The global perspective on digital revolution is one that has received a rapturous approval from information professionals, scholars and practitioners. However, such an approval has come at a great cost to memory institutions as the preservation of digital information has proved to be a complex phenomenon to memory institutions. Guided by the multi method design and underpinned by the triangulation of questionnaires, interviews, observation and document analysis, the study examined digital preservation of e-government in Ghana. Findings revealed that the creation of databases, digital publication, emails, website information and tweets were often ocassioned by the use of ICT, e-government, and application of legislations and public policies. It observed that these types of digital records were in urgent need for preservation as most of the ministries and agencies were unable to access their digital records. While the application of a digital preservation tool (Lots of Copies Keeps Stuff Safe) was a familiar terrain to the ministries and agencies, there was expressed lack of awareness about digital preservation support organisations and digital preservation standards. The study identified funding, level of security and privacy, skills training and technological obsolescence as factors that pose key threats to digital preservation. It noted backup strategy, migration, metadata and trusted repositories as the most widely implemented preservation strategy across the ministries and agencies. On the other hand, cloud computing, refreshing and emulation were the least implemented preservation strategies used to address the digital preservation challenges . The study recommends that the ministries and agencies can address many of the digital preservation challenges if they leverage on collaborative and participatory opportunities. Such collaborative and participatory opportunities involve the use of experts from other institutions to share resources and use a common protocol through cloud computing and Open Data. It further recommends that the process of developing a digital preservation policy can be guided by a template document from other jurisdictions / Information Science / D. Litt et Phil. (Information Science)

Thesis purpose: The purpose of this paper is to investigate which circumstances technology entrepreneurs believe facilitate innovation, in the context of developing countries, and in Ghana in particular. Additionally, to explore the institutional and environmental factors that enable or prevent innovative activity from taking place in the technology startup ecosystem. Methodology: Multiple case qualitative research study of the Ghanaian technology entrepreneurship ecosystem. Data collection by conducting semi-structured interviews with 20 technology entrepreneurs in Accra, Ghana. The data collection and analysis process is inspired by the phenomenography approach. Theoretical framework: Theoretical concepts found in the literature on entrepreneurship and innovation. The institutional pillars of the entrepreneurship ecosystem, developed by GEDI (Global Entrepreneurship and Development Institute), are discussed and applied in the analysis of the interview results. Conclusions: This paper identifies a number of areas where the majority of the entrepreneurs reported having similar experiences and challenges. Many of the challenges are related to institutional factors such as regulation and bureaucratic processes. Despite this, the technology entrepreneurship system in Ghana is growing, and the country offers a lot of opportunities for entrepreneurs. Ultimately, to facilitate innovation further, the institutional environment requires change in a number of areas, in order to better support technology entrepreneurs, and to create an enabling environment in which they can act on and take advantage of the opportunities that exist.

