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Ghanaians voted in an election seen as a close fight between President Nana Akufo-Addo and his longtime rival John Mahama, in a country long viewed a beacon of stability in a troubled region.
Announcement of the death of former President Rawlings pic.twitter.com/7ext0fp4sd
— Nana Akufo-Addo (@NAkufoAddo) November 12, 2020
Watch our report:
Born: October 17, 1956
Birthplace: Decatur, Alabama
Mae C. Jemison was born the youngest of three children of Charlie and Dorothy Jemison, a maintenance worker and
schoolteacher. Raised in Chicago, Illinois, she graduated from Morgan Park High School in 1973. She earned a Bachelor of
Science degree in Chemical Engineering from Stanford University in 1977, while also fulfilling the requirements for a Bachelor
of Arts in African-American Studies. She attended medical school and received a Doctor of Medicine degree from Cornell
University in 1981. While in medical school she traveled to Cuba, Kenya and Thailand, providing primary medical care to
people living there.
Following medical school Dr. Jemison served in the Peace Corps, from January 1983 to June 1985. She was stationed in
Sierra Leone and Liberia, West Africa as the area Peace Corps medical officer. There she supervised the pharmacy,
laboratory, medical staff. She provided medical care, wrote self-care manuals, developed and implemented guidelines for health
and safety issues. She also had contact with and worked in conjunction with the Center for Disease Control (CDC) on
research for various vaccines.
In 1985, after returning from the Peace Corps, Dr. Jemison secured a position with the CIGNA Health Plans of California as a
general practitioner in Los Angeles, California. There she began attending graduate classes in engineering and applied to the
National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) for admission to the astronaut program. Her first application was not
accepted. It was her second application in 1987 that was accepted as an astronaut candidate; Mae Jemison became one of the
fifteen candidate accepted from some 2,000 applicants.
Dr. Jemison successfully completed her astronaut training program in August 1988, becoming the fifth black astronaut and the
first black female astronaut in NASA history. In August 1992, SPACELAB J was a successful joint U.S. and Japanese science
mission, making Mae Jemison the first black woman in space.
Art historian Shawn Michelle Smith—in her new book Photographic Returns: Racial Justice and the Time of Photography—examines the famous photograph of Emmett Till’s corpse.
Yet, while André’s recollection gave shape to the trajectory of Bajorek’s book—which is about decoloniality in the 1960s—his account also obscured an important collaborator in Diop’s practice: the photographer’s wife, Ndèye Teinde Dieng.
Given the issues exemplified by Smith and Bajorek, can there really be decolonial photography?
Smith’s description of Haynes’s portrait has a crescendo effect: the photograph is introduced with a vignette that intensifies as she folds in facts, anecdotes, and theories about antiblack racism in the United States.
Smith starts with a selection of images that are ingrained in the United States’s popular memory: Frederick Douglass’s perfectly parted hair, VanDerZee’s bourgeois Harlem, and cotton fields of the Deep South, to name a few.
On August 5, 1999 President William Clinton appointed Gregory Lee Johnson U.S. Ambassador to Swaziland. He served in that post from November 16, 1999 to October 18, 2001. Johnson began his career in the Foreign Service in 1968 and has served in Vietnam (1968-1971). His next posts were in Japan (1972-1976), Brazil (1976-1980), and the Soviet Union (1981-1983). He has also served in Somalia, Canada, and as Interim Charge d’ Affaires in the U.S. Embassy in Stockholm, Sweden. Ambassador Johnson speaks Japanese, Portuguese, Russian, Swedish, and Vietnamese.
Gregory Lee Johnson was born in Ellensburg, Washington on July 18, 1945. His parents are Orville and Edith Johnson. He graduated from Franklin High School in Seattle, Washington in 1963 and four years later received a bachelor’s degree in political science from Washington State University. He later attended The American University, Washington, D.C. and received a master’s degree in international relations in 1968.
Besides his service abroad, Ambassador Johnson held assignments in the Department of State’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research and attended the U.S. Army War College between 1983 and 1988. From 1989 to 1992, Johnson returned to Japan where he served as Consul General at the U.S. Consulate General in Osaka-Kobe, Japan.
