Academic literature on the topic 'Ghana, biography'

Although reference to the presence of the Chinese in Ghana might currently evoke instant thoughts on illegal mining activities and not so positive reactions, the relationship between China and Ghana transcends this sphere. China and Ghana have a longstanding six-decade history of political, economic, trade, and cultural exchanges. This research employs (auto)biography as a historical method to explore the personal narratives of Chinese individuals living in Ghana and their influence on Sino-Ghanaian relations. By taking a transcultural approach, the study examines these interactions at a micropolitical level, emphasising the Chinese community’s strategic contributions and cultural insights in shaping bilateral ties. This approach offers a comprehensive understanding of Ghana’s political, historical, and sociocultural evolution through the lived experiences of Chinese residents. Utilising a mixed-methods strategy, the research integrates a systematic review of six decades of journalistic discourse with five in-depth case studies of Chinese people in Ghana. The results reveal the profound impact of Sino-Ghanaian relations on Ghana’s post-independence changes. Politically, China’s emphasis on unity and shared anti-colonial traditions has strengthened their friendship and influenced Ghana’s national development. Economically, the introduction of Chinese technology and products has propelled modernisation. However, the long-term suitability of the “Chinese model” in Africa appears relatively favorable as one of the options for development. This study underscores the necessity for Ghana and other African countries to carefully select development paths and partners, balancing opportunities from China’s rise with the need for national sovereignty. The enduring historical connection between China and Ghana, marked by a community of a shared future, provides a robust foundation for bilateral relations grounded in mutual respect and cooperative development. The study contributes to Sino-Ghanaian scholarship and offers valuable insights for enhancing public diplomacy efforts between the two nations.

AbstractThis article is an interpretive biography of Kwame Tua (c.1865–1950), one of millions of Africans born into an independent society that was overtaken by colonial conquest and overrule. Kwame Tua was from Asante, now in the republic of Ghana, and held the ascriptive status of a royal servant (ahenkwaa) who might have expected a specialist career as a royal hornblower. He was musically very gifted. However, after ruinous civil wars in the 1880s, the Asante king was sent into exile in 1896, and from 1901 to 1957 his kingdom was a British Crown Colony. This article discusses Kwame Tua's responses to these radically altered circumstances and his efforts to forge a place and identity for himself between the new imperial order and his Asante inheritance. It is argued throughout that the pursuit of detail is all in such a study so that we can get as close as possible to the personality of the individual in interaction with the times he lived through.

The history of the commercial entrepôts on the Atlantic coast of West Africa in the pre-colonial period is far from being a neglected topic, but has attracted considerable academic research. The potential value of a biographical (or prosopographical) approach to the social history of such coastal communities has also long been recognized, the classic pioneering example being Margaret Priestley's study of the Brew family of Anomabu, on the Gold Coast (modern Ghana), founded by the locally settled Irish slave-trader Richard Brew (died 1776). The case of the Brews, however, presents exceptionally favorable conditions for the reconstruction both of individual biography and of collective family history, in that the founder was literate and generated a considerable corpus of written records which survives to the present, while for subsequent generations of the family the early establishment of an institutionalized form of British proto-colonial administration on the Gold Coast also yielded relatively abundant documentation.Elsewhere on the coast, and more particularly for individuals and families lower down the social scale, the amount of evidence available is likely to be much more limited and fragmentary. The present article represents a tentative attempt at a biography of a person of much lesser eminence than Richard Brew or his descendants, which may therefore be regarded as a venture into the field of subaltern history. To the extent that it also concerns someone who generated no documentation of his own, but whose life has to be reconstructed from incidental references in the records of the external agencies with whom he had dealings, it is also conceived as a methodological exploration of the possibility of extracting an African voice and perspective from European (and Eurocentric) sources.

