This report is a study on the smoldering combustion of natural sawdust from untreated woods. The objective was to develop and test an experimental technique to study the fundamental behavior of sawdust smolder. The experimental setup was an annulus cookstove packed with sawdust between the inner and outer radii creating a central hollow core. The sawdust was ignited by a heating coil wrapped around the inner radius. Thermocouples were embedded in the sawdust bed fanning out in the radial direction, and temperature was recorded throughout the smolder process. Consistent with the literature, the experimental results indicate that wood smolder consists of three pathways, 1) sawdust to char, 2) sawdust to volatiles, and 3) char to ash. Pathways 1 and 3 can be clearly characterized by the temperature profile of the smolder; however, pathway 2 often involves flaming of the sawdust and is beyond the scope of this study. Pathway 1, sawdust to char, is an endothermic reaction that results in a clearly defined char front that propagates across the sawdust bed in the radial direction. As smolder proceeds, the char continues to oxidize and breaks down into non-volatile products such as water vapor and carbon dioxide (CO₂) in further exothermic reactions. Pathway 2, char to ash, is an exothermic reaction that can lead to glowing combustion when exposed to sufficient amounts of oxygen and results in spikes in temperature. In contrast to the clearly defined char front, the ashing zone traces cracks in the sawdust where air can penetrate through, and has no discernible front. Section 1 discusses the motivation behind the study of sawdust cookstoves in third world countries, in particular Ghana, to replace wood with sawdust as a cheap alternative for household fuel. Section 2 details the experimental setup of the cookstove rig and the methodology of the experiments conducted. Section 3 reports the results of the experiments and analyzes the temperature profiles in relation to the three types of chemical reactions as noted above. Section 4 concludes with a summary of the results and discusses efforts in measuring emissions from the smolder and future work to be done. / text

Governments and donor agencies are increasingly advocating tourism as a viable poverty reduction option in developing countries. However, the debate surrounding tourism development mechanisms and benefits to local people is based upon limited empirical evidence. Much of the literature has focused on the socio-economic impacts of tourism in developing countries, but there is comparatively limited investment of the relationship between tourism and poverty reduction from the perspectives of the stakeholders, particularly local people. To build knowledge about this relationship, this research study examines the role of tourism in poverty reduction in Elmina, Ghana. The core aim of the research is to analyse the inter-relationship between poverty reduction and tourism from the perspective of local people and stakeholders. The research focuses upon the importance of tourism as a developmental strategy to tackle poverty. The research methodology was formulated within an interpretive paradigm utilising qualitative techniques to investigate tourism and poverty in Elmina. Stakeholders who participated in the study included: Government; Donor Agencies; Local People; Tourists; and the Private Sector. The data was analysed using thematic data analysis methods. Researcher reflexivity is also integrated into the study in view of the researcher’s experience of employment in a public sector tourism organisation in Ghana. The thematic findings contribute to knowledge about the relationship between tourism and poverty reduction in Elmina and are categorised into three main themes. Firstly, local people in Elmina define and understand poverty and tourism opportunities in multiple ways, which differ from other stakeholders; however, differences in meanings and understandings exist between and within individuals and groups in Elmina. The attributes accounting for the differences in views include: level of education; access to the tourism market; participation in decision-making; and type of businesses. Secondly, local people participate in tourism mainly as owners of informal tourism businesses and employees. ii However, a group of marginalised people, the ‘Castle Boys’, also benefit from the support received from philanthropic tourists through the activities of begging and informal tour guiding as ways of earning income to escape from poverty. Finally, several barriers to participation for local people in tourism exist in the Elmina community, which marginalises and excludes a cross-section of the locals from the advantages of socio-economic opportunities. These barriers include: a low level of education attainment; a lack of availability of and access to credit facilities; and a lack of ‘voice’ in the decision-making process, indicating a general need for capacity building. Government and donor agencies’ neoliberal policy objectives of utilising cultural tourism for development has failed to achieve poverty reduction in Elmina. This issue has given rise to evolving questions of the use of tourism as a developmental tool to reduce poverty and how to empower local people to actively participate in emerging socio-economic opportunities. This research subsequently contributes to furthering the understanding of the role of tourism in poverty reduction, and theoretically comprehending the role of tourism as a development strategy to combat poverty in local communities.

