Can I Get an “Amen”? Affirming the Contemporary Ghanaian Usage of Amen

Altogether then, the claim that amen as used in the instances we have discussed is inappropriate is found to lack firm biblical or etymological foundation. Neither does the suggestion that if it is a vestige of African worship culture then that provides a reasonable ground for thus condemning it. While it is recognized that amen is often babbled from mental laxity, it is suggested that the problem lies not in amen, as a word, but in the person, as a worshipper. Amen is a rich word, capable of communicating a spectrum of positive human intellectual and emotional responses to worship; a spectrum that fits squarely within the umbrella of acceptance 2018, vol. 14 no. 2 and assent. G. B. Funderburk (1976:127) is correct is assessing that amen is “far more meaningful than a stop or signing-off word by which a prayer, song or declaration is terminated. It carries the weight of approval, confirmation, and support for what is said or sung.” Therefore, amen does not need to be curtailed to a few formal, highly rehearsed schemes of worship. It should be embraced as the bona fide, effective, biblical expression of assent it can be in contemporary Christian worship

Organic Agriculture, Food Safety and Supply in Northern Ghana - CAOF’s Strategy

Northern Ghana covers the three regions in the north of Ghana and parts of Northern Brong Ahafo Region and Northern Volta. It covers a large part of the Savannah vegetation of Ghana and suffers from declining soil fertility, food insecurity, climate variability and change. Organic agriculture has the potential to reverse these ills even though the advocates of conventional agriculture may disagree with this assertion. The Coalition for the Advancement of Organic Farming (CAOF) has seen organic farming as the way to tackling these challenges in a sustainable manner. CAOF has conducted various research, developed and implemented projects and has seen that this strategy is actually addressing these challenges. This paper presents CAOF’s strategy in trying to address organic agriculture, food safety and supply concerns in Northern Ghana and highlights some of the successes so far. The paper also identifies some of the challenges so far in its work in the organic agriculture sector in Northern Ghana and concludes with the way forward for the coalition

Essays on the Implications of Accounting and Audit Regulations

Papers I-III are excluded from the dissertation until they will be published.In this dissertation, some questions relating to the implications of these developments, particularly regarding audit pricing, accounting quality, and auditors’ use of experts are examined. In the first essay, a bibliometric review of the literature is conducted to synthesize the academic research with a focus on insights about the impact of these regulatory and technological changes on audit fees. Given that audit fees is a function of audit effort, stakeholders including regulators, practitioners, and investors have been interested in understanding the impact of accounting and audit regulations on audit fees. Secondly, accounting quality is often cited as a major motivation for regulatory changes. The second study examines the impact of IFRS adoption approaches on accounting quality. Countries use different approaches to implement international accounting standards. Some adopt the standards without changes, others adopt with changes aimed at incorporating their local context into these standards. Although these two approaches are particularly common in Africa, questions about the impact of these approaches on accounting quality are yet to be empirically examined. The final study focuses on a recent development in the audit environment following the adoption of ISA 701: Communicating Key Audit Matters. This relatively new standard is a response to the longstanding criticism of the audit report. Users assert that the audit report is standardized and boilerplate thereby not providing client-specific information beyond the pass or fail opinion (B dard, Coram, Espahbodi, & Mock, 2016; Mock et al., 2012). The associated increased transparency has provided a rare insight into the internal working of audit firms, especially in relation to their use of experts in the most significant areas of the audit. Consequently, the study exploits this unique information to empirically examine the factors associated with auditors’ use of experts in an audit.publishedVersio

Tiered Centralized Education in the Transition-to-Practice Program to Improve Nurses\u27 Level of Confidence on Nursing Sensitive Indicators Outcomes

A tiered Centralized Education in the Transition-to-Practice (TTP) Program is crucial to improving nurses\u27 Level of Confidence on nursing-sensitive quality indicators. The benefits of a structured orientation program taught by trained content experts are evident in the literature. In addition, training transition-to-practice RNs during onboarding with training and assessment sessions throughout the orientation program to increase frequency provides skills acquisition. This study examined the impact of a house-wide education program on the nurses\u27 confidence levels of CLABSI prevention, a measured nursing-sensitive quality indicator. This quasi-experimental quality improvement study measured the confidence and comfort levels of transition-to-practice RNs and identified that centralized house-wide education programs statistically increase the confidence levels of TTP RNs in CLABSI prevention

Climate Change Governance and the Politics of Scale: Evaluating Local Climate Protection Policies and Practices in the United States and Germany

