The World Health Organisation last Thursday announced a plan to provide antiretroviral drugs to about half of the HIV-positive people in Ghana by the end of 2005, Reuters reports. The program is part of WHO's 3 by 5 Initiative which aims to treat three million people with antiretroviral drugs by 2005, according to WHO Ghana Program Director Napoleon Graham.

A two-day workshop designed to create a framework for exploring ways of promoting the contributions of Ghanaians in the Diaspora for sustainable national development took place in Accra on May 14 and 15. Organised by the Social Enterprise Development Foundation (SEND) in collaboration with the African Foundation for Development (AFFORD), the forum examined ways through which to maximise resource mobilization from Ghanaians abroad for execution of projects back home.

IDEA’s sole purpose is to promote excellence in the education of people of African ancestry. “IDEA’s mission is to establish an autonomous, self-reliant support system for the benefit of Africans in Africa and throughout the Diaspora. It is imperative that we coalesce with people of colour on a global scale in order to address mutual needs and concerns. IDEA will serve as a catalyst for forming cohesive coalitions with those who share our vision.” IDEA plans to open a building called the Silicon Centre in Ghana in 2004. The Silicon Centre will offer hotel, restaurant and conference room facilities.

The deputy minister of information, Mr. Stephen Asamaoh -Boateng has said the government has worked towards greater constitutional recognition to Ghanaians in the Diaspora so they can take part in the process of electing the government of their country. He added that some diplomatic missions had initiated various innovative programmes to assist and facilitate the mobilization of resources from Ghanaians living in other countries to support development programmes in Ghana.

About 2000 teachers poured onto the streets of Tema on Monday this week to demonstrate their disapproval against the Social Security Pension Scheme, which is currently being operated for teachers in the country. According to the teachers, the continuous use of the scheme for teachers clearly shows that the government had refused to recognize the enormous contribution of teachers to the socio-economic development of the country.

Could information communication technologies (ICTs) improve learning in rural Africa? When exposed to new technology, how do children, adults and teachers use it to represent their lives and opportunities? Research from the University of Sussex’s Centre of International Education shows what happened when residents of a Ghanaian village were given their first chance to collect and show digital images of their lives. The study not only brought out attitudes towards ICTs and the community’s problematic interaction with currently available schooling, but also explored the implications of technological change for development initiatives.

Speakers at a symposium organized by the Ghana Integrity Initiative (GII) on Tuesday raised concerns about the level of political corruption in Ghana and the likelihood of it undermining the country's democratic processes and the rule of law. The panellists at the symposium on: "Political Corruption in Ghana" said government should put in place measures to strengthen anti-corruption agencies, enhance the education of civil society organisations and streamline political party financing in the country.

As the World Bank convened for its spring meetings this weekend, Public Citizen released a new report that highlighted how the World Bank continued to promote water privatization despite its assertion that it had modified its stance on privatization policies after a series of failed experiments around the world. A review of World Bank lending from 2000 through 2004 reveals that while the Bank’s public relations rhetoric has changed in the face of increasing global resistance to privatized water services, its loan policies in the water sector have not changed at all. The World Bank is pressuring governments to privatize water services, thereby ceding control of them to major transnational corporations, as part of the package of policies required before governments can access loans for building and repairing water and sanitation systems.

Cobbled together from the West African British colony of the Gold Coast and the Togoland trust territory, Ghana became in 1957 the first country in colonial Africa to gain its independence. Lesbians and gays, though, are still waiting to be liberated from a repressive British legacy: sodomy laws. A gay social life exists, mostly in the form of house parties, and a few queer-friendly clubs in the capital, Accra, but there are risks. Because homosexuality is illegal, club-goers, especially tourists, risk blackmail. If they don't pay, social and legal consequences can be serious.

A Ghanaian lawyer and human rights campaigner has won recognition for his work to stop water being privatised. Rudolf Amenga-Etego, who is campaigning against a privatisation scheme being backed by the World Bank, has won a 2004 Goldman environmental prize. Rudolf Amenga-Etego founded Ghana's National Coalition Against the Privatisation of Water, an attempt to halt a $400m project which would have meant water being sold at full market rates.

