The new philanthropy is increasingly seen as a panacea and an alternative source of global development finance for rural development, especially in developing countries. The theoretical underpinning of the new philanthropy entails the idea that the private sector, led by philanthropists and civil society organisations in social policy issues can lead to more effective outcomes through partnership. The existing literature on the new philanthropy mainly focuses on its economic or commercial impact. This is particularly the case in the rural parts of Ghana; there has been very little research on the new philanthropy’s impact on the livelihoods of the poorest segments of society. Therefore, this research investigates the impact of new philanthropy on the livelihoods of smallholder farmers in Northern Ghana in order to fill the gap. The study employed ethnographic research, utilising qualitative techniques involving 20 stakeholders in philanthropy and livelihood affairs and 100 smallholder farmers. The research findings suggest that there is a significant relationship between philanthropic sponsored interventions in Ghana and an increase in smallholder farmers’ yields. The few farmers who purchased improved seeds and other agricultural inputs registered significant increases. However, this study identified some bottlenecks inhibiting access to agricultural inputs by smallholder farmers. Majority of smallholder farmers revealed that they could not afford them (seeds, chemical fertilizer and other inputs) despite the subsidies. Furthermore, rainfall variability gives rise to fluctuating food production from one season to another; meanwhile, there is a lack of strategy from philanthropic practitioners to address the variability in rainfall. Through philanthropy, other methods of faming such as irrigation farming agroecology, and permaculture could be exploited to the benefits of smallholder farmers. The outcomes of this study have policy implications for philanthropic practitioners. This study shows that the failure to involve farmers directly in decisions that affect their livelihoods is a major cause of livelihood interventionist programme failures in Ghana. Thus, this study argues that understanding the socioeconomic dynamics in the Northern Region and amongst the farmers should be an important part of policy formulation for philanthropic involvements seeking to improve livelihood of smallholder farmers. Lastly, the study called for a separate policy framework for philanthropy that would have a key objective of mobilising private philanthropic resources to support steady economic growth and sustainable development, dealing directly with recipients.

abstract: Africa is misrepresented and mis-imaged in the western media. Because of this, notions and beliefs about atrocities that take place on the continent lack context, leaving people to think that Africa is a place of misery, darkness and despair; a monolithic land where evil resides. The image of Africa as the "heart of darkness" was conjured following the Joseph Conrad novel and the idea of Africa as the "Dark Continent" still pervades Western thought. This is an inadequate understanding of Africa, and lacks the context to comprehend why many of the atrocities in Africa occur. I will explore two atrocities in Africa, the 1994 Rwanda Genocide and child slavery on Lake Volta in Ghana. I believe that both these examples reflect how the label of evil is insufficient to describe the circumstances around each atrocity. In order to understand such events we must understand the part that colonialism and poverty play in the disruption of pan-African culture. The "evils" of these two phenomenon, are in many cases the result of the Western world's past involvement in Africa and are remnants and extensions of the disruption caused. / Dissertation/Thesis / M.A. Social Justice and Human Rights 2011

The proposition of the thesis is, in its role as the lead offshore petroleum regulator in Ghana, the Petroleum Commission is not competent enough to oversee robust offshore health and safety regulation. Two accounts are developed to support this claim. First, the conferment of dual licensing and health and safety regulatory functions on the Petroleum Commission gives rise to a potential conflict. Secondly, even recognising a distinction between formal and de facto independence, neither is present in the Petroleum Commission. A number of factors justify these assertions: not least the fact that the law establishing the Petroleum Commission confers discretionary powers on the executive and does not provide regulatory independence as a formal requirement. In addition, the Commission's financial and administrative procedures are determinable by influences external to it. Formal independence is not, however, in itself a sufficient condition for the proper exercise of regulatory discretion. It is necessary for the regulatory body in question to be able in fact to behave independently, that is, to develop and take ownership of regulatory values, which in turn depend on the possession of relevant competence and expertise. Based on comparative analysis of global offshore regulatory regimes, and backed by empirical evidence, the thesis recommends legislative reforms in Ghana aimed at a functional separation of petroleum licensing from health and safety regulation.