The existing literature about the causes of welfare state change, including health care reform, emphasizes stability, yet there is evidence of remarkable changes taking place in welfare systems in much of the developing world. This study analyzes health care reform in Ghana, a country which has experienced significant path-departing changes in just four decades (1957-2003). These changes – the establishment of a National Health Service system with deep (first-dollar) coverage, the introduction of a user-fee system, and the transition to a social health insurance scheme – have been pursued despite key countervailing factors, especially the high political costs associated with them. The study argues that to adequately account for these changes, the policy process should be given special consideration, particularly through the examination of how new policy proposals moved onto the agenda; how they were formulated, adopted, implemented and sustained; and how the reformers managed the entire reform process over time. Based on this analysis, I identified three main interconnected contextual and agential explanatory factors: (a) conjunctural factors, which created windows of opportunity for the changes to occur; (b) policy entrepreneurs, whose leadership, commitment and strategies helped in taking advantage of these opportunities to propel, sponsor, design, adopt, implement and sustain the policy changes; and (c) the concentrated institutional configuration of Ghana, which limited the number and scope of the veto points available to interest groups opposed to the proposed changes. While these three factors contributed to why and how the changes occurred, I identified policy entrepreneurs’ commitment, leadership and strategies, including the feedback effects of those strategies, as the most crucial factors. The study contributes to existing health policy literature by showing how perspectives such as the window of opportunity thesis, the dynamic political process model, the historical institutionalist approach to radical policy change and, finally, the ideational scholarship on framing processes can be combined to enrich our understanding of radical policy change. The study also introduces additional mechanisms of policy change that involve the use of repressive strategies before suggesting some modifications to a number of widely-shared assumptions within the welfare state literature focusing on path dependency, globalization, partisan ideology and vested interests.

Ghana and South Korea have experienced regime changes from politically closed regimes to liberal democracy since their independences from Britain and Japan. This study elaborates on important factors that affect regime shifts in both countries. After reviewing a vast array of literatures, I argue that economic reform and civil society directly influenced democratization in Ghana. Neo-liberal economic reform led by international forces created decentralization and social movements that gave pressures to President Jerry Rawlings to consider running for a democratic presidential election. Social movements from below directly caused the democratization in South Korea. The dictator Chun gave up his power in the face of massive demonstrations of students, labor, and oppositions and so on. Modernization indirectly contributed to democratization with social changes such as increasing level of education and urbanization in both countries. Political culture has affected democratic consolidation rather than democratic transition. / text

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The present dissertation is a multi-disciplinary project that examines the relationship between human rights and development in Africa, with specific focus on Ghana. The proposition, which is expressed in a theory of community emancipation, is that human rights hold the key to the attainment of sustainable holistic development. The theory of community emancipation represents the Akan notion of rights which speak to the lived experiences (traditional, colonial and post-colonial) of Akan peoples. It is offered as a contribution to the evolution of distinct African notions of rights. The Akan perspective on rights aims at making human rights a more accessible concept that people can relate to and to use as an effective tool to attain development. The theory is used in a general context to analyse Western development foreign policies implemented in post-colonial Africa with the active collaboration of African leaders. It concludes that these policies "failed" due to the lack of attention to human rights. Consequent to this is the creation of a culture of rights abuse in Africa and the unfounded claim propagated by African leaders that human rights does not matter for Africans, and is not part of the African culture. The work also examines Western development policies in the post-Cold War era and concludes that in general the development NGO concept is not conducive to the promotion of sustainable holistic development in Africa. The solution, among others, lies in local human rights NGOs collaborating in a new relationship with their foreign counterparts; and both given a more prominent role to play in the political, as well as the economic liberalisation processes. / The significant contribution of the work, inter alia, is linking the discourses in African philosophy and African notions of rights, which had hitherto gone their separate ways, through the theory of community emancipation. This results in the construction of new paradigm for examining rights in Africa from a developmental context. It is expected that this contribution could help enrich the international human rights discourse, contribute to plugging the loopholes and make the implementation of human rights more relevant and effective in Africa.