The government of Ghana has provoked a feud with civil society organisations just as Accra becomes the first to fall under the lens of the African Peer Review Mechanism. In an attempt to purge the private voluntary sector of alleged graft, the government has ordered all non-governmental organisations to register with the Registrar General and submit annual reports and financial statements by the end of April 2004 or risk being black-listed.

For nations moving from authoritarian to civilian rule, debate about whether to forget past human-rights abuses and focus on the future has always been emotive. Freed from prison in 1990 after 27 years, Nelson Mandela presided over South Africa’s attempt to put the atrocities of the apartheid era behind it through the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) chaired by Archbishop Desmond Tutu. More recently, Sierra Leone’s truth commission has asked how combatants in the country’s brutal civil war could slice open the wombs of pregnant women and amputate villagers’ limbs in the name of a senseless civil war. Ghana, too, has opted for a National Reconciliation Commission to examine the abuses that took place under the leadership of President Jerry Rawlings.

The president of the national coalition of non-governmental organisations on the rights of the child, Mr. Nelson Godfred Agyeman, has condemned the government's inability to protect, enforce and implement the laws and conventions made to advance the rights and development of children. According to him, since 1990 when Ghana took leadership in the ratification of the convention on the rights of the child, no serious effort has been made by the government towards full implementation.

Decades of deforestation and forest degradation have left less than two percent of Ghana's native forest intact. These forests have been the source of livelihood for forest dependent people, providing them with fuel wood, charcoal, building materials, fodder, fruits, nuts, honey, medicines and dyes. They also play an environmental role regarding prevention of soil erosion, watershed protection, soil fertility/shade, shelter from wind, prevention of floods and landslides, water retention and maintenance of water purity. They are also home to 2,100 plant species, over 200 mammal species including buffalo, leopard, golden cat, chimpanzee, forest elephant and pygmy hippopotamus, 200 bird species including the African grey parrot, and butterflies, all internationally recognized as in danger of extinction, thus designating them as Special Biological Protection Areas and Globally Significant Bio-diversity Areas.

Panelists at a seminar on the Highly Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC) Initiative in Accra have welcomed the contribution that HIPC has made to the socio-economic development of the country. However, they all said that only debt cancellation would truly benefit poor countries. The panellists at the event comprised, Dr. Yao Graham of the Third World Network, Vitus Azeem, Director of the Centre for Budget Advocacy (CBA) of ISODEC and Okoh Ofori of the Ministry of Finance.

"We the participants in the 3rd Annual InterCED Conference on ICT and Economic Development, held in Accra, Ghana from March 3 to March 5, 2004 recognize that Information Technology is simply a tool for the realization of the dreams of people. We further recognize that the creation of economic opportunity, jobs, and social capital require that all hands are put to the task and that all sectors of the society have a meaningful role to play in bringing about a renaissance of the African economy."

The Ghana Education Service (GES) has virtually decreed that the most vulnerable group of children in the educational ladder in the country should go through the first three years of the cycle, the formative years, without textbooks. They should make do with workbooks, the virtually blank books that carry dotted caricatures and no words or content and are primarily used for drawing. Only teachers would have resource books.

Ghana’s Electoral Commission on Tuesday began a two-week voter listing exercise in 21,000 registration centres nationwide to prepare a new voter’s register and supply all voters with a picture identity card ahead of December presidential and parliamentary elections. “We want to eliminate the possibilities of fraud and build confidence in our electoral systems. That is why we are insisting on a register and voter’s identity card complete with the holder’s picture,” a Director at the Electoral Commission, Henry Okyne told IRIN.

It is 7:00 o’clock in the evening, and students at the University of Development Studies (UDS) Ghana, Navrongo campus are gathered in their various common rooms. All eyes are transfixed on a box, an electronic box: the television. They are watching Ghana Television News at Seven, the only source of up-to-date information for an information thirsty university. The University of Development Studies is the fifth state university in Ghana. For a campus with the sciences as its main focus, UDS Navrongo is in serious crisis: the university has a computer lab of about 30 computers with no Internet connection.

Ghana’s government has shelved a bid to fast-track a bill seeking to allow all Ghanaians abroad to register for general elections to be held in December 2004. The move followed an outcry from the opposition, which had threatened street protests if the bill was rushed through parliament.