Orientador: Anselmo Luis dos Santos / Dissertação (mestrado) - Universidade Estadual de Campinas, Instituto de Economia / Made available in DSpace on 2018-08-25T16:08:24Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 ThompsonJunior_CharlesOcranKofi_M.pdf: 1303825 bytes, checksum: 47abd6bf7cbf879fbdc744f26bace8d3 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2014 / Resumo: O setor informal em Gana é muito grande e emprega a maior parte da força de trabalho do país tanto nas atividades agrícolas quanto nas demais, mas ainda assim contribui muito pouco em termos de receita tributária. O objetivo de todo país em desenvolvimento é o crescimento de sua economia através do uso de suas receitas internas e a minimização do uso de empréstimos e subvenções que trazem dificuldades para o país. A maneira mais importante de tornar isso possível é através do uso da receita fiscal, ferramenta fundamental para a construção e sustentação das economias nacionais. Uma das áreas que exigem atenção nesse sentido é o setor informal. De uma população estimada de 1.5 milhão de ganenses que pagam impostos diretos, o setor informal representa menos de 5% desse número. O ponto central dessa tese é o potencial de contribuição do setor informal para os cofres públicos, uma vez que esse apresenta grande potencial de crescimento e geração de receita, especialmente se for levada em consideração a parcela de população que obtém altos rendimentos e tem condições de pagar impostos, mais ainda não o faz. Para que o governo possa aumentar sua receita fiscal sem recorrer ao aumento das taxas é necessário ampliar a rede fiscal para nela incluir todos aqueles que deveriam pagar impostos. Gana utiliza o sistema progressivo de impostos, o que assegura que os impostos sejam proporcionais à renda. Isso significa, portanto, que a carga tributária é uma responsabilidade compartilhada por todos os cidadãos, e o setor informal não é exceção / Abstract: The informal Sector in Ghana by its size is very huge and employs the largest number of the country¿s labour force in both Agriculture and Non-agriculture activities yet, contribute very little in terms of tax revenue. It is the aim of every developing country to grow its economy by using more of its own internally generated revenues and to minimize or do away with securing loans and grants from donors which brings a lot of hardship on the country. The most important way of carrying out this is through the use of "Taxation Revenue" which is the fundamental tool for building and sustaining national economies. One area that needs concentration in this regard is the informal sector. Out of an estimated 1.5million Ghanaian tax population paying direct taxes, the informal sector consists less than 5 percent of the number. This thesis focuses on the informal sectors potential to contribute substantially into the tax revenue coffers, since the sector is highly potential in the growth and revenue generation, especially those in the high income spectrum of the sector who has the condition to pay taxes, yet are not paying. In order for the government to increase its tax revenue potential without increasing the tax rate is to widen the tax net to capture all those who are to pay tax. Ghana is using the progressive tax system in its direct tax administration, which ensures that the more your income the more tax you pay and the lower your income the lower tax you pay. It¿s therefore means that the tax burden is a shared responsibility of all citizens of the country for which the informal sector is not an exception / Mestrado / Economia Social e do Trabalho / Mestre em Desenvolvimento Econômico

The discovery of commercial quantities of oil and gas resources in the Gulf of Guinea and parts of East Africa has once again raised expectations that sustained development will emerge in one of the world’s poorest regions. At the same time there is great concern that Africa’s new resource-rich countries will succumb to the so-called resource curse phenomenon because of their generally weak governance institutions. In response to this challenge, the international community has intensified its efforts to promote good governance mechanisms in such countries, focused on transparency and accountability, and informed by a dominant institutionalist literature which argues that the differences in resource governance outcomes can be explained by the differences in institutional design and performance. A recent turn to politics in both the development and resource curse literature has begun to move the research agenda beyond the primacy of institutions to look at the politics that underpin the emergence and performance of institutions. This is particularly evidenced in the emerging literature on political settlements that emphasise the distribution of power amongst social groups in society and how these power relations shape institutions and in turn development outcomes. This new political lens is helping to deepen analysis of how and why resource-rich countries prevent or succumb to the resource curse and provides an opportunity to interrogate the inclusive development prospects of Africa’s new oil-rich countries. In this thesis, I apply and extend the political settlement approaches by incorporating ideational and spatial dynamics, to analyse the prospect of inclusive development outcomes in Ghana where oil and gas resources were discovered in 2007. Focusing on the power relations between and amongst national elites and elites in the oil producing Western Region, I interrogate the ways in which the spatial dynamics of Ghana’s prevailing competitive clientelist political settlement is shaping the governance of the oil sector, and the implications it has for inclusive development. I find that at the onset of a resource boom, the dynamics of local politics, and the dominant incentives and ideas generated by the political settlement has strongly shaped the content and enforcement of Ghana’s foundation institutions to manage the oil sector, in ways that reinforces the pre-oil settlement around the governance of natural resources and undermines the long-term prospects for inclusive development. At the same time, the oil boom has also been accompanied by the increased use of formal institutions and suggests that Ghana may be moving away from personalised to more programmatic forms of clientelism.