In the Ghanaian political landscape, Sisaala land is on record to have produced political stalwarts who have occupied high-ranking political portfolios including the presidency of Ghana. Previous research has identified some pioneering Sisaala political stalwarts including; Dr. Hilla Limman, Imoro Egala; and others. Also, prominent political stalwarts such as; Kwame Nkrumah, Kofi Abrefa Busia, Simon Diedong Dombo, Adu Boahen, Jerry John Rawlings, and others have been variously studied by biographers. Motivated by previous biographical studies anchored on the paucity of similar biographies on emerging political stalwarts of Sisaala land, the study utilised qualitative narrative design to chronicle the biography, personality dispositions, and developmental contributions of Amidu Isahaku Chinnia. Empirical data were elicited through semi-structured interviews from twenty-one (21) heterogeneous-purposively sampled respondents. The study found Chinnia to be a growing academic, known staunch member of the New Patriotic Party and a potential political stalwart in Ghana who currently serves as the Member of Parliament for Sissala East Constituency and Deputy Minister of Sanitation and Water Resources. With mixed viewpoints ably argued by the research participants, the study further found Chinnia to be a development-oriented personality with dispositions that are in tandem with the five-factor personality model (emotional intelligence, assertiveness, openness, conscientiousness, & loyalty). With his enviable academic pedigree, development-mindedness, political activism and unwavering personality dispositions, Chinnia appears to have a brighter political future. For Chinnia to consolidate his political growth, and fortunes, he should promote his positive personality dispositions while working on his weaknesses; unite the rank and file of his party in the Sissala East Constituency, address the major developmental needs of his constituents, and loyally support his party-led government to deliver its mandate to Ghanaians as promised.

The arrival of the Europeans in brought about formal education of the Western world into the then Gold Coast. In the area of Music, the Western theory of Musical practices were introduced and implemented. The introduction of the Western theory of musical practices deeply affected the early Ghanaian composers such that early compositions were in the framework of Western music education, which affected the use of indigenous Ghanaian cultural and traditional practices. However, in the spirit of nationalism, a crusade of Ghanaian indigenous music traditions was initiated in the early twentieth century by Ephraim Amu and it was supported by many composers who followed. Using Euba’s creative ethnomusicology as the underpinning theoretical framework, the writers seek to examine the composer, C.W.K Mereku, investigating into his academic biography. The study again appreciates Africanism through the formalist viewpoint of two of his works: Ghanamamma (People of Ghana) and Atentenata (Atenteben Sonata), exploring the Ghanaian traditional and indigenous elements, and how he used them in his compositions. This study uses purposive sampling method and focuses on interview and document analysis as instruments for data collection. The two compositions of the study reflect Mereku’s conscious usage of the Ghanaian indigenous elements as source materials to express his identity and the awareness of his thematic intercultural activities.

Abstract: This study uses qualitative method using biography approach which means the study of an individual by explaining the results of K.H Muhammad Zaini Abdul Ghani's thoughts. Research findings about Islamic education thought. K. H. Muhammad Zaini Abdul Ghani include the purpose of Islamic education which means to really know Allah SWT, so always remembering Him in every situation. Then, educators mean people who change students to be better, the curriculum which is used related with experience outside of school as part of educational activities. Then the method used by K.H. Muhammad Zaini Abdul Ghani is an exemplary method, habituation, *bandongan*, demonstration, and question and answer method. While the works of KH. Muhammad Zaini Abdul Ghani included Risalah al-Mubarakah, Manakib asy-syeikh Muhammad Samman al-Madani, Ar-risalat an nuraniyah fi syarh at-tawassulat as-sammaniyah, Nubzat min manaqib al imam al-masyhur bil ustadz al a ' zham Muhammad bin ali ba'alawi, Al-amdad fi Aurad Ahl Al-Widad, Manaqib Ash-Shaykh As-Sayyid Muhammad bin Abdul Qadir Al-Qadiri and Al-Fushul Al-Ilmiyah wa Al-Ushul Al-Hikamiyah. Keywords: Thought, Islamic Education, K.H. Muhammad Zaini Abdul Ghani.

