United States President Barack Obama should use his visit to Ghana on July 10 and 11, 2009 to encourage its new president, John Atta Mills, to take a leadership position in Africa on issues of democracy and justice, Human Rights Watch has said.

cc As US President Barack Obama heads to Accra, Ghana, this week, Charles Abugre hopes a new 'wind for change' is blowing. Coming from a 'son of Africa' held with pride and esteem by Africans across the continent, Obama's speech will have major influence on the way the world regards Africa. For all the anticipated talk about 'good governance' and 'democracy', Abugre stresses, the US president should first acknowledge his country's historical role in undermining African countries' stability and progress. If Obama is to spark a new beginning in US–Africa relations based on genuinely mutual interests and respect, he must actively allay fears around US militarisation and seek to review US economic relations with the continent. Through building trust and commending Ghana's democratic successes, who better, asks Abugre, to understand the wind of change than Barack Obama?

The government of Gambia is to pay compensation to the families of the 44 murdered Ghanaians in that country in 2005. Ghana's Deputy Information Minister, Samuel Akudzeto Ablakwa, said the two governments arrived at the decision in Libya after a discussion between Presidents Atta Mills and Yahya Jammeh.

cc Kwame Nkrumah brought the Convention People's Party into power within two years of its formation, creating independent Ghana, writes Yao Graham. An overwhelming electoral victory gave Nkrumah a platform for mass anti-colonial mobilisation around Africa. Accra became a staging point for the African anti-colonial movement with the All-African People's Conference, drawing delegates from 62 nationalist organisations, including future ruling parties and post-colonial leaders, who were urged to 'fight for independence now'. Post-colonial construction, however, was different from bringing down colonialism and Nkrumah struggled to generate resources for steady improvement in the living standards of people with expectations fuelled by independence and his own visionary pronouncements. Today Ghana is seen as a development icon, but the challenges Nkrumah grappled with have not been overcome, argues Graham. Reliant on a few commodities for export earnings and aid for public investment, it is far from the independent structurally transformed model Nkrumah wanted to establish as a ‘black star’ for Africa.

cc With a view to wresting Ghana and Africa at large from the entrenched control of neocolonial institutions, Kofi Mawuli Klu looks to Kwame Nkrumah's legacy for inspiration. While broadly optimistic about Ghana's potential under President John Atta Mills, Klu cautions that achieving effective change will rely on supporting progressive forces through both words and deeds and the ability to involve the country's masses in an ongoing process of 'conscientisation'. If country and continent are to liberate themselves from external influence, the author concludes, the focus must be on drawing on the cultural, organisational and politico-ideological resources of the masses in the pursuit of 'genuine pan-African community regeneration'.

The Africa Water Network says that private water company Aqua Vitens Rand Limited, which manages water services in Ghana, must go.

cc An understanding of US interests is crucial for Ghana if it is to capitalise on the immense opportunity provided by the President Obama's July visit, writes Asare Otchere-Darko. Following a deepwater oil find in 2007, Ghana's pending oil-rich status has made it the subject of strategic US energy and military interests, and raising the stakes of Ghana–US relations, Otchere-Darko argues. As the US's preferred physical location for the US African Command (AFRICOM) headquarters and with the superpower concerned not to cede strategic ground to China in the region, Ghana has an unprecedented hand to play in this round of international diplomacy. The task of Ghanaians, says Otchere-Darko, is to ensure that Ghana comes away with concrete deliverables that help meet its own strategic goals, rather than simply being the honoured recipients of President Obama's first visit to Africa.

The ruling National Democratic Congress (NDC) on June 2, 2009, officially denied any involvement of its members in the recent vandalisation of privately-owned Techiman-based Classic FM in the Brong Ahafo Region of Ghana. The regional chairman of NDC, John Owusu Agyeman, told Media Foundation for West Africa (MFWA) in a telephone interview that no party member took part in the alleged attack on the radio station and therefore called for police investigations into the matter.

