Can skills training help break the cycle of deprivation for the poor? Lessons from Northern Ghana

This article presents a summary of preliminary findings from a first round of fieldwork with vocational training institutes in Northern Ghana. The research seeks to better understand the pathways from skill to work among the poor

External Impact Evaluation of the Millennium Villages Project, Northern Ghana: Report of the Qualitative Participatory Rural Appraisal Midterm Study

The independent Participatory Rural Appraisal (PRA) midterm evaluation aims to interrogate the Millennium Villages programme theory using available evidence about outcomes emerging from the first three years of the project’s implementation. This qualitative report will help to qualify, elaborate and illustrate the findings of the survey-based analysis. Its findings are based on the perspectives and analyses of villagers in 20 communities. The villagers were constituted into some 80 “standard” focus groups and interviewed by researchers from Participatory Development Associates Ltd

The impact of regulation on the performance of universal banks in Ghana

Undergraduate thesis submitted to the Department of Business Administration, Ashesi University, in partial fulfillment of Bachelor of Science degree in Business Administration, April 2019This research paper studies the impact of banking regulations on the performance of universal banks in Ghana. The study uses OLS regression for panel data to analyze the impact of the banking regulations on profitability and efficiency metrics of six universal banks listed on the Ghana Stock Exchange. The research uses data collected from 2005 to 2017. The first aim of the study is to identify previous regulatory changes and their impact on the performance of the universal banks. The second aim is to forecast the impact of future regulations on universal banks after the recent Ghana banking crisis. The use of capital adequacy ratio as the sole regulation is because of the recent banking crisis that mainly affected universal and commercial banks. The results of the study show that banking regulation has a positive relationship with return on assets, but a negative relationship with operating expense ratio.Ashesi Universit

Millennium Villages Impact Evaluation, Baseline Summary Report

This report presents the baseline findings from the Department for International Development (DFID)-commissioned impact evaluation of the Millennium Village Project (MVP) in Northern Ghana.1 The project will run from 2012 until 2016, with interventions targeting a cluster of communities with a total population of approximately 27,000 people. The MVP has been designed to demonstrate how an integrated approach to community-led development can translate the international Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) into results. It is an approach that has been previously piloted in Kenya and Ethiopia and in 2006 launched at scale to reach nearly half a million people across 10 countries throughout Sub-Saharan Africa. The new Millennium Village (MV) in Northern Ghana is the first to be accompanied by an independent impact evaluation. Details of the conceptual approach and methodology for the evaluation are presented in the Initial Design Document (IDD), with appendices containing the tools used for data collection.2DFI

Millennium Villages Evaluation: Midterm Summary Report

This report presents the midterm findings from an impact evaluation of the Millennium Villages Project (MVP) in northern Ghana. The MVP has been designed to demonstrate how an integrated approach to community-led development can translate the international Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) into results. The project in northern Ghana is one of several instigated over the past 10 years, and is set to reach nearly half a million people across 10 countries in Africa. Central to the MVP approach is the synergistic value of integrated community-based investments, focused on scientifically proven interventions, delivered simultaneously rather than as one-off investments. The premise is that a critical platform of basic needs must be reached before economic development can really take off. The project in northern Ghana has been running in three districts since May 2012, investing over £11 million on health, education, agriculture and infrastructure interventions in 35 communities, and reaching around 30,000 people

Impact Evaluation of the SADA Millennium Villages Project in Northern Ghana: Endline Summary Report

The Millennium Villages Project (MVP) aims to demonstrate how the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) could be achieved locally through an integrated approach to development. While the MDGs have now been superseded by the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs, 2016–30), there remains a consistent thread to the MDGs around issues such as eradicating poverty, preventing avoidable deaths and improving education. Furthermore, the interconnected nature of the SDGs means the MVP model also has relevance for those seeking to address extreme poverty by taking an integrated approach to sustainable development. This report summarises the findings from what we believe to be the first independent impact evaluation of the MVP approach. It is hoped that the evidence and analysis will be of relevance to a wide range of actors in international development.Department for International Development (DFID

The low-income housing system in Kumasi An empirical examination of two neighbourhoods

In 2 partsAvailable from British Library Document Supply Centre- DSC:DX173020 / BLDSC - British Library Document Supply CentreSIGLEGBUnited Kingdo

Bambara yerfıstığının genom ve kromozom özellikleri, Vigna subterranea

Bambara yer fıstığı (Vigna subterranea, 2n = 2x = 22), çoğunlukla Afrika'nın kurak ve yarı kurak bölgelerinde yetiştirilen yerli baklagil bitkisidir. Yüksek miktarda protein içerdiğinden dolayı çok besleyici bir üründür. Bununla birlikte, bu baklagil bitkisi üzerindeki çalışmalar son derece sınırlıdır. Bu çalışma, ayrıntılı kromozom çalışmalarına temel teşkil etmek amacıyla bambara yer fıstığı sentromer DNA dizisi hakkında temel bilgiler sağlamayı amaçlamaktadır. Bu araştırma için Nijerya'dan tohumlar kullanıldı. Elde ettiğimiz sonuçlar bambara yer fıstığının, börülce (V. unguiculata)’de tespit edilen 455 bazçifti (bç) sentromerik DNA tekrarları ile yüksek DNA dizi benzerliğine sahip olduğunu göstermektedir. DNA sekans sonuçlarından, klonların boyutlarının börülce genomundaki 455 bç sentromerik DNA tekrarlarından daha az olduğunu göstermiştir. Ayrıca DNA dizi sonuçları içerisinde hiçbir alt motif veya tekrar tespit edilmemiştir. Metafaz kromozom hazırlanmasından, metasentrik ve submetasentrik kromozomlar daha az yapısal değişkenlik ile gözlenmiştir. Bu çalışma sonucunda, DAPI boyaması ve sentromerik DNA klonlanmasıyla dizi analizi yapılarak somatik metafaz kromozomlarının hazırlanması için etkili bir yöntem geliştirmiştir. Anahtar Sözcükler: Bambara yer fıstığı, DAPI boyama, klonlam, sentromerik DNA, tandem tekrarlarBambara groundnut (Vigna subterranea, 2n = 2x = 22) is an indigenous leguminous crop cultivated mostly in the arid and semi-arid regions of Africa. It is a very nutritious crop since it contains a high amount of protein. However, studies on this pulse crop are very limited. This study is aimed at providing fundamental knowledge on bambara groundnut centromere DNA sequence for further chromosome studies. In this regard, seeds of bambara groundnut were obtained from Nigeria for the research. The results indicate that bambara groundnut has a higher pairwise similar identity with that of 455 bp centromeric DNA repeats of cowpea. There was no internal motif/repetition from the DNA sequencing indicating that the sizes of the clones were lesser than the 455 bp centromeric DNA repeats in cowpea. From the metaphase chromosome preparation, metacentric and sub-metacentric chromosomes were observed with less structural variability. The sizes of the chromosomes were smaller making it relatively impossible to identify the homologous pairs. This study has successfully developed an efficient method for the preparation of somatic metaphase chromosomes using DAPI staining and sequence analysis by cloning of centromeric DNA. Keywords: Bambara groundnut, centromeric DNA, cloning, DAPI staining, tandem repeat