Decentralization policy forms part of a broader global ideology and effort of the international donor community in favor of subsidiarity and local participation, and represents a paradigm shift from top-down command-and-control systems. Since 2003, the formalization of property rights through titling became an integral component of decentralized land administration efforts in Ghana. The creation of new forms of local government structures and the related changes in the distribution of responsibilities between different levels of government have an impact on natural resource management, the allocation of rights, and the unequal distribution of powers. This paper aims to understand how decentralization reforms modify the balance of power between public administration, customary authorities, and resource end-users in Ghana. Decentralization’s impact is analyzed based on two case studies. Relying on purposive and snowball sampling techniques, and mixed methods, we conducted 8 key informant interviews with local government bureaucrats in land administration, 16 semi-structured interviews with allodial landholders, 20 biographic interviews and 8 focus group discussions with small-scale farmers. The interviews analyzed the institutions and the roles of actors in land administration. Our case studies show that decentralization has the tendency to increase local competition in land administration where there are no clear distribution of power and obligation to local actors. Local competition and elitism in land administration impact the ability of small-scale farmers to regularize or formalize land rights. Thus, the paper concludes that local competition and the elitism within the land administration domain in Ghana could be the main obstacles towards decentralization reforms.

Starting with fragments of information from the archives about a rebellious young man designated a “Ghona [Xhosa]” in 1820, the study constructed a plausible biography to be used in a dance performance. This uncovered several myths and omissions in historical writings about the western part of the historic “Zuurveld” area of today’s Eastern Cape. While many writers pronounced the Gonaqua to have disappeared from about 1750, they remained visible as a special category of versatile and innovative people at least through the 1850s. The imiDange Xhosa chiefs of this era were in the forefront of defending African interests against colonial encroachment, as occupants over a fifty-year period of the land north, south and west of the Fish River. The geographical location of the imiDange meant their fate was intimately linked to the colonial designation of the Fish River as a boundary between white and black. Their consistent role as resisters has been marginalised in historical writing, especially the strong defence they made in the Zuurberg mountains in the war of 1812. They challenged colonial practices not only militarily but also by trying to define the terms and conditions of labour relations. The disregard of boundaries reveals the complex dynamics of the contested frontier zone of encounter between Europeans and Africans prior to the defeat of the amaXhosa in late 1819. The study demonstrates the gains made by asking personal questions about marginal historic figures.