A group of armed supporters of the ruling National Democratic Congress (NDC) in Techiman, a town in the Brong Ahafo region of Ghana on May 28, 2009 besieged the premises of privately-owned Classic FM physically attacked three persons and vandalised the station.

The Ghanaian government has signed a Memorandum of Understanding on the interconnection of fibre optic networks with Burkina Faso to enhance communications between the two west African neighbours. The Ghanaian communications minister has said the signing of the MOU is in line with the commitment of ECOWAS member states to foster economic integration.

Gambia has rejected a joint United Nations-Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) report on the alleged murder of more than 50 West African nationals, including 44 Ghanaians, in the Gambia in 2005, which dem a nded compensation be paid to the relatives of the victims. According to Ghana’s foreign minister Alhaji Muhammad Mumuni, the report of the committee prepared after eight months of investigations was presented to the two countries in Abuja, Nigeria, on Monday.

A group of Chinese tourists have announced a travelling expedition from Ghana across the Sahara desert to help them learn more about Africa and also promote Ghana and the continent as a good tourist destination for other Chinese. The tourists will also serve as goodwill ambassadors for China by creating awareness among Chinese people about tourism opportunities and investment potentials on the continent.

On 11 April 2009, William Jalulah, the Upper East regional correspondent of the Accra-based "The Chronicle" newspaper, was violently assaulted by supporters of the ruling National Democratic Congress (NDC) for photographing a violent attack. The party supporters also destroyed his digital camera.

A pilot initiative to provide rural community health workers, nurses and doctors with advice on diagnosis and treatment via mobile phones is to launch in Ghana later this year. The project will enable rural health workers to call specially-trained doctors at a call centre, providing the daily support that health workers in richer countries take for granted.

I thought this was a very good essay on ; it is very encouraging to note that the African electorate gets the opportunity to consider the characters of the candidates for elected offices and that money and advertisements play far lesser roles. Thanks for this essay. I have already created a link to the essay in my blog: http://chielozona.blogspot.com/

cc Many lessons can be drawn from the historic 2008 elections in Ghana, writes Mawuli Dake. Different campaign strategies yielded diverse results, and voters are now looking more at politicians’ character and conduct when choosing their preferences rather than mere appearances or the provision of gifts, Dake maintains. Ghana went through three contentious rounds of voting, which resulted in the opposition’s victory and the transfer of power from one government to another without a single loss of life. This is a positive not just for Ghana, Dake suggests, but for the whole of west Africa.

There has been a clamour to tighten up oversight and regulation of Ghana’s broadcasters from unusual bedfellows - the state-sponsored National Media Commission (NMC) and the Ghana Journalists" Association (GJA). The bodies have, in separate initiatives, slammed attempts to "privatise" the state-owned Ghana Broadcasting Corporation (GBC) and have railed against the practices of commercial radio stations. The trigger for this rare convergence was "unsubstantiated" news reports by two commercial stations, Radio Gold and Oman FM, that publicly backed rival political parties in the run up to the Dec. 7, 2008 national elections.

This research paper, written by Mr. Ebenezer Malcolm and Dr. Francis Godwyll from Ohio University, USA, explores the state of ICT integration in the educational system in Ghana. The emphasis is on how ICTs are currently being used in the education sector in Ghana, what is actually happening on the ground, what are the strategies and policies related to the use of ICTs? What are the common challenges or constraints faced by Ghana schools in the area of ICT integration in schools?

On the 200th anniversary of Charles Darwin's birth, BBC News asks one of Africa's pioneering scientists, Dr Ave Kludze, of the US space agency Nasa what inspired his stellar career and what he thinks of the standard of science teaching in Africa today.

The National Coalition on Mining reports that the Minister of Lands and Natural Resources has declared that mining will no longer be allowed in protected forest reserves. This decision follows years of destruction to Ghanaian forests by mining interest, which have displaced thousands of citizens and contaminated water supplies.