People do not always need to be of the same religion or hold the same theological values in order to live in peace and foster social cohesion, according to the Most Rev. Philip Naameh, Archbishop of Tamale and President of the Ghana Catholic Bishops Conference (GCBC).

He said this when he spoke at the launch of the Sahel Peace Initiative 2.0 in Bolgatanga, the Upper East Regional capital.

The SPI is a peace project implemented by the Catholic Church with funding support from the Catholic Relief Services.

SPI 2.0 is aimed at creating awareness about threats of terrorism, promoting social cohesion through advocacy, and building the resilience of communities affected by conflicts in the Subregion.

Through the project, relevant stakeholders would be brought together to raise conflict resolution responses. The project is coordinated by the National Catholic Secretariat (NCS) and implemented by the Navrongo Bolgatanga Catholic Diocesan Development Organisation (NABOCADO), a faith development organization.

Most Rev. recounted how the Catholic Church established itself in Tamale, the Northern Regional capital. 

“If you go into the history of Catholicism in the archdiocese of Tamale, it started from a few Catholics from what is now the Cape Coast ArchDiocese. When they arrived at Tamale, they had no place to worship. The Chief Imam offered them the veranda of his house. That was where the Catholics started to worship for some time until he led them and showed them the way to acquire land to now build their own place of worship. In 2019, when the National Chief Imam turned 100 years old,  he chose to mark his 100th anniversary in a Catholic Church. This did not go down well with many muslims.”

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“I just want to say it was a signal that we could do a lot more. When I think of how Catholicism started in Tamale, and this gesture that the Chief Imam gave us, we could do a lot more for social cohesion. It is not because people worship the same God in a different way that they should find reason to be on each other’s necks.”

“There are sets of values that we treasure together even if we worship in different ways,” he said. 

Source: A1radioonline.com|101.1MHz|Mark Kwasi Ahumah Smith|Ghana

According to data from the Ghana Statistical Service (GSS), almost 80,000 girls in Ghana aged between 12 and 17 years are already married or living with a man. It says nearly 26,000 of them are girls in Junior High School aged between 12 to 14 years.

The regions with the highest percentage of girls ever in union are North East (13.0%), Savannah (10.9%) and Northern (10.6%) all with rates more than twice the national average (4.0%).

Also, despite the free and compulsory universal basic education, almost a quarter of a million girls (244,731) aged 6 to 14 years have never attended school at all.

3 out of every 10 of these girls are in the Northern Region which has the highest number of girls who have never attended school (73,516) followed by the Savannah (27,930) and North East (22,857) regions.

These 3 regions also have the highest percentage of girls currently not attending school (never attended or attended in the past) with Savannah leading all regions with 40.2% followed by the North East Region (29.3%) and the Northern Region (28.5%).

The data is based on the 2021 Population and Housing Census and coincided with the International Day of the Girl Child which was observed globally on October 11.

The day seeks to highlight challenges preventing young girls from reaching their full potential, such as early marriage, and lack of access to educational and other opportunities.

Source: A1Radioonline.com|101.1Mhz|Joshua Asaah|Ghana

Unlike other businesses that are operating in Ghana, the Upper East Regional Marketing Manager of Charger Limiter, Anafo Edward Abambila says his outfit is investing in the country and the communities through corporate social responsibility activities.

“Others make their profits and they repatriate back to their various countries because most of the companies that patronize their products from the Upper East here are not even Ghanaians. But in our company, we feel that, after we make a profit, we use part of it to sponsor some activities for the people that patronize us. So, in this way, the public will always want to choose us over our competitors”, Mr. Anafo stated.

Charger Limited is the producer of Happy Man Bitters, Happy Man Plus 2 Bitters, and Happy Man Plus 1 products. Charger Limited, through its Founder and President, Dr. Emmanuel Bortey Borketey over the years sponsored the Happy Man Upper East Music Awards, Miss Upper East, and Happy Man Bitters Inter Community Soccer Competition (HAMISOC) in Navrongo.