Inledning:  Studien har syftat till att undersöka jämställdhet i matematikundervisningen i två olika länder, Sverige och Ghana. Detta genom att undersöka verksamma lärares tankar kring flickors och pojkars uppträdande i matematikundervisningen samt hur lärarna anser att de agerar gentemot flickor och pojkar och hur de behandlar dem. Hur talutrymmet i klassrummet fördelas har också undersökts. Det vill säga hur många gånger en flicka ges ordet och hur många gånger en pojke ges ordet, hur många gånger respektive kön ber om ordet, samt hur läraren bemöter de elever som pratar rakt ut. Syfte: Syftet med studien är att jämföra svenska och ghananska lärares tankar kring och agerande för jämställdhet i matematikundervisningen. Metod: Studien har genomförts med hjälp av två forskningsmetoder, observation samt self-report. I studien har sex klassrumssituationer observerats, tre i Sverige och tre i Ghana. De lärare som observerats är även de lärare som har besvarat self-reporten. Genom observation har vi samlat in studiens kvantitativa data som består av hur talutrymmet i klassrummet fördelas samt hur elever som talar rakt ut bemöts av läraren. Med hjälp av metoden self-report har lärarnas upplevelser av flickor och pojkar (som grupp, generellt) i matematikundervisningen samt lärarnas tankar kring sitt agerande och bemötande av flickor och pojkar i matematikundervisningen synliggjorts. Resultat: Studiens kvalitativa resultat visar att samtliga lärare som deltog i studien anser att pojkar tar för sig mer under matematikundervisningen samt visar en större tilltro till sin egen förmåga. Lärarna menar att de strävar efter att behandla flickor och pojkar likvärdigt. Studiens kvantitativa resultat visar att pojkar ges mer talutrymme i undervisningen, sannolikheten är större att en pojke som ber om ordet får det än att en flicka som ber om ordet får det. Vidare visar resultatet att sannolikheten att en flicka som talar rakt ut blir besvarad är större än för en pojke. En pojke blir istället i större utsträckning ignorerad om han talar rakt ut än vad en flicka blir. Resultatet av studien visar att skillnaderna var större inom respektive land än mellan länderna. / Introduction: The purpose of this study is to research equity in mathematics education in Sweden and Ghana. This study has researched how active teachers act and reflect on equity in mathematics education and their thoughts about girls’ and boys’ behaviour during mathematics lessons as well as how they act towards girls and boys during their lessons. The study has also researched how the opportunity to speak is distributed between girls and boys as well as how the teacher reacts towards students who speak without asking. Purpose: The purpose of this study is to research how teachers in two different countries act and reflect on equity in mathematics education. Method: Our method of research was observation and self-report. A total of six teachers participated in the study, three in Sweden and three in Ghana. The teachers who participated in the observations were also those who answered the self-report. Through observation we were able to collect the quantitative data of the study which consists of how the opportunity to speak is distributed between girls and boys as well as how the teacher reacts to students who speak without asking. Through self-report we were able to research how teachers act and reflect on equity in mathematics education and how they feel they act toward girls and boys during their lessons. Findings: The qualitative findings show that the teachers who participated in the study consider boys more active during mathematic lessons and that they show a greater self-efficiency than the girls do. The teachers also explain that they strive to treat girls and boys in the same way. The quantitative findings show that boys are given more opportunities to speak and that the probability for a boy being given the opportunity to speak if they ask for it, is greater than if a girl does it. The findings also show that the probability for a teacher to answer a girl if she speaks without asking, is greater than for a boy. Teachers tend to ignore a boy if he does the same. The findings show that there was a greater difference in each country than among the countries.

Maternal mortality remains a severe problem in many parts of the world, despite efforts to reach MDG 5. Assessing progress towards this goal is difficult because maternal mortality is difficult to measure and the information available at country level does not generally permit the establishment of good baseline data. Countries with high maternal mortality ratios neither have adequate vital registration systems nor adequate resources to carry out surveys. Only few low-income countries have been able to establish a comprehensive reporting system and even where such vital registration systems are in place, maternal deaths are often underreported or misclassified as non-maternal even in large well developed cities. <p>Ghana belongs to the group of low-income countries with high maternal mortality ratios (point estimate 560, lower bound 200 and upper bound 1300) per 100,000 live births and inadequate data on maternal deaths. Previous studies have demonstrated that most of these deaths could be prevented with existing effective practices.<p><p>In this dissertation, we looked at the registration system of births and deaths in the Greater Accra Region of Ghana. We assessed completeness of registration of maternal deaths and data quality. We also looked at the degree of underreporting of maternal deaths, assessed causes of maternal deaths and substandard care of these cases through a confidential enquiry. This enabled us to identify problems associated with measuring of maternal mortality in Ghana and the standard of care of the cases. Through our findings we were able to make recommendations to achieve MDG 5 in the country by 2015 if implemented. Other maternal and child health (MCH) interventions were also looked as working to improve MCH is a continuum, and no aspect should be neglected. The first relates to seeking evidence based practice in presence of potentially complicated obstetrical conditions like premature rupture of membranes and the second pertains to preventive activities in MCH and concentrates on the results of tetanus immunisation of women in their reproductive age in the Northern Region of Ghana.<p><p>Objectives<p>1.\ / Doctorat en Sciences de la santé publique / info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished

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The performance of public utilities in low-income countries with respect to service to all customers, and particularly lower-income urban consumers, is understood to be limited in many cases. The Government of Ghana chose to implement a private sector management contract in order to deliver significant change in service delivery and financial viability. The five year management contract with Aqua Vitens Rand Limited ran from 2006 to 2011 and was not renewed. This study investigates the public utility outcomes, both as a state owned corporation and a state owned limited liability Company, and compares those outcomes with the achievements of the private operator through a Management Contract. The latter two management models operated under the oversight of the newly formed economic regulator, the Public Utility Regulatory Commission in 1999 and any effect of that regulation is considered. The hypothesis of the study developed in 2008 was that “a management contract would not provide the necessary level of empowerment, incentives and commitment and access to resources for a private operator to adequately and efficiently perform even where there is an established economic regulator with a clear mandate”. The case study approach was employed for the study data was gathered on the operations, activities, regulation and management of the urban water utility through documentary review, key-informant interviews, household surveys, public hearing meetings and user observations. However, three major cities including Accra, Kumasi and Tamale were used for the household survey. These three cities were carefully picked out taking into account the political, economic, geographical, social and cultural significance that each of the them represents and commands in Ghana.

Philosophiae Doctor - PhD / This thesis was based on a larger international comparative study called the ROSE (Relevance of Science Education) project. The study investigated the affective factors pupils perceive might be of relevance for the learning of science and technology using the ROSE survey questionnaire, and was aimed at providing data that might form part of an empirical basis for local adaptation of the science curriculum. / South Africa

Magister Artium (Development Studies) - MA(DVS) / Over the last decade, there has been a marked convergence in thinking regarding the importance of social cash transfers in poverty alleviation. As such, most governments especially in the developing world have began embracing the idea of rolling out various social cash transfers programmes in a bid to address poverty, social exclusion and vulnerability. This study which is predominantly centred on the LEAP social grant programme in Ghana aims at assessing the impact of the programme in alleviating household poverty in rural Ghana, specifically in the Tolon-Kumbungu district of the Northern region. Through a combination of both qualitative and quantitative strategies, the study focuses on unravelling in how far the programme has contributed to improving the livelihoods and general welfare of beneficiary households in the case study area. Using data from structured household questionnaires, focus group discussions and in-depth interviews conducted in two rural communities (Dingoni and Woribogu), the study establishes that the LEAP social grant has a significant positive impact on food consumption, frequency of utilization of healthcare facilities and the school enrolment rate for children aged 6-13 years in beneficiary households. However, although hypothesised, no significant impact is observed in relation to the incidence of child labour in the household. Thus, in line with Rawls’ theory of justice, the researcher argues that the LEAP social grant programme is a very useful mechanism for promoting social justice in the Ghanaian society. Despite its successes, the study also uncovers that, the insufficient nature of the cash transfer, irregular payment periods, lack of access to complimentary services and lack of transparency and accountability on the part of payment officials are some key challenges confronting the programme from the perspective of beneficiaries, whilst limited staff capacity, the non availability of training opportunities for staff, inadequate logistical support and no motivation for programme staff and voluntary structures also constitute some key challenges from the institutional perspective. In all, the study recommends that government increases the cash amount and pay transfers regularly, link beneficiaries to existing complimentary services in the district, recruit more staff and provide in-service training opportunities for them, strictly monitor compliance to LEAP conditionalities and ensure transparency and accountability in the payment of transfers to beneficiaries.