Category: General

His Majesty’s Prisons and Probation Service (HMPPS) under the UK Ministry of Justice has acknowledged the Crime Check Foundation’s (CCF) work in the prisons with a plaque.

Top-level officials from HM Prisons and Probation Service presented a plaque to recognise the Foundation’s contribution to the rehabilitation and reformation of prisoners in Ghana.

The HMPPS, like the Ghana Prisons Service, carry out sentences given by courts, in custody and the community, and rehabilitate people through education and employment.

The key officials presented the plaque to Mr Ibrahim Oppong Kwarteng, the Executive Director of CCF when they met a team from the organization to tap into its wealth of knowledge on prison administration in Ghana.

They applauded the Foundation for the work it does in the prisons.

The meeting with CCF was borne out of the UK’s decision to repatriate some Ghanaian prisoners in Britain to Ghana.

Following its recognition internationally, Crime Check Foundation is expecting a second cohort of vol
unteers from the UK to learn about Ghana’s prison system under its supervision.

Source: Ghana News Agency

Spanish Basque separatists are celebrating an historic parliamentary election victories, with the two parties in favour of independence for the northern Spanish region receiving 54 of the 75 seats in the parliament – more than ever before.

However, the governing coalition between the conservative Basque Nationalist Party (PNV), one of the parties that favours Basque independence, and the country’s ruling Socialists (PSOE) of Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez, will continue to rule.

This is because the PNV has ruled out governing with the other party that favours independence – the left-wing alliance EH Bildu. It and the PNV each won 27 seats in Sunday’s vote, according to electoral authorities.

The PNV and the PSOE, which have governed the region since 2016, have an absolute majority of 39 members of parliament – two less than before.

Despite the PNV’s unwillingness to govern with the EH Bildu, some are worried in Spain.

‘EH Bildu is becoming the alternative to power and is opening up a worrying scenario,’ co
mmented the renowned daily newspaper El Mundo.

‘Never before in the history of democracy has nationalism been so strong in the Basque Country,’ wrote the newspaper ABC.

In front of cheering supporters chanting ‘independence, independence,’ EH-Bildu lead candidate Pello Otxandiano shouted on election night: ‘This is spectacular…We are on the right track. We are making progress, and fast.’

The various separatist parties in the conflict region of Catalonia congratulated the 41-year-old engineer on his success.

On May 12, the new parliament in Barcelona will be elected. Sánchez’s minority government is dependent on cooperation with all separatists there.

With 27 seats, EH Bildu achieved by far the best result in the history of the alliance and also in the history of its predecessor parties.

One of the reasons the party is controversial is its refusal to label the former Basque underground organization ETA as ‘terrorist.’ It calls it an ‘armed group’ instead.

Like EH Bildu, which has former members of the d
isbanded terrorist organization ETA in its ranks, the PNV also seeks more self-determination for the region from the central government in Madrid, but is less radical in its approach.

Iñigo Urkullu also has a nationalist orientation, but is less radical.

Urkullu, 62, who has been in power since 2012, no longer presented himself as the leading candidate this time. He will most likely be replaced as prime minister by his party colleague Imanol Pradales, 49, if the PNV and PSOE agree to continue the coalition as expected.

The underground group ‘Euskadi Ta Askatasuna’ (ETA), which translates as ‘Basque Country and Freedom,’ was founded in 1959. It fought for an independent Basque Country for decades, carrying out some 3,000 attacks in which 857 people died and 2,600 were injured.

It was considered a terrorist organization by Spain, France, the United Kingdom, the United States, Canada and the European Union. It continued its fight even after the end of the Spanish dictatorship of Francisco Franco in 1975.

Th
e organization announced its dissolution in 2018. The Basque Country is now one of the most prosperous of Spain’s 17 autonomous regions, which correspond to the German federal states.

Source: Ghana News Agency

Ghana has assumed the presidency of the Consultative International Cashew Council (CICC).

The country takes over the reign of CICC, an international organisation with legal capacity and financial autonomy responsible for promoting the sustainable development of cashew in the world, from Côte D’Ivoire at the end of April 2024.

The CICC seeks to provide a framework for consultation and to promote the development of the cashew sector in Member States through the coordination of policies and cooperation between States.

Mr Yaw Frimpong Addo, a Deputy Minister for Food and Agriculture in charge of Crops told the Ghana News Agency (GNA) that Ghana’s mandate commenced from April 2024 to April 2025.

He expressed joy, noting that the country had been preparing for the position over the years by putting in place regulations and structures.