Johnson’s appointment as U.S. Ambassador to Swaziland provided him the opportunity to help deepen relationships with the United States. Swaziland was the last nation in Africa to be governed by a monarchy and was seen as the most stable nation in Southern Africa. Johnson‘s greatest challenge was in helping Swaziland confront its HIV/AIDS epidemic where one-fifth of its one million people were HIV-positive.
Ambassador Johnson helped negotiate the lifting of sanctions on cane sugar exports from Swaziland to the U.S. and played a key role in gaining commitment from the Government of Swaziland to contribute resources to the United Nations and the Organization of African Unity (OAU) peacekeeping efforts in in Northeast and West
On July 2, 2009 President Barack Obama appointed Gayleatha Beatrice Brown to be the United States ambassador to Burkina Faso, a nation in West Africa. This was her second ambassadorial appointment. Previously, Brown had been appointed by President George W. Bush to serve as U.S. Ambassador to Benin, a post she held from 2006 to 2009.
Brown was born in Matawan, West Virginia on June 20, 1947. Her family moved to New Jersey when she was a child and she graduated from Edison High School, in Edison, New Jersey in 1964. She received bachelor’s and master’s honor degrees from Howard University in Washington, D.C. in 1968 and 1970, respectively. Brown also did post-graduate work in international relations at the School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland.
Before joining the United States Foreign Service in 1982, Brown was a Special Assistant at the Agency for International Development (USAID). She was later Assistant Administrator for Africa and a legislative assistant to the House of Representatives.
Brown had had extensive overseas experience before her ambassadorial appointment. Her first posts were, successively, as Development Officer at the U.S. Embassies in Paris, France and Abidjan, Côte dIvoire. She also served as Counselor for Political Affairs at the U.S. Embassy in Pretoria, South Africa, and U.S. Consul General and U.S. Deputy Permanent Observer (concurrently) to the Council of Europe in Strasbourg, France. She was Chief of the Economic and Commercial Sections at the U.S. Embassies in Harare, Zimbabwe, and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. She was also desk officer at the U.S. State Department for Canada, Senegal, Guinea, and Mauritania.
Brown has represented the Department of State at the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) at Credit Arrangement negotiations, and she was a Desk Officer for the U.S. Export-Import Bank (EXIM).
Brown’s honors and recognitions include the Lady of the Golden Horseshoe (West Virginia state
But now the contraction in the Chinese economy has paused the illegal logging in the Outamba-Kilimi national park – more than 1,100 square km of park protected by 27 unarmed rangers.
“No Chinese men are coming here anymore, and they’re the only people to come here and help us by buying what we cut,” said Ishmael Sessay, who has been harvesting timber from Sierra Leone’s oldest park since last year.
Logging for domestic use is allowed, but the government says logging in the park goes far beyond what is needed to satisfy home demand, and it does not have the resources to stop it.
“I feel pain in my heart when I see this forest cut,” said Musa Kamara, who worked as a ranger in the park from 1981 to 2018.
In a related development, Nigeria is facing life without oil revenue as oil prices, now around $20 a barrel, have already skidded to the zero point.
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The World Health Organization (WHO) on Thursday warned that the potential impact of COVID -19 on food security in Africa is likely to exacerbate the already existing burden of malnutrition.
The WHO Regional Director for Africa, Matshidiso Moeti, in a press statement said the impact of the disease is expected to be greater among those grappling with food scarcity and malnutrition.
\"COVID-19 is unfolding in Africa against a backdrop of worrying levels of hunger and undernourishment, which could worsen as the virus threatens livelihoods and household economies,\" the statement said.
The WHO said COVID-19 is exacerbating food shortages, as food imports, transportation and agricultural production have all been hampered by a combination of lockdowns, travel restrictions and physical distancing measures.
\"Some countries have already announced measures to mitigate some of the risks of lockdowns on food supply, from in-kind distributions to this week's announcement by Heads of State of the East African Community of their intention to develop a mechanism for tracking and certification of cross-border truck drivers to ensure the safe delivery of essential goods,\" the statement highlighted.
By the time of her death at the age of 31, Phillis Wheatley was among the most celebrated poets of her time.
