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This paper examines the nexus between financial development and economic growth in Ghana between 1970 and 2020. The study adopted the Bayesian Model Averaging (BMA) techniques to address issues of model uncertainty due to many potential explanatory variables that could influence growth. The study revealed that credit to the private sector, gross domestic savings, inflation rate, labour force participation, current account balance and population growth as key promoters of growth. Therefore, there is the need to address cost of doing business and promote increased credit delivery to the private sector. The direct association between financial development and growth indicates the need for policy makers to implement measures such as provision of legal environment for efficient allocation of credit to the private sector and provide the environment for the establishment of more financial institutions to enhance the growth of the financial sector. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The informal economy has become a vibrant and growing phenomenon across the world. Within the context of sustainable development, connecting local economic development (LED) to the informal economy is imperative. However, the informal economy remains largely neglected within the conventional LED literature. Using key informant interviews and focus group discussions, this paper found that recognizing, embracing and supporting informal economy contributes to a more inclusive form of LED. The study concluded that local government authorities need to be more innovative in recognising the informal economy as part of local governments' strategies for addressing unemployment, and supporting livelihoods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the complexities, degree of organisation and embedded potentials in selected informal worlds of work involving women in Agbogbloshie, a site that has achieved both national and international notoriety for its ostensible environmental and social unrest challenges. The analysis provides empirical evidence to show how informality remains a persistent, substantial and the defining feature of Ghana’s economy in terms of its fostering growth and creating jobs, although its overall role in the national development discourse is largely ignored or seldom considered. Drawing on participant observation and qualitative field-based survey data, the paper presents the multi-dimensional ways migrant women from northern Ghana adopt to innovate, network and “graduate” from e-waste-related activities to engage in long-distance trade, which, in turn, serves as a catalyst for spin-off activities that manifest differently between the south and the north of the country. It also sheds light on how these women, with little prospect of formal employment, negotiate contemporary economic shifts and create an occupational continuum that defies strict compartmentalisation. The paper adds to the expanding corpus of writings on informalisation as a growing, noteworthy and integral feature of Sub-Saharan Africa’s economy. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This study analyzed the impact of technological progress and digitization on Ghana's economy using panel data for the period 2009–2019. Technological progress and economic growth inter-dependency was analyzed in two steps. First, the relation was tested using Augmented Dickey–Fuller method. Second, we estimated the long-run relation between the variables by using Engel Granger and Error Correction models. The results indicate that adopting technology or digitizing the economy has the potential to drive sustainable growth and development. In particular, it was noted that ICT investments drive high productivity rates and faster economic growth. In sum, technological progress and digitization have the potential to foster significant growth and therefore must be given high credence in the planning and designing of development programmes. This paper contributes to development theories on the role that ICT plays in economic growth and development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Climate change remains a serious threat to climate sensitive pro-poor development interventions in the Pru District of Ghana. This study examined how climate change impacts on Local Economic Development (LED) interventions, the extent to which climate change adaptation (CCA) initiatives are integrated into LED and the challenges associated with the mainstreaming process. Qualitative research design and purposive sampling was used to collect data from 28 respondents at the Pru District Assembly with an interview guide. The results show that climate change adversely affects the following LED programmes; beekeeping, micro-credit for agricultural development programme, and fishing net and outboard motor programmes. The findings further indicate that climate-smart Agriculture, aquaculture (Fish Cage Culture) and Sustainable natural resource utilization and management the CCA initiatives mainstreamed into pro-poor LED in the Pru District to reduce the inevitable impacts of climate change. The study identified multifaceted challenges militating against CCA mainstreaming in the District to include inadequate resources for CCA, inactive stakeholder and institutional collaboration, and lack of continuity of CCA programmes. This paper recommends strong government support for CCA programmes, commitment of adequate resources and effective stakeholder and institutional collaboration. The paper concludes that effective integration of CCA into pro-poor LED is a panacea to achieving sustainable local development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper uses survey data from 1458 households in 60 communities from 24 districts in 5 regions of Ghana and logistic regression to examine conflicts as a contest for mineral wealth in mining communities, estimates the determinants of conflicts in these mining communities and examines how these contests could erode and/or enhance Ghana’s gains from mining. The paper finds that the likelihood of a conflict occurring in a mining area is about 56.7%. Village effect was found to be a significant positive predictor of mining conflict. Also, improvement in primary education, employment opportunities to community members of ages 25–50, the strength of institutions and the absence of small-scale miners in a mining community reduces the probability of conflicts occurring by 12.8, 35.8, 6.57 and 17.7%, respectively. While an increase in pollution levels increases the likelihood of conflicts occurring by 7.1%, primary occupation in manufacturing and services, and increase in household monthly expenditure significantly increases the likelihood of conflicts within the mining communities as the cost of living increases. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Small and medium enterprises (SMEs) are the core of most economies and are a major source of economic growth. In recent times, banks have been actively involved in the financing of SMEs through the provision of loans to this sector. This paper investigates the impact of SMEs financing on banks’ profitability in Ghana. The study employed the fixed effect model as the main regression tool. The study result reveals that SMEs significantly contribute to banks’ profitability in Ghana. Interestingly, transaction cost in administering SME loans was insignificant in all the models. Higher inflation reduces the real value of the loan and erodes the interest returns on the total credit to the SMEs. Conversely, growth of GDP enhances the growth of the bank profit. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Access to credit is critical for SMEs’ growth. However, these businesses that need credit to take advantage of growth opportunities are noted to be credit constrained. The paper examined the SME financing gap on a sectoral basis using the survey approach. The study adopted descriptive and non-parametric statistics in the analyses of data involving 1200 SMEs with 200 each from the agriculture, manufacturing, transportation, construction, retail and hospitality sectors. It was revealed that there are sectoral differences in the SME financing gap with the agriculture sector being the most credit constrained. Sector-specific policies are therefore recommended to tackle the problem. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Butterworth was chosen for this research as one of the growth points in the former Transkei under apartheid. Prospective and existing entrepreneurs in mostly manufacturing enterprises were entitled to various incentives, all of which were phased out by the mid-1990s, and factory closures ensued. Since then the economy of Butterworth has atrophied, leaving thousands unemployed. This paper suggests a community development model as an alternative strategy for resuscitating an ailing local economy, emphasising the imperatives of community participation at all levels of the developmental process. Kenya and Ghana are cited as examples of community development. With this international backdrop, three community-inspired projects in the Eastern Cape were used to test the model: the Umngazi Farming Scheme, the Philani Ncambedlana Farmers' Cooperative and the Tanga Village Masakhane. The paper shows that community development can provide an alternative livelihood in local economies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Decades of development practice suggest the fundamental importance of improving aid-delivery systems and stakeholder competence in order to improve the well-being of poor people. However, it is questionable whether the aid system is able to change its attitudes and values through such partnerships in a way that will do this. This paper suggests that for this change to be possible, processes of individual, organisational, and inter-organisational learning have to be encouraged, in ways that do not sacrifice the knowledge obtained by aid workers in the processes of global management. The paper explores procedures of bilaterally funded community education projects in Ghana, in order to give insights into the working of partnership arrangements as a means to contribute to the alleviation of global poverty. Critical instances from the case study projects reveal the ways in which learning is facilitated, used, ignored, and hindered as the organisational relations develop. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reflects critically on issues of North-South collaboration and participatory research arising from a project on participatory and sustainable local-level environmental management in the peri-urban area surrounding Kumasi, Ghana. Rapid immigration, uncoordinated conversion of farmland to housing, intensified resource exploitation, and declining water quality and availability are particularly pressing problems there. Collaborative research arrangements with local partners as well as sustained participatory relations with selected village communities were central to this project. More generally, the paper reflects on institutional issues relating to the dichotomy between research and development assistance projects, and their implications for project evaluations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Whereas previous research has acknowledged the significance of capacity building for development, there is little research on the capacity building typologies for local economic development (LED) actors at the local level. Adopting the community capitals framework, this study attempts to fill this gap by examining the LED capacity-building typologies and challenges in Ghana. Data for the study was collected through in-depth interviews with local government officials and LED experts in Ghana. The findings revealed six capacity building typologies and three LED capacity building challenges. This study argued that LED capacity building is an indispensable element in the development of local economies. It is recommended that these LED capacity typologies be used to develop a comprehensive LED capacity building framework. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sources of economic growth in Ghana have not been clear. Several studies have contributed to the finance and growth literature with little attention on remittances and the joint effect of financial sector development and remittances. This paper uses macrodata to examine the linkages between financial development, remittances and economic growth in Ghana. We estimate a dynamic heterogeneous Autoregressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) model to show that financial booms are not, in general, growth-enhancing, and a certain level of financial development can drag down economic growth in the long term and the combined effect of financial development and remittances should be of concern to policymakers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates the long-run impact of foreign direct investment and trade openness on economic growth in Ghana (1970-2011) within the framework of the endogenous growth literature. Adopting the autoregressive distributed lag bounds testing approach to cointegration the results suggest that the interaction of foreign direct investment and exports has been crucial in fostering growth, thus validating the famous Bhagwati hypothesis. From a policy oriented point of view, the study recommends the channeling of foreign direct investment to export-oriented sectors and the promotion of export-led growth strategies in long-term development plans. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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In the modern information economy, information technology diffusion is credited with the significant increase in economic development experienced in many parts of the world except, perhaps, sub-Saharan Africa. This paper discusses the problems associated with information technology (IT) diffusion in sub-Saharan Africa, ranging from unstable and erratic power supply and unreliable telecommunications to inadequate computing resources, and most significantly, to the lack of human and financial resources to tackle the challenges. Empirical data obtained through a survey questionnaire are analyzed to illustrate the extent of the problems in the case of Ghana. The paper concludes with discussion of possible strategies for tackling these problems. Mina Baliamoune is the accepting Associate Editor for this article. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper examines the operators' attitudes towards sustainable tourism development concept in Ghana, using Butler's (1993) five constructs. The major finding is that Ghanaian tourism operators (private and public) have favorable attitudes toward sustainable tourism development concept. However, its implementation is constrained by a state of inertia such as cost and expertise. Therefore, a comprehensive training in development of tourism, human resources, and the marketing and promotion of the concept needs to be implemented by the government in order to bring about a better awareness and benefits of this concept. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Recently there have been increasing instances of the return of the state as the central agent of development in resource-rich nations globally. Characterised by both a rhetorical and substantive commitment to increasing control over national resource revenues, this so-called new/neo-extractivism has attracted a debate concerning the extent to which it offers a viable alternative to the imperatives of neoliberal resource extraction. Using two examples, this paper analyses the ways in which the Ghanaian and Ecuadorean states discursively imagine such structural transformations. It highlights the value in analysing the politics of language for strengthening studies of neo-extractivism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines whether Ghana's continuing reliance on primary products has contributed to its economic growth and such economic growth would be sustained in the long run. It shows that Ghana's economic growth since the 1990s can be attributed to a series of fortunes and heavy reliance on a few primary products will not lead to a sustainable development. The experience of Ghana provides important policy implications. Structural reforms, such as a well-designed industrial policy, would be needed for the long run economic development. For Ghana, industrialization did not progress since the 1980s. The infrastructure could not support the manufacturing development and the tertiary level education is not appropriate, particularly in science and engineering. Focusing on selected industrial estates would be meaningful in light of the limited resources. It is needed to prepare a stable supply of electricity and to reduce an exchange rate volatility. A modification of tariff structure depending on the stages of processing and an active utilization of export incentive schemes would be helpful. The government is to pay attention to a further development of the agro-processing industry, textiles and garments industry, aluminum production and the petrochemical industry. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigated the impact of trade openness on economic growth volatility of Ghana from 1970 to 2013, using cointegration and error correction techniques. Our findings show that both the long and short run economic growth volatility is positively influenced by changes in trade openness. Volatility in domestic credit to private sector, shocks after the economic liberalization and financial openness contributed negative to economic growth volatility in the short run. The major policy implication of our paper is that developing economies should take into consideration their own realities in their trade policies to limit economic growth volatility. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the questions of why and how foreign assistance was utilised successfully in South Korea but less so in Ghana, with a focus on the role of aid in the process of state building and state transition in these two countries. As multiple policy makers and scholars have noted, in 1957 South Korea and Ghana shared similar levels of GDP per capita, yet South Korea then achieved rapid economic development and democracy in one generation, while Ghana suffered from slow development and a general deterioration of the standard of living. In this study I adopt a comparative historical research method to explain the divergent paths of these two countries, with a special focus on the impact of foreign assistance on state transitions. I argue that contextual factors – including the effect of the colonial legacy in each of these two regions in shaping modern states, and the specific characteristics of foreign assistance intervention – provide useful insights in explaining the differential impact of aid on state building and state transition in Ghana and in South Korea. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Livelihoods approaches emerged from a broad range of efforts to understand how people live in particular places. They have since cohered into often instrumentally applied frameworks that rest on the broadly held assumption that livelihoods are principally about the management of one’s material circumstances. This assumption limits the explanatory power of livelihoods approaches by shifting a range of motivations for livelihoods decisions outside the analytic frame. This article extends efforts to recover a broader lens on livelihoods decisions and outcomes by conceptualising livelihoods as forms of intimate government, local efforts to shape conduct to definite, shifting, and sometimes contradictory material and social ends. By employing a Foucault-inspired analytics of government to the study of livelihoods in Ghana’s Central Region, the paper presents a systematic, implementable approach to the examination of livelihoods and their outcomes in light of this reframing, one where material outcomes are one of many possible ends of intimate government, instead oftheend. By opening the analytic lens in this manner, we can explain a much wider set of livelihoods outcomes and decisions than possible under contemporary approaches. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper explores the impact of mining on the everyday lives of people in the Wassa West District, Western Region, Ghana. It is based on an interpretative methodology involving focus group discussions and in-depth interviews, complemented with an analysis of policy documents. The results reveal an extensive geographic transformation of livelihoods at various scales as a result of the local people being displaced from their lands that have become contested economic spaces. Monetary compensation for farmers who have lost their lands to mining companies remains a contentious issue, with farmers reporting that they are always at the losing end of any contestation for land and compensation. Furthermore, the local public perception is that there is hardly any trickle down of mining benefits to the local communities to improve their lives. After more than two decades of operation of various minerals and mining laws, our findings point to a conflicting and confused mining sector policy environment that disadvantages local communities. There is therefore a need to revise the country’s mining laws to reflect international best practices, to help make Ghana a sustainable mining investment destination in Africa, and to facilitate sustainable economic development in the country. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

More than four decades ago, Philip J. Foster (1927-2008) published an essay on the The vocational school fallacy in development planning, drawing on research on schools in Ghana. That essay has been reprinted in numerous texts and remains frequently quoted in recent research literature. What were his main general insights about vocational education and how have these stood the test of time? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Drawing on the experience of Ghana, which the World Bank itself proclaimed as an African success story in the early 1990s, this paper sheds important light on why neoliberal policies have had limited success in Africa and what strategies are likely to be necessary to foster growth and industrialisation in Ghana and elsewhere in Africa. In 2001, a few short years after being proclaimed as an economic miracle, Ghana joined the growing ranks of highly indebted poor countries (HIPC) - an especially humbling development for this once proud nation. Why did Ghana's economy collapse after recovering so well? Ghana's experience highlights both the promise and limitation of neoliberal reforms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Governments undertake expenditures to pursue a variety of objectives, one of which is economic growth. This paper examines aggregated and disaggregated expenditure on economic growth in Ghana over the period 1970-2004. Expenditure on education and health represents human capital development, while expenditure on roads and waterways captures infrastructure development. The study reveals that the aggregated government expenditure retarded economic growth. The study's findings show that expenditures on health and infrastructure promote economic growth, while those on education had no significant impact in the short run. In addition, the political economy variables-namely the nature of governance (democracy) and political instability (years of changes in government and military dictatorship)-proved significant in explaining Ghana's economic growth over the study period. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Researchers have generally assumed that housing policies of the colonial and the immediate post-colonial governments were shaped solely by social and political considerations. From a social perspective, some have argued that governments intervened in the housing field purely on health grounds to create good sanitary conditions and prevent the spread of diseases, especially amongst the colonizers and indigenous educated elites. From a political perspective, writers have argued that the key goal for most housing programmes was to prevent unrest and ensure political longevity. Even though each of these arguments has some merit, little, if any, consideration has been given to the economic logic of housing policies and programmes. Indeed, researchers have generally assumed that colonial and immediate post-colonial governments never considered the economic significance of housing. This assumption is incorrect. Through surveying published and archival sources, this paper aims to rectify the neglect of the economic logic of housing policies by demonstrating that economic implications were considered in the implementation of housing policies and programmes. As will be shown, housing was seen not only as a necessary tool to secure labour and improve productivity, but also as an essential element for the success of economic development projects, especially industrialization programmes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ghana has witnessed tremendous economic growth since the 1990s and attained the Millennium Development Goals target of halving poverty. This notwithstanding, inequality in Ghana increased over the same period, suggesting growth benefits were not equitably distributed. This study provides evidence on the determinants of household consumption expenditure and factors that explain rural-urban welfare gaps between 1998 and 2013. The study employs an unconditional quantile regression and recently proposed decomposition technique based on re-centred influence functions. We find significant spatial differences in consumption expenditure across selected quantiles, with rural-urban inequalities driven largely by differences in returns to households' endowments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, optimal policies for 1960 to 1970 will be sought and a comparison made between the actual performance of the postcolonial period and the policy which might have been optimal for this period. The optimal policies are determined by the application of an optimal control technique to the model as Baum (1983, p. 83) points out in a related context: With the development of optimal control techniques applicable to sizable models it has become feasible to calculate optimal policies for a historical period and compare them directly with realized policies. Section 2 of this paper will discuss the model. Section 3 touches on the optimal control approach implicit in it. Policy implication of the finding is discussed in section 4; this is followed by references. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As a result of the failure to meet tax collection targets, policymakers, economists, and financiers have focused their attention in recent years on how a country's tax effort has been employed to combat tax evasion and maximise tax collections for economic growth. The study looked at the nexus between tax efforts, tax evasion, and economic development, as well as the effect of institutional quality on moderating the nexus in Ghana. The maximum likelihood (ML) estimation and structural equation modelling (SEM) techniques were used in the study to analyse a sample of quartered data from 1996 to 2020. Testing the hypotheses reveals that both tax efforts and tax evasion have negative effects on the economic freedom of the world index (EFWI) but positive effects on urbanisation. A test of the third hypothesis shows that institutional quality moderates tax evasion in Ghana in order to influence economic development. The findings imply that the idea that tax evasion is bad for an economy or that tax efforts drive domestic revenue mobilisation is based mainly on prima facie evidence. Tax efforts such as tax amnesty may appear to compliant taxpayers as an incentive for tax evaders, which could affect their compliance. The adoption of the tax efforts index measure to examine its econometric impact on economic development is one of the pioneering attempts in the field. The study recommends well-thought-out strategies to ensure that tax efforts achieve their intended goals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

What drives exchange rate volatility, and what are the effects of fluctuations in the exchange rate on economic growth in Ghana? These questions are the subject matter of this study. The results showed that while shocks to the exchange rate are mean reverting, misalignments tend to correct very sluggishly, with painful consequences in the short run as economic agents recalibrate their consumption and investment choices. About three quarters of shocks to the real exchange rate are self-driven, and the remaining one quarter or so is attributed to factors such as government expenditure and money supply growth, terms of trade and output shocks. Excessive volatility is found to be detrimental to economic growth; however, this is only up to a point as growth-enhancing effect can also emanate from innovation, and more efficient resource allocation. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article explores the translocality of 1960s Ghana. It brings into conversation the connectivities crafted by official state diplomacies conducted by Kwame Nkrumah's government in the name of Pan-Africanism and the activisms, organizational work, and movements of Pan-African, diaspora, and white European women within and beyond Ghana, against the backdrop of a racialized global Cold War order. Focusing on the messiness and tensions of these connections I bring into conversation seemingly separate agential topics. Whether it is through state visits with Eric Williams, the tensions of minister exchange programmes with Guinea, or of diaspora conferences and organizing by African and Afro-American women, and the racialized and gendered dynamics of Nkrumaism, each is entangled and co-constituted with the wider ideational and material reality of the relational living postcolonial project. The variety of experiences, dramas, disputes, and possibilities, speak to how Ghana's connections with the world were interpreted and used to advance visions of civil rights and Pan-Africanism, while also operating within, against, and beyond the state. The relational project of Nkrumaism demonstrates how translocal power can be crafted to change the nature of translocal entanglements, not erase them, but