Mr Addo said leading the 11-member Organisation would be an opportunity to leverage and learn from other countries’ best practices in production, processing and accessing funding
opportunities.

‘Some of the countries like Cote D’Ivoir are advancing from production to marketing so, we will leverage that to build ours,’ he said.

Mr William Agyapong Quaittoo, the Chief Executive Officer of the Tree Development Authority, told the GNA that leading the CICC would offer Ghana many opportunities, including foreign investment to conduct research and upscale sustainable initiatives.

‘Any institution that wants to do any business or study on cashew will first have to start from Ghana even though the Secretariat of CICC is in Cote D’ Ivoire. Through this, the sector will build its capacity and harness the potential to benefit actors, especially farmers,’ he said.

Cocoa, he said, had been one of Ghana’s foreign exchange earners for over 50 years, however, climate change and other challenges were declining its production hence the need to develop the cashew sector to take over.

Mr Quaittoo stated that the production of cashew had increased in the last three years from 100, 000 metric tonnes t
o over 250,000 metric tonnes.

He said it was the aim of the country to produce and process about 50 per cent of cashews instead of the current situation where 90 per cent was exported as tax free.

The CICC members are; Benin, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Côte d’Ivoire, Ghana, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Mali, Nigeria, Senegal, and Togo.

Established on the 18th of November 2016 in Abidjan, Côte D’Ivoire, the CICC aims to create a consultation framework and synergies between member states for a sustainable cashew sector.

Africa’s cashew industry has come up strongly in recent years as one with enormous potential and one that can significantly contribute to the economic growth of the continent.

About 60 per cent of the world’s global raw cashew nuts are produced in Africa, with Cote D’Ivoire being the world’s leading producer, producing 1 million tons in 2021.

Source: Ghana News Agency

Europe suffered a ‘huge number’ of climate extremes as the continent was hit by heatwaves, wildfires, droughts and flooding last year, scientists said.

The extreme weather affected human health and caused billions in economic losses – and is set to get more frequent and intense as the world warms, experts said as they launched a report on the European state of the climate in 2023.

The report, from the EU’s Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S) and the UN’s World Meteorological Service (WMO), details the impacts of global warming, including a ‘beyond extreme’ marine heatwave off the UK and Irish coasts, the continent’s largest ever wildfire and exceptional glacier melt.

Heat-related deaths are on the rise in Europe, while 63 lives were lost to storms, 44 to floods and 44 to wildfires in 2023, and weather and climate-related, economic losses were an estimated pound 13.4 billion euros ($14.3 billion), the report said.

Celeste Saulo, WMO secretary-general, said: ‘The climate crisis is the biggest challenge
of our generation. The cost of climate action may seem high but the cost of inaction is much higher.’

Overall, the continent saw its joint warmest or second warmest year on record – depending on the dataset used for analysing the year – with the warmest September on record.

North western Europe saw its warmest June on record, while much of Europe was hit by heatwaves during the ‘extended summer’ from June to September.

At the peak of a heatwave in July, 41% of southern Europe was affected by strong to extreme heat stress, which worsens existing health conditions and can raise the risk of illnesses such as heat exhaustion and heatstroke.

The scientists warned that heat-related deaths have increased by about 30% in the past 20 years, and Europe in 2023 experienced a record number of days with ‘extreme heat stress’.

Heat hit the oceans too, with the average surface temperature for Europe’s seas the highest on record, the report said.

Rainfall across Europe was up 7% on average levels, with a third of the r
iver network exceeding ‘high’ flood thresholds and 16% seeing flows above the ‘severe’ flood threshold, including many rivers across the UK.

Major river basins including the Loire, Rhine and Danube saw record or near-record high river flows due to a series of storms between October and December.

Four fifths of the economic losses in 2023 were due to flooding, which affected an estimated 1.6 million people in Europe, the report said.

Wildfires burned an area the size of London, Paris and Berlin combined, with Europe’s largest ever fire in Greece covering 370 square miles, and there were periods of drought in the Iberian peninsula and eastern Europe.

There was a below average number of days with snow, the report said, and the lack of winter snow combined with summer heatwaves meant the Alps saw ‘exceptional glacier loss’ in 2023.

Over the past two years, Alpine glaciers have lost about 10% of their remaining volume, the report found.

C3S director Carlo Buontempo said 2023 was a ‘complex and multifaceted’
year for climate hazards.

‘We witnessed widespread floods, but also high temperature, extreme wildfire, severe drought.