Philosophiae Doctor - PhD / Globally, Employee Assistance Programme (EAP) has become the most effective workplace programme used to assist employees in the identification and resolution of performance and behavioural related problems. Employees, irrespective of the sector of employment are seen as the most valuable assets of any organization and therefore their wellness is as important as the organization itself. Employees' personal or work related problems may adversely affect their health as well as their productivity, thereby impeding the growth of an organization. It is for this reason that the EAP has increasingly become an important tool in addressing employees’ personal and work related challenges. Midwives as employees are prone to challenges such as maternal deaths at the workplace. They are more likely to undergo stressful situations for failing to meet the general goal of their profession, which, among others, include provision of adequate care for pregnant women until they safely deliver. These stressful conditions have negative effects on midwives' health, behaviour and productivity. However, there is no literature that has looked at how midwives in the Ashanti Region of Ghana are affected by maternal deaths and their coping mechanisms employed to address the effects of maternal deaths. Literature revealed that there is hardly any known work-related assistance programme designed to support Ghanaian midwives when faced with work-related challenges likely to affect their work-output. Hence, this study developed an appropriate EAP for midwives dealing with maternal deaths in Ghana based on the exploration and description of the effects of maternal death, coping mechanisms used and their experiences with the facility-based maternal death review (MDR). In order to meet the general aim of the study, a qualitative research approach, with a combination of exploratory, descriptive and contextual designs was used. Purposive sampling was employed to select participants; ward and unit managers (supervisors) (18) and midwives who met the inclusion criteria (39). A total of 57 participants were used in the study. Data were collected through semi-structured individual interviews and focus group discussions, as well as field notes. Thematic Content Analysis was used to manage data through transcribing, organizing, development of category and coding of data. Final data management was done with qualitative computer data analysis package (Atlas ti version 7.1.7). The full understanding of the effects of maternal deaths on midwives and the mechanisms of coping employed to address effects afforded the development of an EAP to support midwives dealing with maternal deaths. Five main themes emerged from the analysis of collected data, namely effect of death as a unique experience, multi-dimensional effects of MD on Midwives' personal life, effects of MD on the midwives’ associated environment, mechanisms of coping employed by Midwives and Perceived MDR process (Phase 1). Phase 2 considered the development of Employee Assistance Programme (EAP) for midwives dealing with maternal deaths in Ashanti Region of Ghana. The steps of developing occupational health service at the workplace by Acutt Hattingh and Bergh (2011) were applied to develop the EAP. Ethical practices pertaining to the study of human subjects as specified by the Research Ethics Committee of the University of the Western Cape and research guidelines of Ministry of Health- Ghana Health Service were observed. It is recommended that, all hospitals in Ashanti Region institute the EAP programme to assist midwives cope with challenges associated with maternal death.

Philosophiae Doctor - PhD / This study addresses the issue of the low participation in or enrolment of the poor in Ghana’s National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS). The low enrolment of the poor in the NHIS is attributed to the difficulty in identifying who qualifies for exemptions from paying health insurance premiums. In an attempt to address this problem, the purpose of this study was, therefore, to develop a model for identifying very poor households for health insurance premium exemptions in the Kassena-Nankana District of Northern Ghana in an effort to increase their access to equitable health care