In the new issue, our scientific journal offers you thirteen scientific articles. As always, we try to offer a wide variety of topics and areas and follow current trends in the history of science and technology. In the article by Olha Chumachenko, оn the basis of a wide base of sources, the article highlights and analyzes the development of research work of aircraft engine companies in Zaporizhzhia during the 1970s. The existence of a single system of functioning of the Zaporizhzhia production association “Motorobudivnyk” (now the Public Joint Stock Company “Motor Sich”) and the Zaporizhzhia Machine-Building Design Bureau “Progress” (now the State Enterprise “Ivchenko – Progress”) has been taken into account. Leonid Griffen and Nadiia Ryzheva present their vision of the essence of technology as a socio-historical phenomenon. The article reveals the authors' vision of the essence of the technology as a sociohistorical phenomenon. It is based on the idea that technology is not only a set of technical devices but a segment of the general system – a society – located between a social medium and its natural surroundings in the form of a peculiar social technosphere, which simultaneously separates and connects them. Definitely the article by Denis Kislov, which examines the period from the end of the XVII century to the beginning of the XIX century, is also of interest, when on the basis of deep philosophical concepts, a new vision of the development of statehood and human values raised. At this time, a certain re-thinking of the management and communication ideas of Antiquity and the Renaissance took place, which outlined the main promising trends in the statehood evolution, which to one degree or another were embodied in practice in the 19th and 20th centuries. A systematic approach and a comparative analysis of the causes and consequences of those years’ achievements for the present and the immediate future of the 21st century served as the methodological basis for a comprehensive review of the studies of that period. The article by Serhii Paliienko is devoted to an exploration of archaeological theory issues at the Institute of archaeology AS UkrSSR in the 1960s. This period is one of the worst studied in the history of Soviet archaeology. But it was the time when in the USSR archaeological researches reached the summit, quantitative methods and methods of natural sciences were applied and interest in theoretical issues had grown in archaeology. Now there are a lot of publications dedicated to theoretical discussions between archaeologists from Leningrad but the same researches about Kyiv scholars are still unknown The legacy of St. Luke in medical science, authors from Greece - this study aims to highlight key elements of the life of Valentyn Feliksovych Voino-Yasenetskyi and his scientific contribution to medicine. Among the scientists of European greatness, who at the turn of the XIX and XX centuries showed interest to the folklore of Galicia (Halychyna) and Galician Ukrainians, contributed to their national and cultural revival, one of the leading places is occupied by the outstanding Ukrainian scientist Ivan Verkhratskyi. He was both naturalist and philologist, as well as folklorist and ethnographer, organizer of scientific work, publisher and popularizer of Ukrainian literature, translator, publicist and famous public figure. I. H. Verkhratskyi was also an outstanding researcher of plants and animals of Eastern Galicia, a connoisseur of insects, especially butterflies, the author of the first school textbooks on natural science written in Ukrainian. A new emerging field that has seen the application of the drone technology is the healthcare sector. Over the years, the health sector has increasingly relied on the device for timely transportation of essential articles across the globe. Since its introduction in health, scholars have attempted to address the impact of drones on healthcare across Africa and the world at large. Among other things, it has been reported by scholars that the device has the ability to overcome the menace of weather constraints, inadequate personnel and inaccessible roads within the healthcare sector. This notwithstanding, data on drones and drone application in Ghana and her healthcare sector in particular appears to be little within the drone literature. Also, little attempt has been made by scholars to highlight the use of drones in African countries. By using a narrative review approach, the current study attempts to address the gap above. By this approach, a thorough literature search was performed to locate and assess scientific materials involving the application of drones in the military field and in the medical systems of Africans and Ghanaians in particular. The paper by Artemii Bernatskyi and Vladyslav Khaskin is devoted to the analysis of the history of the laser creation as one of the greatest technical inventions of the 20th century. This paper focuses on establishing a relation between the periodization of the stages of creation and implementation of certain types of lasers, with their influence on the invention of certain types of equipment and industrial technologies for processing the materials, the development of certain branches of the economy, and scientific-technological progress as a whole. The paper discusses the stages of: invention of the first laser; creation of the first commercial lasers; development of the first applications of lasers in industrial technologies for processing the materials. Special attention is paid to the “patent wars” that accompanied different stages of the creation of lasers. A comparative analysis of the market development for laser technology from the stage of creation to the present has been carried out. Nineteenth-century world exhibitions were platforms to demonstrate technical and technological changes that witnessed the modernization and industrialization of the world. World exhibitions have contributed to the promotion of new inventions and the popularization of already known, as well as the emergence of art objects of world importance. One of the most important world events at the turn of the century was the 1900 World's Fair in Paris. Thus, the author has tried to analyze the participation of representatives of the sugar industry in the World's Fair in 1900 and to define the role of exhibitions as indicators of economic development, to show the importance and influence of private entrepreneurs, especially from Ukraine, on the sugar industry and international contacts. The article by Viktor Verhunov highlights the life and creative path of the outstanding domestic scientist, theorist, methodologist and practitioner of agricultural engineering K. G. Schindler, associated with the formation of agricultural mechanics in Ukraine. The methodological foundation of the research is the principles of historicism, scientific nature and objectivity in reproducing the phenomena of the past based on the complex use of general scientific, special, interdisciplinary methods. For the first time a number of documents from Russian and Ukrainian archives, which reflect some facts of the professional biography of the scientist, were introduced into scientific circulation. The authors from Kremenchuk National University named after Mykhailo Ostrohradskyi presented a fascinating study of a bayonet fragment with severe damages of metal found in the city Kremenchuk (Ukraine) in one of the canals on the outskirts of the city, near the Dnipro River. Theoretical research to study blade weapons of the World War I period and the typology of the bayonets of that period, which made it possible to put forward an assumption about the possible identification of the object as a modified bayonet to the Mauser rifle has been carried out. Metal science expert examination was based on X-ray fluorescence spectrometry to determine the concentration of elements in the sample from the cleaned part of the blade. In the article by Mykola Ruban and Vadym Ponomarenko on the basis of the complex analysis of sources and scientific literature the attempt to investigate historical circumstances of development and construction of shunting electric locomotives at the Dnipropetrovsk electric locomotive plant has been made. The next scientific article continues the series of publications devoted to the assessment of activities of the heads of the Ministry of Railways of the Russian Empire. In this article, the authors have attempted to systematize and analyze historical data on the activities of Klavdii Semyonovych Nemeshaev as the Minister of Railways of the Russian Empire. The article also assesses the development and construction of railway network in the Russian Empire during Nemeshaev's office, in particular, of the Amur Line and Moscow Encircle Railway, as well as the increase in the capacity of the Trans-Siberian Railway. The article discusses K. S. Nemeshaev's contribution to the development of technology and the introduction of a new type of freight steam locomotive for state-owned railways. We hope that everyone will find interesting useful information in the new issue. And, of course, we welcome your new submissions.