‘And these events have not only strained natural ecosystems, but they’ve also posed severe challenges to agriculture, water resources management and public health.

‘Hundreds of thousands of people were affected by extreme climate events in 2023, which have been responsible for large losses at continental level, estimated to be at least in the tens of billions of Euros,’ he said.

‘Unfortunately, these figures are unlikely to get smaller, at least in the near future,’ he warned.

The service’s deputy director, Samantha Burgess, said: ‘Europe in 2023 saw a huge number of records, a record number of Europeans affected by heat stress, record ocean temperatures, and record melting of glaciers.

‘We also saw a huge number of extreme events from the largest wildfire in Europe in Greece last year to the sheer number and frequency of flooding and storm events across Europe.

‘We know that extreme
events are likely to become more frequent and more intense due to climate change.

‘And we also know that all of these events are within a context of record concentrations of greenhouse gases in our atmosphere, which are the ultimate driver of human-caused climate change.’

The report found that renewables, such as hydropower, wind and solar which all rely on climatic conditions, generated a record proportion of Europe’s electricity, at 43%, with storms and rain boosting the potential for wind and river flow hydropower, while there was a mixed picture for solar.

Source: Ghana News Agency

Ghana Irrigation Development Authority and the International Water Management Institute (IWMI) have signed a Memorandum of Understanding to deepen collaboration and ensure sustainable water management and irrigation practices.

The MoU, which is heavily tilted towards research, will also look at training smallholder farmers to sustainably utilize the water resources. 

Dr Mark Smith, IWMI Director General and Richard Oppong-Boateng, Acting Chief Executive Officer of GIDA, signed the deal on behalf of their institutions.

Commenting on the five-year agreement, Mr Oppong-Boateng expressed the hope that the strategic partnerships would serve as fundamental resource for organisations to develop and expand linkages with well-established institutions.

‘Ghana has the potential to produce more and export to neighbouring countries.  We can only do that when we have sustainable water resources. Through this MOU, we are going to do a lot of research to look at how we can predict the rainfall and also how we can model o
ur water resources,’ he said.

The Authority currently manages over 180 irrigation schemes and has the vision of developing the available water resources and irrigation potential of about 1.9 million hectares for livelihood options in agriculture, (irrigation, livestock watering and aquaculture) at appropriate scales for smallholder and commercial farmers in all communities throughout the country.

‘We are very grateful and happy to see the signing of the MoU and hope it will help to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) 6 towards achieving water quality and sustainability for the survival of people and the planet,’ he said.

Mr Oppong-Boateng said the MoU would also bring on board expertise to predict with satellite imagery and modelling instead of using runoff coefficients in design of dams. 

Also, the MoU will help to mitigate the effect of climate change through the use of climate smart technologies, placing a limit on water usage and still have high production levels. 

‘If we don’t manage ou
r resources well, we will not be able to have water to produce food. So, for the small-holder farmer who doesn’t know anything about water conservation through this capacity building training, we will be able to tell them and even train them how they should use their water resources.’

On his part, Dr Smith said the MoU would deepen and make closer the strategic partnership IWMI have with the Ghana Irrigation Development Authority.

He said the two institutions had a shared objective to support the development of irrigation in Ghana to make sure it was sustainable and inclusive as well as productive.

Dr Smith said IWMI had been working in Ghana for the last 20 years on water management and irrigation development in a whole variety of respects that met maximum potential for supporting and strengthening farmers, their livelihoods and their families’ well-being. 

On measuring the impact of the project, Dr Smith said the partners would clearly want to see that ‘a partnership like this is really driving change a
nd driving impacts, especially impacts in policy and investment and the way that works.’

Also, impact on the ground that makes a real difference in people’s lives.

He said to implement the joint activities with GIDA, there was quite comprehensive monitoring frameworks for tracking the results and the impacts of our programmes together. 

‘So, we’ll be sure to have a strong evidence-based story to tell about the success, we hope, of this partnership,’ Dr Smith added.

He said IWMI was focused on driving change in water management that makes a difference in people’s lives through more formalized training approaches that we would build into different projects and also through partnerships that work from the ground through institutions, whether local water management institutions or district level water management institutions.

Dr Olufunke Cofie, IWMI West Africa Regional Representative, said the Institute was proud about co-developing innovations with stakeholders and beneficiaries, including smallholder farm
ers, government agencies, and non-governmental organisations that are working with farmers as well.