make them more equitable, while simultaneously reproducing underlying tensions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The study examines the differential effects of capital flows on economic growth in Ghana over the period 1970–2014 using autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL). Breakpoint unit root tests are employed to cater for structural change and breaks in time series. Afterwards, these break dates are fed into the ADRL model as dummy variables to allow for the computation of a more robust cointegrating vector. The findings indicate that in both the short and long run capital flows (i.e. FDI, aid, and external debt) have negative effects on economic growth. However, remittances exhibit positive insignificant elasticity in all the regressions. Further, the empirical results show that while the impact of trade, gross capital formation and population growth on growth are mixed, that of inflation is negative. The results of the study are consistent with the idea that the impact of capital flows in Africa has been exaggerated. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The media are viewed as playing an important role in promoting economic development by educating the public, framing the agenda for discussion, serving as a watchdog and promoting corporate governance. This article examines some characteristics of the print coverage in Nigeria, Ghana and Uganda of oil, gas and mining, to see whether it lives up to these lofty goals. A content analysis was done of 788 articles that appeared in Nigerian, Ghanaian and Ugandan newspapers from 2007-2009 to determine how informative their coverage of the extractive sector was. Measurements included the use of jargon; the explanation of context and background; the number, type and range of sources. The conclusion was that much of the reporting was news-focused and did not include substantial discussion about the effects of oil and gas extraction or the policy implications. Nor did the articles provide a balance of sources who could articulate a range of perspectives. Differences were more pronounced between periodicals than countries. Delineated are some ways in which press coverage could be improved. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The impact of development has been identified as one of the most pressing concerns in heritage management in Africa. At the same time, heritage has also been recognized as having the potential to bring tourists, and thus growth, to local economies. Communities that wish to benefit from the latter have to balance developmental pressures against the preservation of heritage, and various sectors of the community may view these priorities differently. In this paper, I discuss some of the potentials of, and pressures on, the heritage landscape of Gwollu, a town in Ghana's Upper West Region. I use GwoIIu's brickmakers as a case study to illustrate the small-scale everyday development that can have a lasting impact on a town's heritage resources, and how internal divisions within communities may affect the heritage tourism process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Financial development impacts a country's economic growth and development. Due to this, many nations have sought new ways to bring about financial sector development. For developing economies, innovations in the financial sector are a sure bet for the development of financial inclusion. Mobile money is one of them. However, as the financial sector innovate, the Central Bank may lose control, rendering monetary policy ineffective. Therefore, this study examines one such innovation's effect on monetary policy effectiveness. Using SVAR and monthly data spanning from January 2012 to December 2018, the study found that monetary policy becomes less effective under mobile money growth. The study further revealed that policy rates respond to mobile money growth in Ghana. In conducting monetary policy in Ghana, the study recommends that the monetary policy authority includes mobile money activity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

National development experts (NDEs) play unique roles as knowledge brokers, translators and gatekeepers between governments, intended beneficiaries and donors on various development policies and practices. Due to their local contextual knowledge, they influence development activities at national levels by engaging in formulation and implementation of development policies. However, discussion of their motivations and roles has been particularly limited in the existing development literature. Drawing on 25 semi-structured interviews with the local staff of donor agencies and non-governmental organisations, independent consultants, civil servants and academics in Ghana, this article presents findings on their motivations and roles within Ghana's development landscape. We argue that while the motivations and roles of NDEs are similar in many ways to those of Western development experts, except their contextual understanding of national development issues, their contributions to development are so far excluded within the development literature. This article contributes to the emerging aid ethnography literature by providing a more comprehensive perspective on NDEs and deepens the scholarship by asking whether the exclusion of this group is a deliberate choice or unintended mistake. The article further highlights the perspectives of NDEs on their engagement with foreign experts and its implications for national development and future research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the essential features of the population growth patterns in Ghana, and the implications that these features have on the economy. It aims to identify and establish the consequences of population growth within the context of the state of the economy, and to locate any constraints in the process in terms of development. A decrease in the rate of the country's population growth is also examined. Moreover, the high fertility of the population impairs the capacity of the economy to utilize the national income on production.