Again, the company is sponsoring the annual Salah games in the Upper East Region, donated to orphanages, and has supported the police service in Navrongo with motorbikes to combat crime.

While speaking exclusively to A1 Radio, Mr. Anafo said the company has gained the trust of the public because it is investing in the Ghanaian economy and improving lives in society.
“Though we cannot take care of the challenges of the people of the Upper East Region, the little that we can do to make sure that the people are happy, we will do it. It is the reason why people will continue to choose us [Charger Limited products] over other companies. When you do the sales statistics, Upper East Region has been our number area. So, when they pat you on the back, then we have to also do something.”

The Upper East Regional Marketing Manager of Charger made this known when the company supported the Sirigu community in a Health Walk.

Mr. Anafo said the company decided to partner in the health walk because “as Charger Limited, we always try to make sure that our consumers will take their care seriously. That is why we are sponsoring programs like the HAMISOC, and Salah games so that the people can be healthy and patronize our products.”

Source: A1radioonline|101.1Mhz|Joshua Asaah|Sirigu|Ghana

Deputy General Secretary of the National Democratic Congress (NDC), Dr Peter Boamah Otokunor has described the government’s Planting for Food and Jobs (PFJ) programme as nothing but empty sloganeering and rhetorics about agriculture development.  

He spoke on the Day Break Upper East Show on A1Radio with Mark Smith.

According to him, the NDC secured funding for the PFJ in 2016.

“PFJ is nothing but empty sloganeering, empty rhetoric about agriculture development. We got the funding for PFJ in 2016; we were not going to do rhetoric with PFJ.”

“In fact as part of my PhD studies; my second year, I actually reviewed the entire PFJ programme. My lecturer incidentally was a consultant and my review revealed completely; in fact I told them that the PFJ was going to collapse the following year. The PFJ as it stands now has completely collapsed,” he said.

Dr. Otokunor says the PFJ was taken over by party apparatchiks. “So you’re doing an input subsidy programme, you’re giving free seedlings, you’re giving subsidized fertilizers then you used party people to do this distribution, the party people arrogate to themselves powers that they do not have; they only give it to party people. Other farmers who could have even be doing better they don’t have access to the product. 

And because you give it to party people the way they use it, the seriousness and the commitment is down because most of them are not even farmers, but they think that is an opportunity to benefit from their toils in supporting the party.”

He added that the system is not sustainable because of the involvement of party people, and government has also failed to make any investment that will provide value chain development.

Source: A1radioonline.com|101.1MHz|Osuman Kaapore Tahiru|Ghana

Dr Peter Boamah Otokunor, Deputy General Secretary of the opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC) has mentioned that agriculture is the heartbeat of Ghana and yet the nation has failed to support it.

Dr Otokunor who is an Agricultural Economist and Economic Policy Expert noted that for Ghana to recover from the current economic challenges, much attention should be given to the agric sector.

“I think that agriculture is actually the heartbeat of the nation and we have let it down so badly.”

He said that “for this country to recover from the economic misery that we’re going through, the meltdown, the shutdown, the plummeting of our financial prospects, we need to refocus on agriculture.”

“We’ve gotten so many things wrong. We’ve not been able to provide the environment that allows Agriculturalist to expand and grow. We’ve not provided the marketing channels; we’ve not looked at how we grow the value chain system, we’ve not looked at agro-processing because when you produced raw products you’re not being an agriculturalist.

If we’ve really looked at agro-processing we will not be losing anything from the farm because whatever you lose through post-harvest sources could be translated into some other end products for the market and you would also be making money from the products that ordinarily you would have thrown away.”

He added that there’s a total deficit of government’s vision to relook at agriculture as the accelerating pillar for Ghana’s economic growth.

Source: A1radioonline.com|101.1MHz|Osuman Kaapore Tahiru|Ghana