Academic literature on the topic 'Kumasi Metropolitan Area'

Kumasi is a nodal city and functions as the administrative and economic capital of the Ashanti region in Ghana. Rapid urbanization has been experienced inducing the transformation of various Land Use Land Cover (LULC) types into urban/built-up areas in Kumasi. This paper aims at tracking spatio-temporal LULC changes utilizing Landsat imagery from 1986, 2013 and 2015 of Kumasi. The unique contribution of this research is its focus on urban expansion analysis and the utilization of Random Forest (RF) Classifier for satellite image classification. Change detection, urban land modelling and urban expansion in the sub-metropolitan zones, buffers, density decay curve and correlation analysis were methodologies adopted for our study. The classifier yielded better accuracy compared to earlier works in Ghana. The evaluation of LULC changes indicated that urban/built-up areas are continually increasing at the expense of agricultural and forestlands. The urban/built-up areas occupied 4622.49 hectares (ha) (23.78%), 13,447.50 ha (69.18%) and 14,004.60 ha (72.05%) in 1986, 2013 and 2015, respectively of the 19,438 ha area of Kumasi. Projection indicated that urban/built-up areas will occupy 15,490 ha (79.70%) in 2025. The urban expansion was statistically significant. The results revealed the importance of spatial modeling for environmental management and city planning.

In Ghana, although a number of regulations are in place to guide caterers in their operations, hygienic practices among restaurants in the Kumasi Metropolitan area are inadequate. The hospitality industry alone accounts for about 44% of all the reported food-borne illness outbreaks. The main objective of the study was to assess and evaluate the extent at which licensed restaurants in the Kumasi Metropolis observe food safety and hygienic practices regulations in food provision. Fifty (50) respondents were drawn from the population under study, specifically from staff, managers and regulatory bodies including the Metropolitan Assembly. Primary data was collected from the three groups. Questionnaires were administered and in-depth interview was conducted. The Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) was used to analyze data collected from the respondents in the survey. The study showed that customers in the selected restaurants were very much satisfied at the extent by which restaurants in the Kumasi Metropolis observe and apply the food safety and hygienic practices. It was also revealed that there is adequate evidence to show that formal education and professional training have a significant impact on food safety and hygienic practices of caterers and restaurant managers in the tourism industry in the Kumasi Metropolis. The study recommends that restaurants in the metropolis should be encouraged to sponsor their workers to enroll in some professional programmes to acquire more knowledge for the purpose of practicing food safety and hygiene in the restaurant business. It is further recommended that regulatory bodies should improve their performance by maintaining high standard of food hygiene.

Solid waste management within Kumasi Metropolitan Assembly area continues to be a major challenge for the municipal assembly and one of the key issues is its financial constraints. This study was undertaken to examine households' willingness to pay for improved solid waste management services. A multistage sampling technique was employed to select six hundred respondents for the study. Logistic regression model was used to establish the determinants of willingness to pay for solid waste management whilst the Tobit model was used to evaluate the factors influencing the amount of money the households are willing to pay for improved solid waste management. The logistic model shows that income, age, number of children, quantity of waste generated, and education have significant effects on the willingness to pay, while the amount of money the households are willing to pay was influenced by their income, quantity of waste generated, education, house ownership, and number of children. Thus, the assembly can increase waste collection fees between GHC 3 and GHC 5.00. This would lead to improvement in the waste management within the metropolis. However, the additional charge should take into consideration location and income levels.

Most urban areas of developing countries were hitherto experiencing unprecedented growth in their population, the phenomenon commonly referred to as urbanization, which in this study can be said to be the proportion of urban population relative to the total population of a region.

This phenomenon has opportunities vis-à-vis challenges, whose impact on natural resources in general and water resources in particular, cannot be over- emphasized. It is within the context of these urban challenges that this study attempts to look into and possibly assess the situation in the urban and peri- urban areas of Kumasi Metropolitan Area (KMA) in Ghana, whose urbanization processes is prejudiced by this study to be increasing rapidly.

The study specifically attempted to assess thechanges in the urbanization patterns and the possible future urbanization trend of the area within a specific time frame. The study also attempts to look at the causes of this urbanization, and its impact on water resources in the Area, both qualitatively and quantitatively, envisaged to be the results of socio-economic activities taking place in the Area. Finally, the study attempts to look into the measures put in place to curb these challenges.

Amid paucity of data, however, the study reveals that the most single contributor of urbanization processes in the area has been migration from the countryside, and in particular from the northern part of the country. The study also reveals the fact that even though the general quality standard of some water resources is better, the largely uncontrolled socio-economic activities, coupled with the deplorable sanitary conditions in the KMA, has potential to degrade the water resources in the KMA. In addition, the study reveals that little attention is given, in terms of policy formulation to curb this urbanization processes and to protect water resources in the area.