In Ghana, the constitution recognises stool land revenues as a principal source of funding local economic development. However, there has been a lacuna on the collection and disbursement of family land revenues. The study examines ground rent collection and disbursement on family land, revenue losses and the capacity of family landowners to assess and collect ground rents. The analyses show ground rent collection is for infrastructure development and the sharing formula is similar to the Constitutional formula. Also, ground rent losses is significant and family landowners do not have the human and technical capacity to assess ground rents on their own lands. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The EU is vigorously pursuing Economic Partnership Agreements (EPAs) in its trade and aid relations with African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) countries. Justifying the EPAs as being 'development friendly', EU officials promise that aid support to private sector development (PSD) in ACP countries will make free trade systems 'win–win'. This article, based on the authors' semi-structured interviews conducted in Ghana and Nigeria, examines the perspectives of cocoa stakeholders vis-à-vis EPAs and PSD. Applying critical discourse analysis to interview transcripts, it underscores areas of overlap and, crucially, divergence among cocoa stakeholders' own narratives on PSD support in the context of EPAs and the official legitimating discourse of EU institutions. In the process, the article draws critical attention to cocoa business interviewees' concerns regarding the impact of premature trade liberalisation. It also underscores cocoa stakeholders' concerns that EU PSD promises are not being fulfilled in terms of actual tangible benefits for business people in this vital ACP export sector. Accordingly, the article contributes to, and corroborates, an existing critical scholarly literature which problematises the strategic functions of donor PSD discourse in presenting free trade reforms as being 'pro-poor' in the post-Washington Consensus. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Participatory modes of local economic development are laudable policy aspirations, but are often difficult to cultivate in practice. Thus, attempts by international bodies, such as the International Labour Organization (ILO), to institutionalize participatory development in localities of the Global South have often faced serious implementation challenges. Key to this is the issue of power asymmetry. This study uses Giddens' notion of duality of structure and draws upon a qualitative case study research of the Ghana Decent Work Programme (GWDP) implemented in Ajumako Enyan Essiam to deepen the understanding of the nature of asymmetric power relations among actors within a participatory development space. The key finding is the dynamic nature of asymmetric power relations. The ensuing asymmetric power relations manifest in the negotiations and contestations that contribute to shaping the trajectory of the participatory development space. The study, therefore, challenges the static notions of asymmetric power relations within participatory development spaces by revealing their fluid properties. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents abstracts on city planning including ways of achieving correct thermal design, economic implications of population growth in Ghana, and possible applications of the Lowry Model.

