Coastal Ghana Research Articles

Using qualitative research methods to understand how climate variability impacts the livelihoods of fishermen in coastal Ghana

Using qualitative research methods to understand how climate variability impacts the livelihoods of fishermen in coastal Ghana

Climate risks and adaptation strategies: the perspectives of farmers in coastal Ghana

Climate risks and adaptation strategies: the perspectives of farmers in coastal Ghana

A record of change in oyster environment through high-resolution geochemical analysis of Late-Holocene sediments from Coastal Ghana

The near-coast environments where oysters occur are among the most impacted by humans globally, especially during the Late-Holocene. Yet, in West Africa, there is no documented historical record of change in these environments. We provide insight into the changing geochemical conditions of two oyster environments through high-resolution analysis of total organic carbon (C), total nitrogen (N), carbon and nitrogen isotope ratios (δ13C, δ15N), and trace elements, in two cores retrieved from the Densu estuary and the Anyanui (Keta) Creek in Ghana. Drastic shifts in sedimentation rate occurred in the Keta and Densu cores around 1996 CE and 960 CE respectively. At these times, comparatively, low levels of C and N were found in the Densu core. Increasing C and N levels and decreasing δ13C upcore aligned with the observed shift in sedimentation rate in the Keta core. The C/N ratios in the Keta core suggest allochthonous organic matter (OM) dominance in the creek. The Densu core showed periodic changes in C/N ratios from very high values (>20) between 1918 BCE and 1321 BCE, to values between 20 and 11 between 1321 BCE and 1977 CE and below 10 from the late 1970s CE to the present day, suggesting a varying degree of transformation in the catchment basin. Extremely high Sulfur (S) and moderate to significant Iron (Fe) increases suggest reducing conditions in the Keta sediments. Moderate Calcium (Ca), Zinc (Zn), and Strontium (Sr) concentrations in the upper part of the Densu core suggest a stronger influence of marine processes in the Densu in recent times. The findings reflect the impacts of catchment basin modification on the health of the two coastal environments, likely to impact the growth, productivity, and sustainability of the fishery of the West African mangrove Oyster.

Towards Sustainable Beach Tourism: Analysis of Beach Attractiveness, Overall Experience, and Revisit Intention in Coastal Ghana

Beaches are distinctive destinations, and their attractiveness is decisive in attracting tourists, enriching their experience, and sustaining coastal tourism. This study examined the relationship between beach attractiveness dimensions (scenery and cleanliness, facilities and services, geophysical aspects, and access and comfort), the overall experience, and revisit intentions of visitors. The mediating role of overall experience in the relationship between beach attractiveness and revisit intention was also tested. Data were collected from 311 respondents and analyzed using structural equation modeling in AMOS. These findings indicate the direct effects of beach scenery and cleanliness, as well as geophysical aspects, on revisit intentions. In addition, beach scenery, cleanliness, geophysical aspects, and facilities and services directly affect the overall experience of beach users. Finally, overall experience also mediated positive indirect relationships between facilities and services, access and comfort dimensions and revisit intentions. The results underscore the importance of enhancing beach attractiveness and user experience to attract tourists sustainably. The results are discussed from a demand perspective and implications are provided for beach management, regulators, and local governments on the supply side towards sustainable beach tourism in Ghana.

Temperature variability in coastal Ghana: a day-to-day variability framework

Temperature variability in coastal Ghana: a day-to-day variability framework

Maritime Culture And Everyday Life In Nineteenth-And-Twentieth-Century Coastal Ghana: A Social History of Cape Coast, written by Kwaku Nti

Maritime Culture And Everyday Life In Nineteenth-And-Twentieth-Century Coastal Ghana: A Social History of Cape Coast, written by Kwaku Nti

An assessment of the accuracy of wind speeds from selected Analyses and Reanalyses datasets downscaled with the Weather Research and Forecasting model for Coastal Ghana

An assessment of the accuracy of wind speeds from selected Analyses and Reanalyses datasets downscaled with the Weather Research and Forecasting model for Coastal Ghana

Plastic waste and fish landed by beach seine fishers in coastal Ghana.