‘So, we’ve co-developed two innovations. One is about transforming waste into fertilizer, which we have done together and it’s being commercialized,’ she said.

Dr Cofie said IWMI continued to use its expertise to support the efforts of the government to take irrigation to the next level, to expand the area of irrigation, and to improve irrigation practices, particularly in the northern area where they only have opportunity to cultivate once a year.

‘There’s a need to improve the income and livelihoods of smallholder farmers by helping them with innovations, technologies, practices that they can draw on water whether it’s surface water or groundwater resources, to use it to have dry season production systems.  We help people to be more engaged, we help people to generate income,’ she added.

The occasion was also used to showcase the activities of IWMI to stakeholders in areas such as agricultural water manag
ement and irrigation, drawing attention to faecal sludge management, strengthening individual and institutions, contributing to their capacity through graduate studies, facilitating policy dialogue, contributing knowledge, evidence-based knowledge into policy processes, either in the agricultural sector or in the water and sanitation sector, something that we have been actively doing in Ghana.

Stakeholders also had a virtual reality experience.

Source: Ghana News Agency

Ten finalists out of 2,000 applicants from across Africa are set to converge in Uganda for the much-anticipated Africa Monologue Challenge (AMC) 2024.

The finalists are Agume Mark, Uganda; Delove Augustt, Ghana; Ijeoma Grace Agu, Nigeria; Noluthando Shandu, South Africa; Kelvin Maxwell Ngoma, Malawi; Maud Guerard, Ivory Coast; Esther Wanjiru, Kenya; Chimwemwe Chipidza, Zimbabwe; Jang Afanyuh Gehnjang, Cameroon; and Chadzanso Mwenda, Zambia.

‘Mr Mawuko Kuadzi, the Chief Executive Officer of MK Casting, described the finalists as ‘eloquent storytellers’ who would engage in a healthy contest to market their countries’ unique culture.

He said: ‘Representing the spirit of their nations, these eloquent storytellers will engage in a healthy contest to determine who can best market their country’s unique culture through the art of monologue,’

In an interview with the Ghana News Agency (GNA) Kuadzi stated that the AMC was not just a competition; but a celebration of African diversity, adding that; ‘As the finalist
s take up residence in the Pan African house, they will live out the differences and similarities of their cultures.

‘From the fiery jollof battles to the rich flavours of East and Southern African cuisines and the opportunities in their home countries, the event promises to be a feast for the senses and a testament to the joy of unity in diversity.’

Mr Kuadzi said: ‘Uganda, known as the Pearl of Africa, extends its renowned hospitality as the host country for this year’s AMC. The global audience is in for a treat as they witness the finalists, each a remarkable talent from their respective countries, share interesting, exciting, and educational experiences.

Mr Dwomoh-Doyen Benjamin, the Executive Director of the African Chamber of Content Producers, revealed that the AMC 2024 was a beacon for cultural exchange, illuminating the diverse dynamics of African cultures to a global audience, fostering understanding and appreciation across continents.

He said the event was poised to generate significant economi
c activity, driving tourism and local business patronage, and creating a ripple effect that benefits multiple sectors.

‘The AMC champions the message of unity in diversity, resonating with global audiences and promoting a shared sense of humanity.

‘The finalists, as ambassadors of their cultures, will have the opportunity to forge international connections, opening doors to cross-border collaborations and innovations,’ he stated.

Mr Benjamin said the competition happening in Uganda under the auspices of the Uganda Communications Commission offers an unparalleled educational experience, providing insights into African history, languages, and social dynamics, enriching the global narrative on cultural heritage.

He stated that the stakes are high, as the ultimate champion would not only claim the title but also earn the honour of hosting the next Monologue Challenge in their home country.

Additionally, a Pan African film would be produced in the winner’s country, starring the victor and supported by the oth
er finalists. Alongside these prestigious opportunities, the winner will also receive exciting cash prizes and more.

He said the journey to this stage had been rigorous, with the 10 finalists emerging from a pool of 2,000 entries over 10 months of evictions.

The AMC, an initiative of MK Casting in partnership with the African Chamber of Content Producers and the National Film Authority of Ghana, will this year operate under the auspices of the Uganda Communications Commission.

Mr Benjamin said the organizers were actively engaging with various African governments to garner support for their finalists, ensuring that each participant was backed by their nation as they step onto this Pan African stage.

The organizers also stated that they were in talks with various Pan African businesses and institutions to support and sponsor this year’s AMC to benefit from the global visibility the challenge will provide.

Source: Ghana News Agency