Ghana links

Things have been quite hectic on the research project front, and I am back in Kumasi for more data collection. Hopefully in a week or two things will be back to normal and I can attend to my blog more regularly. In the meantime, here are links to a couple of stories that are on the front pages of Ghana's papers right now:

From the BBC, the UN warns on West African floods. Basically there has been torrential rain in Burkina Faso and other West African countries, which has displaced some 150 000 people in that country alone. As a result, the Burkinabe authorities opened the main gates of one of their dams o the Volta River, which displaced and killed many Ghanaians. According to IRIN, Ghana had fewer than 24 hours' notice that Burkina Faso would be opening these gates.

Last week's The Economist featured a story on Sodom and Gomorrah, one of Accra's biggest slums, and how it represented Africa's rapid urbanization and falling fertility rates--the so-called "demographic transition". Just as this Economist story went to press, several people in Sodom and Gomorrah were basically cut to pieces in ethnic violence, prompting (reigniting?) calls to close down the slum and relocate the squatters, a move for which few offer solutions for the inevitable instability.