relies on unwritten but dominant social norms, hence, informal institutions. The removal of formal legislation that constrains women's agency, the enactment of formal laws, and the implementation of economic policies designed specifically to create incentives for behavior change are recommended.