Non-medical abortions are frequent in Ghana, where abortion is illegal. Yet, as more people witness the suffering and deaths of women who've attempted unsafe abortions, more international organisations are trying to provide birth control, or to exploit legal loopholes to carry out abortions.

Thailand, the World’s largest exporter of rice, is to support the Irrigation Company of Upper Region (ICOUR), to expand local rice production under the Tono and Vea Irrigation Schemes in the Region.

Don't miss this excellent opportunity to learn how to respond to the emerging youth market in sub-Saharan Africa through the development of Youth Inclusive Financial Services. This two week course will be offered at the Sustainable Microenterprise and Development Program (SMDP) Ghana in Accra from March 15-26, 2010.

Cnooc Ltd., China’s largest offshore oil producer, said the Ghanaian government has not allowed it to bid for Kosmos Energy LLC’s assets in the African nation.

India's ONGC Videsh (OVL), ONGC’s foreign investment arm, is in talks with Ghana’s national oil company to bid for Kosmos Energy’s stake in the giant offshore Jubilee field of the region. Dallas-based Kosmos Energy focused on Africa, holds a 30.8 per cent stake in the Jubilee oil block, one of the biggest oil blocks in Africa.

James Donkor, a journalist working with community radio station Radio Progress, in Wa, the capital of Ghana's Upper West region, was reportedly assaulted on 24 October 2009 and briefly detained by two policemen in the area. The journalist, who had photographed a man the policemen had allegedly tied to an electric pole, was accused of "disrespecting" the police officers.

Ace Ghanaian investigative journalist Anas Aremeyaw Anas of the New Crusading Guide grabbed two awards at the 2009 edition of the Norbert Zongo Awards. He scooped the Norbert Zongo Grand Prize in Investigative journalism and the Segbo Excellence in Investigative Journalism 2009, for his groundbreaking expose on the work of Chinese human traffickers in Africa.

West African neighbours, Ghana and Cote d'Ivoire, have called for national reconciliation in Cote d'Ivoire to ensure a peaceful vote to climax peace efforts in the country that was torn apart by civil war about a decade ago. They have also expressed appreciation about arrangements towards the forthcoming elections which Ivorian Preident Laurent Gbagbo said would take place in December 2009 or January 2010.

Dozens of farmers in northern Ghana claim they have been forced off their land with no alternative source of income after a multinational firm bought their farms to cultivate jatropha, a non-food crop whose seeds contain oil used to produce biofuel. Biofuel Africa Ltd has acquired over 23,700 hectares of Ghanaian land forcing out the inhabitants of seven villages – all of them farming communities -- in Tamale district.

The preserved head of King Badu Bonsu II has been returned to the Ghana by the Netherlands, 170 years after the Ahanta chief was hanged for ordering the murder of two Dutch emissaries, Ama Biney tells Pambazuka News. The return of the head is not just of cultural importance for the Ahanta people, says Biney, it’s also a significant step in ‘setting right colonial wrongs’.

A programme to train students in technical institutions to repair and service computers has been launched by the Ghana Education Service in Accra. The Computer System Support Programme (CSSP) is a two-year pilot programme which will commence in September this year and initially run as a technical institute for senior high school students who offer science programmes.

The Secretariat for the International Conference on African Culture and Development (ICACD) invites you to submit abstracts / presentation ideas for ICACD 2009 – . Academics, artists, cultural and development workers, Government agencies and policy makers and all people committed to working to see Culture included on all development agendas are encouraged to submit their abstracts or ideas. ICACD 2009 will be held in Accra, Ghana November 15th to 18th 2009.

Reflecting on the US president's Accra speech in this week's Pambazuka News, Ama Biney finds Obama's dismissal of neocolonial explanations for Africa's difficulties worrying. Though apologetic towards his Arab audience for past US meddling while in Cairo earlier this year, Obama showed no inclination to acknowledge his country's support of African dictators such as the former Zaire's Mobutu Sese Seko and Kenya's Daniel arap Moi. If Obama is not simply to be the new George W. Bush, albeit under a more humanitarian guise, he will need to advance a foreign policy genuinely grounded in economic and political equality, Biney writes. Echoing the words of the late Tajudeen Abdul-Raheem, Biney stresses however that Africans should in reality prioritise pan-African solutions to their continent's challenges, rather than merely competing to be the US's 'brown-eyed ally'.

Following Barack Obama's recent visit to Ghana, Ihechukwu Njoku tells Pambazuka News of his hope that the choice of destination will be seen as a celebration of a laudable government rather than a political snub.

President Barack Obama's trip to Ghana will be rich in symbolism. But those hoping for a new direction in U.S. Africa policy are tempering their hopes with skepticism. The issue posed, parallel to that in other policy spheres, is to what extent change will remain symbolic or reflect substantive shifts, even if small, away from U.S. policies based on unilateral geostrategic goals or unexamined economic policy assumptions.

Ghana will receive around $1.1 billion in resources from the International Monetary Fund, as the country tries to reduce its widening budget deficit, a senior IMF official has said. The IMF resources include a $600 million loan over three years approved on Wednesday and another $452 million in IMF special drawing rights, IMF mission chief to Ghana, Peter Allum, told reporters on a conference call.

cc The internet and wires have been burning with anger and disappointment at the speech made by Obama this week at the start of his visit to Ghana. With several articles commenting on the speech in this issue, Firoze Manji provides a perspective on what Obama might have, or should have, said during his second visit to the continent in the space of a few weeks.

Cyrus Degraft-Johnson and Alhassan Suhuyini, journalists of two Accra-based radio stations were on the night of July 9, 2009 violently assaulted by security personnel working for the city authority, the Accra Metropolitan Assembly (AMA). Media Foundation for West Africa (MFWA)’s correspondent reported that the incident occurred at about 21: 30 GMT in Shiashi, a suburb in the eastern part of Accra, where Degraft-Johnson, reporter of Joy FM, had gone to cover an ongoing demolition exercise by a combined team of AMA guards and police officers to rid the city of illegal structures.

Reactions to Obama’s Ghana visit and the contradictory and somewhat insubstantial speech he made there are the focus of Sokari Ekine’s fortnightly round-up of the African blogosphere. Some are ‘uncritical’ and ‘bordering on the sycophantic’, but there is also ‘balanced and informed analysis’ to be found, says Ekine.

Members of the Ghana Reparation and Repatriation Foundation (GRARF), a local NGO operating in the north, have appealed to the government to take a strong stand and asked for compensation from Britain and America for their involvement in the Trans Atlantic Chattel slavery in Ghana. The members reminded government that the United Nations Human Rights Commission has classified the Trans Atlantic Chattel Slavery as crime against humanity and that must be pursued to its logical conclusion without any favour.