Analysis and studies of local economic development (LED) tend to be under the rubric of case studies to the neglect of their historical context and the role of international development agencies. This article attempts to fill this gap by focusing on the experiences of Ghana. Adopting a systematic review of the policy documents and existing literature, it was found that, despite its significance, LED was not the priority of the governments of pre and post immediate independence era. In the fourth republic of Ghana, LED gained prominence in the various policy documents but this appears to be rhetoric and camouflage because they have not seen real implementation. However, international development agencies have played a significant role in initiating, funding and implementing specific LED activities in the various districts in Ghana. Overall, LED in Ghana has crawled from the 'lost decades' to a policy 'maturing stage'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The influence wielded by international development actors in Global South bureaucracies remains enormous. These actors actively shape the policy-making practices and funding of local state bureaucracies. Nevertheless, local bureaucracies have become adept at strategically appropriating that influence to their own benefit and to appear legitimate in order to exact development funds for their everyday tasks. Empirical data from two local self-governing areas in Ghana show that attempts towards gaining legitimacy are not only influenced by self-interest but also by external development funds seeking to promote the performance of the local state. Despite numerous institutional changes to enhance participation, the daily tasks of the local political structures tend rather to focus on assessments and qualification for development funds. Although these funds add to the local resource pool, at the same time they inhibit the realisation of the local state's grandiose promise of reforms promoting participatory development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The construction of the Bui Dam was expected to boost socio-economic development in Ghana. This article examines the impacts of the project on the livelihoods of the local people. Data were collected using a mixed-research approach and a case-study design. The study finds that, while there have been significant improvements with respect to resettlement and compensation issues as compared to the earlier dam projects in Ghana, there are still some shortfalls. It is recommended that agriculture be improved by providing extension services and inputs to improve food security and the economic status of the local people. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The literature on access to finance has confirmed a positive relationship between access to finance and firm growth. Yet the boundary conditions for such linkage are less examined in the context of developing economies. This study draws on resource-based view to introduce financial literacy as a moderator of the relationship between access to finance and firm growth. This theoretically derived research model is empirically tested using survey data from 201 small and medium-sized enterprises in Ghana. Our empirical findings suggest that financial literacy positively enhances the access to finance-firm growth relationship. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In this study, we combine the latent class stochastic frontier model with the complex time decay model to form a single-stage approach that accounts for unobserved technological differences to estimate efficiency and the determinants of efficiency. In this way, we contribute to the literature by estimating "pure" efficiency and determinants of productive units based on the class structure. An application of this proposed model is presented using data on the Ghanaian banking system. Our results show that inefficiency effects on the productive unit are specific to the class structure of the productive unit and therefore assuming a common technology for all productive units as is in the popular Battese and Coelli model used extensively in the literature may be misleading. The study therefore provides useful empirical evidence on the importance of accounting for unobserved technological differences across productive units. A policy based on the identified classes of the productive unit enables a more accurate and effectual measures to address efficiency challenges within the banking industry, thereby promoting financial sector development and economic growth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Revisiting the events leading to the collapse of Third World summitry in 1965, this article proposes that the rise and fall of Third World unity efforts in the years 1955–65 originated from the unsuccessful attempt by industrialised Afro-Asian (aa) countries to turn unindustrialisedaastates into their export markets. As a case study, this article explores Egypt’s economic foreign policy towards otheraacountries and its activity within theaaand the Non-aligned movements, and compares Egyptian strategy in this field with that of China and Ghana. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In Ghana, most oil palm fruits are produced by smallholders and processed by female artisanal processors. However, the ensuing crude palm oil (CPO) is high in free fatty acids and therefore cannot be sold in remunerative local or export markets. An earlier diagnostic study indicated that two main factors cause the poor quality: the processing practice of leaving harvested fruits unprocessed for up to 21 days and the use of lorry tyres as fuel to cook the fruits. Furthermore, the tyre-burning practice affects the health of people working and living around the processing facilities. This study describes the effect of action research undertaken with processors and the creation of a stakeholder platform in which Chiefs, the District Assembly, and a Concertation and Innovation Group collaborated to address the issues. The emerging institutional changes are assessed against baseline information. Awareness was raised about the dangers of tyre-burning, and CPO quality was improved by establishing the optimal time to leave fruits before processing. However, the prevailing market circumstances led producers to opt to produce greater quantities of oil rather than better-quality oil. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the relationship between stock market development and sustainable economic growth in Ghana. The study employs the recently developed ARDL-bounds testing approach and multidimensional stock market development proxies to examine this linkage. The article finds that in the long run, stock market developments and capital account liberalization policies have no positive effect on economic growth in Ghana. This finding supports the numerous past studies, which have reported negative or inconclusive results on the effects of stock market development on economic growth. The article, therefore, concludes that it is the increase in credit to the private sector, rather than stock market development that drives the real sector development in Ghana. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]