Following the First World War, colonial policy in West Africa underwent a transition as British administrators began to adopt indirect rule reforms to help usher in peasant-driven agricultural development in Northern Ghana. This thesis addresses the impact of these important policy changes on women and children through a study of local colonial and indigenous responses to four bodily practices: female circumcision, human trafficking (female pawning and illicit adoption), nudity and prostitution. Although much has been written about colonial and post-independence legislation of the female body, especially the female circumcision controversy in Kenya and prostitution in the mines and cities of east and southern Africa, few historical studies have fully considered the role of West African development doctrine, or the importance of ‘tradition’ and ‘community’, in colonial policies affecting women and children in Northern Ghana. Through a Parliamentary inquiry in 1930, West African departments came to reluctantly engage with questions of women and children’s status. Collectively, they decided that a gradualist path which sought to preserve community or ‘tribal’ cohesion was preferable to legislation promoting individual rights and civil society. This thesis situates this reluctance to introduce potentially destabilizing legislation in the context of development doctrine in northern Ghana. This thesis focusses on the north-eastern borderland corridor of northern Ghana where in the 1930s anthropologists and district officials investigated questions of female circumcision and as a solution to Parliamentary inquiry, sought to encourage a milder form practiced in infancy, rather than adolescence. The refusal to legislate reflected West African officials’ privileging of ‘community’ over the ‘individual’ and was repeated in their responses to ‘undesirable practices’, including nudity, pawning, and in post-independence times, illicit adoption and prostitution. In exploring state officials’ handling of these practices in a gradualist manner, this thesis illuminates the connections between development doctrine and the role of the male colonial gaze in managing undesirable practices in north-eastern Ghana, West Africa. / Thesis (Ph.D, History) -- Queen's University, 2014-04-03 14:33:00.037

Modern African historians have agreed that the use of indigenous African Muslim historical writings is an important tool for modern interpretation of African history because the majority of source materials that have been previously relied on for the interpretation of African history are for the most part inadequate in giving Africa's view point of its past. This thesis is basically concerned with a study of one representative of the indigenous African Muslim historians in the context of general historiographical studies on Africa. Four works of the author are translated and studied in an attempt to assess their value for the understanding of African history of the times and places mentioned by the author in his works.

ABSTRACT BACKGROUND: The prevalence of adiposity (overweight and obesity) is increasing in among Ghanaian women. The disparity between urban and rural Ghanaian women in adiposity is seldom described due to data paucity. The purpose of this study was to provide a comparative analysis between urban and rural women in regards to the socio-demographic factors associated with adiposity. METHODS: The analyses used cross-sectional data from the Ghana Demographic Health Survey involving child bearing women ages14 to 49 years old. The eligible population comprised 4848 non-pregnant women (2023 from urban and 2825 from rural areas). Residence-specific (urban versus rural) associations between selected independent variables and adiposity were quantified using odds ratios from univariate and multivariate logistic regression analyses. Stepwise logistic regression analyses were used to describe the variables that were best predictors of adiposity. RESULTS: The overall crude prevalence of overweight (25.0-29.9 kg/m2) and obesity (≥30kg/m2) were 40% and 18% in urban and rural areas, respectively. There was a positive statistically significant difference between urban and rural women with respect to the distribution of overweight as well as obese (p<.001). Result from the univariate models showed that among rural and urban resident women, older age, higher education, higher wealth, and lack of job was each associated with increased odds of overweight. Compared to Akan women, being of other ethnic group was associated with decreased odds of overweight in women of urban and rural settings. Lack of fruits consumption and Muslim religion were each associated with increased odds of overweight in women who live in rural settings. Consumption of less than 5 fruits in a day was associated with decreased odds of overweight in urban resident women. For urban and rural resident women, wealth index and age were the best predictors for overweight. Older age, higher education, higher weight index, lack of jobs and being other than Akan ethnicity were each associated with increased odds of obesity in urban and rural settings. Compared to married women, being unmarried was associated with increased odds of obesity in urban and rural women. Wealth index was the best predictor variable of obesity in urban women. older age, education, wealth index, having a job, and fruit consumptions were the best predictors of obesity in rural women. CONCLUSION: Adiposity was more prevalent in urban living women compare to women who reside in rural areas. This finding is critical for planning effective adiposity control in Ghana. Proving education for Ghana women may enhance their wealth and knowledge about adiposity.