Baseline data on plastic landing by fishers and monitoring of this is important in evaluating the success of plastic waste management efforts. This study investigated plastic and fish landed by beach seine fishers in Ghana together with the rate of plastic deposition on an adjoining beach. Plastic constituted 31.6% of the total catch and 41.7% of the fish landed by weight. There were significant differences between the average weight of fish (139.58 ± 53.6 kg) and plastic (65.73 ± 14.6 kg) landed per fishing session and the catch per unit effort of fish (183.4 ± 76.7 kg/day) and plastic (88.4 ± 35.2 kg/day). The mean weight of plastic landed per fishing session was higher than the mean weight of each of the 26 species of fisheries. The rate of plastic deposition on the beach was 8.1 ± 2.5 plastic items per m2 per tidal cycle or 0.35 ± 0.11 kg plastic per m2 per tidal cycle with food packs and tableware dominating the deposited plastic. The results suggested ongoing water sachets and plastic bottle recycling in Ghana are yielding results and calls for targeted efforts in plastic food packs and tableware management.

Artifacts from the Perspective of Effutu Masquerade Performance: An Aesthetic Album

Artifacts from the Perspective of Effutu Masquerade Performance: An Aesthetic Album

Spiritual Pawning: “Mad Slaves” and Mental Healing in Atlantic-Era West Africa

AbstractWhen enslaved people became “mad,” they lost exchange value as labor capital on the Atlantic market, as neither African nor European merchants considered the mentally distressed to be valuable bondsmen. Historians of slavery in the Americas have drawn on accounts of “mad slaves” to understand how labor value was generated, and disrupted, through the transport and sale of captive Africans. But historians have yet to examine the relationship between psychological distress and enslavement in West Africa, where many of the captives in question originated. This article opens a research agenda on madness in Atlantic-era West Africa through a case study of the role of Ga shrines as spaces of mental healing in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Gold Coast, today’s coastal Ghana. Ga families confided their mentally distressed kin to shrine priests, who treated severe illnesses caused by ritual afflictions. When shrine priests healed these ailments, they engaged in spiritual pawning: converting mad persons, deemed unfit for sale due to mental incapacity, into potential subjects of enslavement. West African shrines were thus spaces of value conversion that reflected a broader monetary and ritual economy of capture, enslavement, and raiding that proliferated on the Gold Coast.

UNESCO world heritage sites and sustainable local community development

ABSTRACT While the literature connects the development of World Heritage Sites (WHS) and their host communities, issues of mutual developmental relevance to the sites and the communities are hardly explored for collaborative development actions. This study explored issues of common developmental relevance to selected WHS in coastal Ghana and their host communities. Data were collected from local-level stakeholders – heritage site managers, community residents, and municipal authorities. Common issues of developmental relevance that needed to be addressed related to poor sanitation, harassment of tourists, demarcation of the heritage-protected areas, and beach sand mining. Since the development of WHS and their host communities is linked, the stakeholders are urged to collaboratively develop and implement management plans that take into account the development imperatives of the two entities. Such action-oriented, mutually beneficial plans need to be informed by research and driven by a stakeholder-participatory framework to ensure inclusion and ownership for sustainable development.

Illegal sand mining in coastal Ghana: The drivers and the way forward

The study examined the drivers of illegal sand mining operations in coastal Ghana and the way forward. Underpinned by common pool resource theory and guided by interpretivist research philosophy, qualitative data were collected from 67 relevant actors in coastal sand mining operations in selected communities. The main drivers of the phenomenon were ineffective law enforcement, poor coastal surveillance, systemic corruption, the fact that beach sand was considered by some actors as not strictly belonging to anyone, profit and livelihood support motives, the relative abundance and cheapness of the resource, unemployment, poor attitude, and a cultural misconception in the study area that beach sand is a better construction material than sand from agricultural lands. The government should strengthen environmental governance, enforce mining laws, implement interventions for decent alternative livelihoods, and fight systemic corruption. The public, particularly the stakeholders engaged in the practice, should be educated on the negative impacts of the practice on environmental, social, and economic sustainability, and made to utilise alternative sources of sand for their operations. A technology-enabled surveillance mechanism is needed for effective coastal monitoring. The study helps to fight illegal coastal sand mining operations to enhance coastline resilience, livelihoods, and sustainable development.