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Cette étude émane de plusieurs observations tirées d’une recherche sur l’Intégration de l’Internet dans l’enseignement/apprentissage du FLE à l’Université de Cape Coast. Notamment parmi celles-ci est le fait que les étudiants n’ont pas les capacités requises pour tirer profit des opportunités d’apprentissage qui leur sont disponibles dans le département de français. C’est dans cette optique que l’Internet en tant qu’outil multimédia à grands potentiels pédagogiques est identifié comme capable d’aider les étudiants ghanéens à développer diverses stratégies d’acquisition et d’apprentissage de la langue française. La problématique de cette étude est donc d’identifier les stratégies de compréhension qu’adoptent les étudiants lorsqu’ils travaillent sur des sites Internet authentiques en langue française. Celle-ci a essayé de mettre la lumière sur les procédés mentaux qui sous-tendent la compréhension des informations sur l’Internet en prenant comme appui les recherches menées par RUBIN (1989), OXFORD (1990), O’MALLEY et CHAMOT (1990) et COHEN (1998) sur les stratégies d’apprentissage et d’utilisation de la langue seconde/étrangère. Grâce aux méthodes de recueil des données par verbalisation, questionnaires, entretiens et observation en situation de navigation sur des sites Internet authentiques, nous avons obtenu des données quantitatives et qualitatives chez 52 étudiants inscrits en FLE dans quatre universités publiques du Ghana. Les tâches de navigation consistaient à réserver une place dans un train ou une chambre dans un hôtel, à demander des services postaux en ligne, à créer des comptes clients, à trouver l’itinéraire sur un site de transports en commun, etc. L’analyse des données nous a permis d’identifier des stratégies de navigation comme la recherche d’indices, la lecture fine, l’essai-erreur, le recours à l’aide d’un tiers, l’auto-encouragement, entre autres. Ces stratégies de navigation correspondent à différentes stratégies d’inférence du sens (en contexte, par mots-clés, par images, par traduction, par outils interactifs, par les couleurs, etc.), le raisonnement déductif ou inductif, l’analogie, le transfert de connaissance, l’analyse textuelle par les connaissances acquises en FLE. On note également des stratégies de vérification de sens comme le recours à des dictionnaires, des traducteurs en ligne et des moteurs de recherche. Certaines stratégies affectives et sociales comme le recours à l’explication d’un collège et l’auto-rappel des objectifs aident les étudiants à confirmer le sens des mots nouveaux en français. Ces stratégies sont identifiées grâce à l’analyse qualitative des données de verbalisation et de l’interface de navigation de sept étudiants qui ont atteint les objectifs de la tâche. La dernière partie de cette étude se penche alors sur quelques implications pédagogiques des tâches réalisées sur des supports Internet authentiques. Là, nous avons déblayé la notion d’autonomie dans l’enseignement/apprentissage du Français Langue Etrangère et tiré des conclusions spécifiques par rapport aux tâches de compréhension écrite sur l’Internet. Nous relevons d’ailleurs dans ce cadre sept cas d’autonomie que permettent de développer les tâches de compréhension écrite sur l’Internet. / This investigation stems from observations that were made regarding students’ ability to take control of their study of French in a research aimed at integrating Internet to the teaching and learning of French. It was quite clear that students lacked the required strategies for them to take advantage of the learning opportunities available to them in the French Department. It is therefore in this vein that the Internet was identified as the multimedia capable of fostering the development of various strategies of acquiring/learning the French Language. The focus of the study was therefore on strategies that students would adopt in order to comprehend information that is available to them while browsing a French website. It sought to identify the mental processes that underlie comprehension on the Internet taking as basis researches realized in the cognitive sciences by RUBIN (1989), OXFORD (1990), O’MALLEY and CHAMOT (1990) and COHEN (1998) about strategies of learning and using a second/foreign language. From 52 second-year students doing French in four public universities in Ghana, we were able to obtain through think-aloud procedures, questionnaires and observation, quantitative and qualitative data about strategies that they adopted when browsing on authentic websites in French. The browsing tasks involved shopping for items on the Internet, booking a place on a train or in a hotel, requesting for a postal service, creating a user account on shopping sites, seeking directions about how to get to a place, among others. Browsing strategies such as looking out for clues, critical reading, trial and error, seeking help, self-motivation, forming hypothesis were identified as strategies that aid comprehension of information on the websites. The strategies helped students to guess meaning through such means as inference (in context – word context, keywords, images, interactive tools, colours, etc.), deductive and inductive reasoning, translation, analogy, transfer of knowledge and textual analysis with previous knowledge in French. Students also applied various strategies of checking meaning by using online dictionaries, online translation tools as well as search engines. Social and affective strategies such as seeking explanation from a peer and reminding oneself of goals of the tasks At the end of the study, it was quite evident that strategies adopted by students in understanding information on the website did not differ from those identified by early research in cognitive sciences. However, it is important to note how these strategies enhanced the general understanding of the French Language by students and also their autonomy in learning the language. Various suggestions were offered about the best way of developing students’ autonomous use of Internet resources in the teaching/learning environment.also helped students confirm interpretative guesses about words and phrases they encountered for the first time in French.