She had also been a slave, bought in West Africa and brought to Boston in 1761 as a child then resold to the Wheatley family, where she was tutored …
The Pan-Africanist Ghanaian President Nana Akufo-Addo
The President of Ghana, Nana Akufo-Addo, is seeking a second term in the upcoming presidential election on Monday. Although often positively-viewed by many other Africans on the continent and abroad as a Pan-Africanist, his win is not guaranteed in his home country as he must succeed in convincing Ghanaians that he is still the same worthy candidate for whom the majority of the population voted four years prior. Early Days and Career Début
Born in 1944 in the capital, Accra to a family of the national political elite, Akufo-Addo saw his own father Edward Akufo-Addo become president in the late 1960s as a member of the \"Big Six\" i.e. the fathers of independence of the nation of Ghana. Educated in London, Akufo-Addo he worked as a lawyer in France and England — specialising in human rights before returning to Ghana where he eventually became involved with the New Patriotic Party (NPP) in 1992 when the country returned to democracy following decades of military rule.
His career path as a lawyer then as a member of parliament and minister garnered Akufo-Addo a strong anti-corruption reputation which resulted in high expectations for his presidency.
According to Kwesi Jonah, a researcher at the Ghana Institute for Democratic Governance, \"Everyone saw him as the one who would be able to put an end to corruption.\"
Accusations of mission obstruction by the special prosecutor — who resigned a month later, to oversee a corruption investigation initiative appointed by Akufo-Addo upon his election in December 2016, raised questions about the authenticity of his presidential brand amongst the Ghanian public.
Presidential Term Overview
Kwesi Jonah believes that the 76-year-old Ghanaian president was in a better position to win the election than he is today. President Akufo-Addo had promised to improve education accessibility- a sector which has seen success, and create job employment as a substantial percentage of Ghanian youth is without work.
An asset for the president, in a country where 18 to 35-year-olds represent more than half of the electorate.
He also pledged to diversify the Ghanian economy which has been dependent on primary resources (gold, cocoa and, more recently, oil), and to reduce taxes in the private sector to encourage investment.
Since his election in 2016, although President Akufo-Addo has managed to contain the increase in debt and inflation, more than half of voters believe that he has failed to improve their standard of living and create jobs — according to a survey conducted by Afrobarometer in 2019.
Economically, Ghana has taken a giant step forward in the last decade, but the country - just like most other countries, has been very much affected by the Covid-19 pandemic with its economic growth this year expected to fall to 1.5%, the lowest rate in 37 years.
Another Four Years as President?
Nevertheless, the President’s swift handling of the coronavirus crisis has been applauded both in Ghana and abroad. In particular, the
Early voting has begun in Ghana for essential workers ahead of national elections which comes up next week Monday December 7.
More than 100 security personnel, journalists and staff of the electoral commission who will be busy on election day are expected to vote according to the Electoral Commission.
The polls would hold in 275 constituencies and include ballots for the presidency and parliament.
President Nana Akufo-Addo is facing a re-election challenge from former president John Mahama in what is expected to be a tight contest.
During campaigns the two main presidential candidates promised to spend more if they win the election. Their campaign promises comes amid concerns over the west african country's economy and rising debt profile.
Ghana, a major producer of gold, oil and cocoa, suffered its first economic contraction in almost four decades this year, as a result of the covid 19 pandemic.
Opposition leader John Dramani Mahama, 61, in a campaign promise hinged on the tag ‘Operation rescue Ghana’ is trumpeting massive infrastructural development as a trump card in this year’s polls.
However, a recent survey by the Center for Democratic Development (CDD) conducted between September 28 to October 16, 2020 shows that the incumbent President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo enjoys a slight advantage over him.
Around 17 million eligible voters are expected to exercise their franchise on December 7.
Air ambulance services operating on the African continent are seeing an uptick in medevacs linked to Covid-19 and are adjusting to a number of difficulties in transporting infected patients, both within Africa and outside the continent.
\"In the air ambulance industry, Covid-19 has had a huge impact,\" says Fraser Lamond of Air Rescue Africa, a Johannesburg-based company operating two Hawker aircraft.
Typical clients for air ambulance services in Africa include workers for non-governmental organisations, corporations, tourists and governments, although this has changed with permission to move infectious patients becoming more difficult to obtain.
Some African governments have reportedly employed air ambulances to provide medevacs for officials suffering from Covid-19.
A typical Covid-19 medical evacuation by aircraft ranges from between $60,000 to $100,000 for taking a patient from west Africa to South Africa or Europe, depending on the aircraft employed, according to industry estimates.