O Jazz Cosmopolitanism in Accra Projeto : entrevista com Steven Feld

In this interview, Steven Feld, an anthropologist, filmmaker, musician, and sound artist, discusses his multimedia project on “Jazz Cosmopolitanism” in Ghana. From 2004, Feld started to study acoustemology—one’s sonic way of knowing and being in the world—from the standpoint of avant-garde jazz musicians and visual artists in Accra. He worked as a producer and as a sound engineer, before performing as a musician with the Accra Trane Station band in Africa, Europe and the United States. In the following years, he produced CDs and documentary movies featuring musicians such as the drummer Ghanaba (formerly Guy Warren), the country’s leading experimentalist. In this interview, Steven Feld discusses his encounter with these musicians and visual artists and how their readings of the Black Atlantic came into dialogue. At the same time, his discussion of his artistic collaborations, and excerpts of his recording and video projects, reveal creative ways of addressing the history of race in music and the sensory memories of the slave trade in coastal Ghana.

Power and Play

Power and Play

Brass Working and Mforowa Manufacture among the Akan of Coastal Ghana during the 17th–20th centuries

Cet article traite de la fabrication et de la datation des ornements, outils et boites en laiton produits par les Akan dans les régions côtières du Ghana, en particulier les mforowa (sing. forowa), récipients en feuilles de laiton spécifiques utilisés pour y conserver le beurre de karité et qui sont associés à des rituels mortuaires. Les fouilles archéologiques ont permis de retrouver une variété d’artefacts fabriqués localement à partir de laiton européen importé, souvent en étroite association avec des objets de traite européens. Comme les gammes de production de nombreuses manufactures européennes sont connues et peuvent être bien circonscrites dans le temps – souvent à quelques décennies près –, les marchandises de traite offrent un moyen de dater précisément les artefacts qui leur sont associés et de manière plus assurée que ce qui est souvent possible pour les sites archéologiques africains des 500 dernières années. Cet affinage chronologique apporte un élément nouveau sur les traditions de travail des alliages de cuivre parmi les Akan côtiers, en particulier l’utilisation et la réutilisation du laiton importé. Cet article passe en revue les connaissances actuelles sur les origines de la métallurgie et la transformation du métal dans la région côtière du Ghana, et sur le développement du travail du laiton avec l’avènement du commerce européen. Les données archéologiques provenant de la ville africaine d’Elmina suggèrent que la production de mforowa a débuté au xviie siècle et que ses origines stylistiques trouvent leurs racines dans la tradition antérieure des nkuduo (sing. kuduo) en laiton coulé. Le contexte des découvertes archéologiques fournit également un aperçu des cadres culturels dans lesquels les mforowa ont été utilisés.

Implications of Spatio-Temporal Land Use/Cover Changes for Ecosystem Services Supply in the Coastal Landscapes of Southwestern Ghana, West Africa

Land use/land cover change (LULCC) is an important driver of ecosystem changes in coastal areas. Despite being pervasive in coastal Ghana, LULCC has not been investigated to understand its effects on the potential for coastal landscapes to supply ecosystem services (ES). In this study, the impacts of LULCC on the potential supply of ES by coastal landscapes in Southwestern Ghana was assessed for the years 2008 and 2018 by using remote sensing and benefit transfer approaches. Based on available data, relevant provisioning and regulating ES were selected for the assessment while indicators to aid the quantification of the ES were obtained from literature. Supervised classification methods and maximum likelihood algorithms were used to prepare land use/land cover (LULC) maps and the derived LULC categories were assigned according to the descriptions of the Land Cover Classification System (LCCS). Potential supply of provisioning (food, fuelwood) and regulating (carbon storage) services was quantified and the spatial and temporal distributions of these ES illustrated using maps. The results show variations in food and fuelwood supply and carbon storage potentials over the study period and across different locations on the landscape. Potentials for fuelwood supply and carbon storage in mangrove forests indicated declining trends between 2008 and 2018. On the other hand, food-crop supply and carbon storage potential in rubber plantations depicted increasing patterns over the same period. Population, slope and elevation exhibited strong effects on LULC conversions to food crop and rubber plantations whereas these factors were less important determinants of mangrove forest conversions. The findings of the study have implications for identifying and addressing tradeoffs between land uses for agriculture, industrial development and conservation of critical coastal ES within the context of rapid land system transformations in the study region.