The return to the customary or integration of customary and statutory tenure systems to continue gain currency in both contemporary policy and academic discourses on land tenure as an alternative pathway towards enhancing security of access and tenure in the sub-Saharan African context. Central to the debates are issues concerning the relevance of customary land tenure arrangements and appropriate pathways to successfully engineer the process of harmonization toward improved tenure security whilst preserving of the communitarian principles of local tenure systems. Using two case studies in rural Ghana, this study investigated the prevailing land tenure arrangements, practices and socio-political dynamics that underpin them, highlighting the challenges and opportunities that need to be addressed for the successful adaptation of customary tenure rules and institutions into the statutory system towards improved tenure security and sustainable land management. The research employed a mixture of qualitative and quantitative methods including interviews, focus group discussions and questionnaires to collate and analyse data from sampled respondents in Kakum and Ankasa in southern Ghana. The results of the investigation revealed that contrary to the mainstream view that customary tenure arrangements are incapable of providing tenure security in the face on ongoing transformations, the perceived tenure security of respondents was generally high in the study areas. This notwithstanding, it was observed that the emerging patterns of access and control (occasioned by increasing land scarcity and commodification) have resulted in social differentiation and inequalities in land access and distribution amongst the poor and vulnerable members of the landholding groups including women and the youth. The research also showed that aside from tenure security, other important contextual factors including access to credit, modernised agricultural inputs and targeted extension service support significantly influence households' investment decisions regarding adoption of sustainable land management practices. These findings have far-reaching implications for current land tenure interventions aimed at harmonising customary and statutory tenure structures for improved tenure security and sustainable land management. Results of the investigation were used to develop a three-phase incremental framework on formalisation of customary land rights which could serve as bespoke framework to guide the design of land tenure intervention strategies and implementation towards addressing local tenure insecurity in the specific context of the study areas and sub-Saharan Africa generally. The major conclusion of the research is that balancing the market efficiency and social equity considerations is necessary and should be pursued under the ongoing land tenure reforms for inclusive and equitable outcomes at the local level. This derives from the fact that the existing tenurial challenges are complex and context-specific, equally requiring well-balanced and nuanced solutions to effectively address them.

Master of Science / Agricultural Economics / Vincent R. Amanor-Boadu / Ghana is the first Sub-Saharan African country to meet the Millennium Development Goals (MDG) of halving extreme poverty by 2015 and has made great improvement in four of the total eight MDG. Supporting by several aid programs, Ghana is right in the middle of an economic boom through agriculture with the stock exchange listing of the Ghanaian Agricultural Development Bank the 3rd of July 2015. However, many Ghanaian producers, specifically in the northern part, cannot take full advantage of this “boom” as they are dealing with poor soil quality and suboptimal levels fertilizer use. By increasing fertilizer use, producers can improve their field’s soil quality and achieve higher crop yields. The purpose of this study is to gain a better understanding of factors influencing the fertilizer use decision among smallholder producers in northern Ghana. A two-part model is estimated and takes into account number of important demographic, production and marking factors affecting producer’s decision on fertilizer adoption and amount used. Findings from this study have implication for designing private initiatives and public policies on improving smallholder producers’ agricultural productivity through the adoption of fertilizer.

Master of Science / Department of Agricultural Economics / Vincent Amanor-Boadu / Food insecurity affects 16 percent of the population in northern Ghana, making food security a major focus for many of the development programs in the country. A major initiative to overcome food insecurity may involve the development of effective storage systems to help farmers control the flow of their production to markets and, thus, have higher control over the price they receive. While the poor storage infrastructure in the region is known, there is lack of knowledge about the factors motivating farmers to utilize storage in spite of these conditions. The purpose of this paper is to increase understanding about storage behavior of smallholder maize farmers in northern Ghana. A review of the literature indicates credit plays a large role in storage behavior. The purpose of this thesis is to bridge the gap between literature on storage as a bank, and on storage as a way to ensure food security. Specific objectives include: i) estimating formal and informal credit’s effects on storage behavior of smallholder maize growers, and ii) examining the effect of credit at various levels of storage. This analysis is based on data collected on 527 farmers in Ghana’s four northernmost regions obtained from an agricultural production survey conducted in 2013 and 2014 by USAID-METSS – a project funded by the Economic Growth Office of the USAID mission in Ghana. Ordinary Least Squares modeling was employed to determine the marginal effects of formal and informal credit on storage. Additionally, quantile regression modeling estimated the marginal effects at different levels of storage, including the median. The results indicate that formal credit and on-farm storage had statistically significant negative effects on maize storage at both the mean and median, but only farm output proved to be statistically significant at different levels across the storage distribution. On-farm storage had a statistically significant negative effect on storage when compared to storing off-farm at facilities like local store rooms. Carryover storage from the previous year tested to have statistically significant negative effects on storage. Under the conceptual framework utilized for this study, the results suggest that using formal credit increases a household’s food security.