In 2013, Ghana’s second largest dam was constructed on the Black Volta River, bordering the Banda region. The Bui Dam, while contributing to the country’s growing electrical supply, has also forced the relocation of thousands of villagers. In addition to the considerable changes to lifeways, the dam has brought attention to Banda from global businesspeople and tourists alike. In light of the ongoing changes to local social and economic processes, the Banda Thru Time project emerged. This project seeks to e-patriate images—from historic times to the present—to the communities that make up Banda. My part in the project—and the focus of this thesis—was to create a web portal to the repository that would contain these images in addition to other historic documents. In addition to the creation of the web portal, the thesis portion of this project engages the process of digital epatriation and the four lines of inquiry that came to inform my research: determining through what pathways digital e-patriation is initiated and achieved in a community; how collections get assembled, with an interest in the implications this has for interpretation; how a collection can be presented to unsettle the troubling either/or dichotomy of continuity and change; and how memory work relates to the process of assembling a collection for the purposes of e-patriation
Graduate

This study addresses the topic of class consciousness and the radical educator. Using the theory of revolutionary critical pedagogy and Marxist humanism I examine the impact of formative experience and class consciousness on my own radical praxis across three continents. The methodology of auto/biography is used to interrogate my own life history. I excavate my own formative experience in Scotland, Canada and my radical praxis as a human rights educator in Ghana West Africa. The study is particularly interested in the possibility of a radical educator transgressing across race, whiteness and gender while working in Ghana, West Africa. Chapter One begins by discussing the theory of revolutionary critical pedagogy, Marxist humanism and theories of the self. Chapter Two assesses the methodology of auto/biography,research methods and an introduction to formative experience. Chapter Three, Four and Five contain excavation sites from Scotland, Canada and Ghana with accompanying analysis. Chapter Six concludes with a summary of research findings.

Born in Khwarazm in 973, Biruni displayed an early interest in the pursuit of knowledge, which remained with him for several decades, during extensive travels and residence in Central Asia, Iran, and India. Biruni’s upbringing and education stimulated his youthful appetite for science and truth. After the political upheaval in his homeland, he spent some years in Iran seeking his livelihood with uncertain patronage before the opportunity arose to return to Khwarazm, where he joined the new government. Upon the overthrow of his patron and the subsequent Ghaznavid invasion, Biruni was drawn into the orbit of Sultan Mahmud’s court. He passed his mature years primarily in Ghazna, which occasioned extensive travels in northwest India. The death of Sultan Mahmud enabled Biruni’s brief return to Central Asia, although he continued to reside in the Ghaznavid capital. The polymath passed away in Ghazna in 1048.