Understanding the Complexities of Human Well-Being in the Context of Ecosystem Services within Coastal Ghana

The understanding of the complexities of human well-being (HWB) within the ecosystem service (ES) context is fundamental to the development of management plans to sustain the flow of ecosystem services (ESs) for HWB. However, research on HWB in the context of ecosystem services is still underrepresented on Africa’s coast. Primary data were collected from 794 household heads in six communities within Ghana’s eastern coastal zone. A sequential logistics regression model was used to assess the effect of the interactions between ESs, socio-economic conditions, and contextual factors on HWB. Respondents’ well-being varied across the study communities, with high well-being reported by 63% of respondents from Anloga and low well-being by 77% in Kedzi. A strong association was found between HWB and relevant characteristics of respondents including marital status, years lived in a community, subjective social position (SSP), main livelihood source, income class, access to a reliable credit facility, and being a member of a local community group. Gender was not a significant predictor of HWB levels. For the effect of ESs on HWB, we found that respondents who had high contentment with provisioning and cultural ESs were more likely to have high well-being as opposed to respondents who had low contentment. Respondents who had low to moderate contentment with regulatory ESs were more likely to have high well-being, but the contextual factors condensed the significance of this relationship. Findings suggest the implementation of deliberate actions to maintain or restore vital ecosystem functions and services for sustainable well-being in coastal communities.

Microplastics prevalence in water, sediment and two economically important species of fish in an urban riverine system in Ghana.

Urban riverine systems serve as conduits for the transport of plastic waste from the terrestrial dumpsites to marine repositories. This study presented data on the occurrence of microplastics in water, sediment, Bagrid Catfish (Chrysichthys nigrodigitatus) and Black-chinned Tilapia (Sarotherodon melanotheron) from the Densu River, an urban riverine system in Ghana. Microplastics were extracted from the samples collected from both the lentic and lotic sections of the river. The results indicated widespread pollution of the Densu River with microplastics in all the compartments studied. The average numbers of microplastic particles deposited in the Dam (2.0 ± 0.58) and Delta (2.50 ± 0.48) sections of the river were not affected by the differences in their hydrology. However, the stagnant water system of the Dam promoted the floating of larger-sized microplastics while the flowing waters of the Delta did not show any selectivity in the deposition of microplastics between sediment and the water column. The number of microplastics ingestions by the Bagrid Catfish (2.88 ± 2.11) was similar to the Black-chinned Tilapia (2.38 ± 1.66) but both species ingested lower numbers of microplastics than reported for marine fish species in coastal Ghana.

LOCAL DIFFERENTIATION AND ADAPTATION TO CLIMATE CHANGE IN COASTAL GHANA

ABSTRACT This study investigates the perception of the impact of climate change on the livelihoods of small-scale fishing communities in the Western Region of Ghana. A mixed-method approach was employed, consisting of a survey of 400 fisherfolk households and 20 interviews with stakeholders. Changes in rainfall pattern, decreasing rainfall, stronger waves and storms that increase coastal erosion and cause persistent flooding were found to be the main effects of climate change on the livelihoods of small-scale coastal fisherfolk. Transnational fishing practices by fisherfolk in response to climate change contributed to the building of resilience of fishing households, while other adaptation strategies appeared to be insufficient in the long run. Coastal communities are not homogenous with respect to climate change impacts and corresponding adaptation strategies. Based on the empirical results, policy implications are suggested related to early warning systems and multiscalar marine planning.

Sea Defence Project and a UNESCO World Heritage Monument in Coastal Ghana

Coastal erosion, sand and gravel mining, and open defecation threaten the sustainability and outstanding universal value (OUV) of heritage monuments dotted along the coast of Ghana. A sea defence project has been embarked upon in some areas in Ghana to, among other reasons, safeguard coastal resources, including the historic heritage monuments—castles and forts. This study examined the implications of the project for the sustainability and OUV of a UNESCO World Heritage Site (WHS) along the Ghanaian coastline. The study used a qualitative research design. In‐depth interviews and focus group discussions were conducted to collect data from key stakeholders and analyzed using the thematic method. It became evident that the project has helped reduce oceanic effects, sand and gravel mining hazards, and open defecation in the direct neighbourhood of the site. These have increased the resilience and protective capacity of the monument and enhanced the aesthetic value and sanitation at the site, thereby shoring up the integrity and authenticity of the site and culminating in its enhanced sustainability and OUV. UNESCO, the State Party, Ghana Museums and Monuments Board, Municipal Authority, and Community Leaders should ensure that the advantages that have accrued to the site from the sea defence project are safeguarded and maximized. Additionally, the project should be extended to other coastal areas in the country where similar monuments are located to enable those monuments to derive similar benefits for sustainable development. The study contributes to understanding the protective and aesthetic nexus between coastal engineering and sustainable coastal heritage management.