When it became evident that the issue of climate change needed to be acted upon, it was projected as a global scale problem. To make this rhetoric concrete, the international relations logic that ‘regimes’ of cooperating nation-states are the most feasible approach to solving problems that are global in nature was adopted. While the national level has performed poorly in climate change mitigation action, as exemplified by the United States’ refusal to ratify the Kyoto Protocol, Canada’s subsequent withdrawal from the Kyoto Protocol in 2011 after initial ratification and, more recently, the United States withdrawal from the Paris Accord, a reconfiguration of the scalar context of climate change governance to the local scale has become more popular. The major sources and sinks of Greenhouse Gases (GHG) are deemed to be at the local scale; hence, it is considered as the most suitable spatial unit for climate mitigation action. However, for local climate action to replace aggressive national level actions in fulfillment of the commitments to the ‘regime’ of cooperating national governments, the number of local climate policy innovation, and depth and efficacy of individual local actions must be substantial. In fulfillment of its first core empirical objective, the study combined critical policy theory, qualitative interviews and Geographic Information Systems, to examine the innovation of local climate action plans in the United States. Relying on the policy documents, the web-pages and progress reports of localities’ climate action efforts, and in-depth interviews with climate protection managers of 21 and five local governments in the United States and Germany respectively, the second empirical exercise examined the efficacy of local climate efforts quantitatively, in terms of their Greenhouse Gas emissions reduction targets, and qualitatively, in terms of the challenges and opportunities in their efforts

Understanding the motivation and circumstances of kayayei in the Ghanaian economy: The kayayei experience

Undergraduate thesis submitted to the Department of Business Administration, Ashesi University, in partial fulfillment of Bachelor of Science degree in Business Administration, April 2018Kayayei is an occupation in Ghana that involves carrying items in the market from one place to another for a fee. Kayayei is not a crime neither is it an immoral act, but the social, economic and health issues associated with the work makes it dangerous. A lot of interventions have been created in the north but the kayayei phenomenon is increasing. This research sought to understand the motivations and circumstances that influence women from the north to migrate to the southern part of Ghana to work as kayayei rather than engage in the various interventions that have been established for them. Using a qualitative approach, data was collected from people from Sherigu, Sumbrugum and Zaare, all in the Upper East region through interviews and questionnaires. The convenience sampling method was used and the sample size for the questionnaires was 50, and 15 out of them were interviewed. From the data collected, some of the circumstance to migrate include crop failures, few opportunities, rural poverty, inability to save, low wages as well as inadequate jobs. Also, some of the motivation to migrate include, the promise of greener pastures, job opportunities, ability to save and peaceful environment. Most importantly, some of the challenges with the interventions included lack of proper planning, lack of constant supply of raw materials, bias/corruption, low wages and inadequate jobs. It was recommended that the various initiatives should be evaluated before they are set up. Also, the minimum wage in Ghana should be enforced by the government in the various interventions.Ashesi Universit

The Classical Theory of Rearrangements

One type of conditionally convergent series that has long been considered by mathematicians is the Alternating Harmonic Series and its sum under various types of rearrangements. The purpose of this thesis is to introduce results from the classical theory of rearrangements dating back to the 19th and early 20th century. We will look at results by mathematicians such as Ohm, Riemann, Schlömilch, Pringsheim, and Sierpiński. In addition, we show examples of each classical result by applying the Alternating Harmonic Series under the different types of rearrangements, and also introducing theorems by Lévy and Steinitz, and Wilczyński which are modern extensions of results of Sierpiński

Determinants of use of mobile phones for sexually transmitted infections (STIs) education and prevention among adolescents and young adult population in Ghana:implications of public health policy and interventions design

Background Sexually Transmitted Infections (STIs) are a major public health challenge globally especially among adolescents and young adults in lower-middle-income countries (LMICs) in Africa including Ghana. In light of this, mobile phone innovations are advocated to enhance public health education and prevention of STIs in developing health systems.Objective This study assessed mobile phone usage among adolescents and young adult populations pursuing tertiary education and their use of these technologies in the education and prevention of STIs.Method This was a cross-sectional analytical study among 250 adolescents and young adults aged 18–24 at Ghana’s premier and biggest public University. The study was however conducted in only one public university in the Greater Accra region which potentially poses generalizability challenges due to socio-cultural and economic differences in other regions of the country. Data was collected using structured questionnaire and data analysisdone with STATA (version 12.0). Univariate probit regression (VCE, Robust) analysis was used to determine factors associated with adolescents and young adult population’s usage of mobile phones in the education and prevention of STIs.ResultsOut of the 250 adolescents and young adults interviewed, 99% owned mobile phones. Out of this number, 58% them were smartphone users. Also, it was found that male young adults (Coef. = 1.11, p = 0.000) and young adults who owned a smartphone (Coef. = 0.46, p = 0.013) were more likely to use mobile phones for education and prevention of STIs.ConclusionMobile phone penetration among young adults is nearly 100% in line with the national trend. Additionally, these young adults largely believe in the use of mobile phone programmes for STIs education and prevention. Moreover, respondents were found to be more comfortable using mobile applications than traditional text messaging or phone calls in STIs education and prevention. Future mobile phone programmes for STIs education and prevention should consider innovating customized mobile applications to promote acceptability by the youth and enhance sustainability of such interventions on STIs in Ghana. Even though this study was conducted in only one public university in Ghana, the findings are nonetheless informative and future researchers could consider using a larger sample size across private and public universities in other regions of the country.<br/