This study is about women, HIV/AIDS and sexual rights in the Kumasi Metropolitan Area in Ghana. The study aimed at discovering the factors that undermine women’s ability to negotiate safe sex and consequently become exposed to HIV infection and the subsequent stigmatisation and discrimination.

The study applied ideas generated mainly from the theories of risk, stigmatisation and discrimination and feminist geography to explain its findings. However, some ideas were also utilised from the empowerment approach. Of particular importance is that concepts like worry, risk perception, risk assessment, risk tolerance, risk optimisation, risk reduction, stigma, discrimination, gender inequality, gender identity and gender relations were applied in the interpretation of the findings.

The study focused mainly on women within the age group of 20 to 39. They included women whose HIV/AIDS status are not known, prostitutes, and HIV/AIDS positive women. In addition, the study included a few men within similar age group, key informants and stakeholders. A total number of 111 informants participated in the study. 80 women were selected for the questionnaire survey using semi-random sampling by age and sex and the remaining informants were purposely sampled. Both quantitative and qualitative methods were used for data collection and data analysis. Methods used for collecting primary data include questionnaire, in-depth interview, and direct observation. Secondary data were also collected from documentary sources. Univariate, bivariate, and multivariate methods were used.

The study revealed that gender inequality in HIV/AIDS persists in the study area. It further reveals that most women are worried for contracting HIV. Also it found out that women have higher perception about HIV and this has influence on their behaviour. However, there is exceptional case where some women with high perception about HIV still engage in risky behaviour. The study also reveals that HIV risk tolerance is generally high at both the local and national level. Caution was revealed as the most preferred measure for risk reduction. Low income or low economic status was revealed as the most important factor undermining women’s inability to negotiate for safe sex. Most women also favour that women are given some form of control over their sex. Furthermore, the study reveals that gender inequality which is evident through biological, economic, socio-cultural and political subordination of women make them vulnerable to HIV, stigmatisation and discrimination.

The study recommends measure such as expanding women’s access to sexual and reproductive health, expanding public education programmes, promoting and protecting women’s right, empowering women, giving women access to antiretroviral treatment and political commitment for reducing women’s vulnerability to HIV, stigmatisation and discrimination.

Today, we find a large number of wireless networks based on different radio access technologies (RATs). Every existing RAT has its own merits. Now the focus is turned towards the next-generation communication networks (Akyildiz, Mohanty, & Xie, 2005), which will seamlessly integrate various existing wireless communication networks, such as wireless local area networks (WLANs, e.g., IEEE 802.11 a/b/g and HIPERLAN/2), wireless wide area networks (WWANs, e.g., 1G, 2G, 3G, IEEE 802.20), wireless personal area networks (WPANs, e.g., Bluetooth, IEEE 802.15.1/3/4), and wireless metropolitan area networks (WMANs, e.g., IEEE 802.16) to form a converged heterogeneous architecture (Cavalcanti, Agrawal, Cordeiro, Xie, & Kumar, 2005).

Today, we find a large number of wireless networks based on different radio access technologies (RATs). Every existing RAT has its own merits. Now the focus is turned towards the next-generation communication networks (Akyildiz, Mohanty, & Xie, 2005), which will seamlessly integrate various existing wireless communication networks, such as wireless local area networks (WLANs, e.g., IEEE 802.11 a/b/g and HIPERLAN/2), wireless wide area networks (WWANs, e.g., 1G, 2G, 3G, IEEE 802.20), wireless personal area networks (WPANs, e.g., Bluetooth, IEEE 802.15.1/3/4), and wireless metropolitan area networks (WMANs, e.g., IEEE 802.16) to form a converged heterogeneous architecture (Cavalcanti, Agrawal, Cordeiro, Xie, & Kumar, 2005). Seamless integration does not mean that the RATs are converged into a single network. Instead the services offered by the existing RATs are integrated as shown in Figure 1. Convergence technology is a technology that combines different existing access technologies such as cellular, cordless, WLAN-type systems, short-range wireless connectivity, and wired systems on a common platform to complement each other in an optimum way and to provide a multiplicity of possibilities for current and future services and applications to users in a single terminal. After creating a converged heterogeneous architecture, the next step is to perform a common radio resource management (RRM) (Magnusson, Lundsjo, Sachs, & Wallentin, 2004). RRM helps to maximize the use of available spectrum resources, support mixed traffic types with different QoS requirements, increase trunking capacity and grade of service (GoS), improve spectrum usage by selecting the best RAT based on radio conditions (e.g., path loss), minimize inter-system handover latency, preserve QoS across multiple RATs, and reduce signaling delay.