Seth J. Bokpe's Ghana Newsreel

With the increasing demand for housing, Ghanaians may soon go hungry if the sale of farmlands to real estate developers  goes unregulated, a Senior Policy Advisor of the USAID Agricultural Policy Support Project has warned. According to Mr Kwaku Owusu-Baah, the country faced danger as far as food production was concerned. This is as a result of the rate at which farmlands were shrinking as they were being sold to real estate companies and individuals desirous of owning homes. "A few years ago, peri-urban farming provided enough vegetables to feed Accra, but today we import vegetables from Burkina Faso. It is a challenge we need to look at and deal with before it gets out of hand," he said. Mr Owusu-Baah, who was speaking at a media training on agriculture reporting in Dodowa, therefore, called on Parliament to take immediate steps to deal with the situation. Training programme The two-day training programme brought together participants ...

President John Dramani Mahama has sent perhaps the strongest signal of his readiness to tame some of the  challenges facing the country with a shake up at the Presidency  with the appointment of a new Chief of Staff and his deputy, a new National Security Adviser and a retired career police officer to restructure the Narcotics Control Board into a Commission.  By appointing Mr Julius Debrah as his new Chief of Staff, the President has chosen the injection of new ideas over continuity as he tries to tighten and sanitise his inner loyal circle. A diplomat by nature, Mr Debrah has gone through the political mill, cutting his teeth as a grass roots National Democratic Congress (NDC) and die-hard loyalist before becoming the party’s chairman in the Eastern Region. President Mahama, who is under pressure to speed up the revival of the Ghanaian economy and also tackle the energy crisis ahead of his 2016 election campaign, will need a man whose ab...

The Motor and Transport Department (MTTD) of the Ghana Police Service has warned that it will arrest and prosecute any driver who deliberately refuses to stop for pedestrians to cross roads.  “Zebra crossings are not road decorations; they are on our roads for a purpose. Therefore, drivers must stop abusing such places to allow passengers to cross the road safely,” the Accra Central Motor Traffic and Transport Department of the Ghana Police Service, Chief Superintendent Mr Anderson Fosu-Ackah, said. He said the refusal of drivers to allow pedestrians to cross roads at zebra crossing was worrying and needed to be nipped in the bud. The driving public in Ghana is notorious for refusing to allow pedestrians to cross roads. At places in Accra  like the Graphic Road, 37 Lorry Park, the Accra Sports Stadium and Abossey Okai, for instance, pedestrians could spend close to 10 minutes waiting to cross the road at Zebra crossings when traffic lights go off.  Mr Fosu- ...

A few years ago, I came across a news item on United Kingdom’s Mail online that said firstborn children are susceptible to depression in later life “because of the weight of their parents’ expectations.”  The story, based on  the results of a survey, wasn’t one any firstborn would read with a smile. For years, it stuck in my mind. Although I am no firstborn, the mantle had fallen on me by virtue of the fact that my elder  brother was dead years before I was born. So by default, I had to play that role. So when I received a copy of Emmanuel Bright Wilson’s book which talked about no other subject but firstborns, I read it from cover to cover, making mental notes of the intriguing way he handled the subject. A firstborn himself, Wilson opens the book with a rather sad but gripping tale of what he had to go through when his father got sick,  hospitalised for years, and eventually died in his arms. However, instead of allowing the situation to weigh him down,...

Officials of the Accra Metropolitan Assembly (AMA) are knocking one another’s head over the fight against street hawking in Accra. They have been caught in the web of contradictions and denials over the long running battle against street hawkers who have become an albatross around the neck of city authorities.   While in last Friday’s Daily Graphic , the Public Relations Officer of the AMA, Numo Blafo II, said the assembly had decided to let go its resolve to evict petty traders from the streets of the Central Business District (CBD) because it was an exercise in futility and a waste of resources, the co-ordinating director of the assembly has punched holes into the claims. “It is rather unfortunate for management to come in to debunk the misguided statement by the Public Relations Officer (PRO) of the assembly,” Mr Sam Ayeh Datey said in a press statement. “It must be noted that the PRO did not consult management before his interaction with the press.” The st...