Welcome to UGSpace
UGSpace is the institutional repository of the University of Ghana. UGSpace is an open access electronic archive for the collection, preservation and distribution of digital materials.
- facilitate the deposit of digital content of a scholarly or heritage nature
- and ultimately share, preserve and promote the intellectual output of the University in a managed environment.
Communities in UGSpace
Select a community to browse its collections.
- Review books or articles provide a critical and constructive analysis of existing published literature in a field, through summary, analysis, and comparison, often identifying specific gaps or problems and providing recommendations for future research. These are considered as secondary literature since they generally do not present new data from the author's experimental work. Review articles can be of three types, broadly speaking: literature reviews, systematic reviews, and meta-analyses. It also the researcher to stay abreast of new literature in the field.
- The content include public lectures and inaugural lectures within University of Ghana.
- A working paper is a scientific or technical paper produced by researchers to share ideas or obtain feedback from a selected readership. Working papers can be in various stages of completion and are not peer reviewed or published in a journal.
Recent Submissions
The influence of lean management and environmental practices on relative competitive quality advantage and performance
(Journal of Manufacturing Technology Management, 2020) Agyabeng-Mensah, Y.; Owusu, D.; Ahenkorah, E.; Afum, E.
Purpose – Firms are adopting strategies to advance product quality and environmental sustainability to
achieve improved profitability and shareholders’ wealth. The study investigates strategies that create a
superior quality performance to competitors and improve both environmental and business performances.
This paper explores the direct and indirect influence of lean management and environmental practices on
relative competitive quality advantage, environmental performance, and business performance.
Design/methodology/approach – The study uses a quantitative method where data is gathered from 259
manufacturing firms in Ghana. The data is gathered through customized questionnaires. The partial least
squares structural equation modeling (SmartPLS 3.2.8) is used to analyze the data. Firm size, industry type, and
importance of environmental issues are used as control variables in this study.
Findings – The findings of the study indicate that both lean management and environmental practices create
relative competitive quality advantage and improve environmental performance and business performance.
Environmental performance and relative competitive quality advantage mediate the influence of lean
management and environmental practices on business performance. The results further indicate that lean
management creates a higher relative competitive quality advantage than environmental practices, while
environmental practices have more potential to enhance environmental performance than lean management.
Originality/value – The study develops and proposes a comprehensive theoretical framework that examines
the potency of environmental practices and lean management in creating a relative competitive quality
advantage and improving environmental performance and business performance from a Ghanaian
perspective, which is an emerging economy in Africa. Lean management and environmental practices may
jointly help firms create relative competitive advantage and improve environmental performance to enhance
business performance.
COVID-19 is a trigger for transformation in pharmacy education for West Africa
(Pharmacy Education, 2020) Duwiejua, M.
The novel coronavirus 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has irreversibly disrupted key
services including education. Terms like the ‘new normal’ reflect the lost hope of
returning to pre-COVID times. This editorial describes the challenges and
responses of educators and governments in West Africa to COVID-19. To avert
further harm posed to pharmacy education and practice, the publication
advocates for innovation. Pharmacy leaders in West Africa are challenged to look
On the other side of the coin, avoid inefficient panic-driven solutions and seek
opportunities for change in the challenges. The paper provides a direction for
change and specifically identifies collaboration with partners within the region
and beyond including quality continuous professional development programmes
for leadership development, re-training of educators and practitioner
development.
Customer loyalty and value anticipation: does perceived competition matter?
(African Journal of Economic and Management Studies, 2021) Christian, I.O.; Tackie, N.N.; Anning-Dorson, T.
Purpose – Drawing on customer value theory and the demanding nature of today’s customers, this paper
examines the moderating effects of competition, as perceived by customers, on the nexus between customer
value anticipation (CVA), satisfaction, and loyalty.
Design/methodology/approach – Utilizing data from the Ghanaian banking sector, which has been going
through some reforms that are changing the banking landscape, the study analyzes data from 587 customers.
Respondents were drawn from a cluster of banks within an enclave with different types of customers and
epitomized the competitive nature of Ghana’s banking sector.
Findings – CVA drives customer satisfaction, attitudinal loyalty, and behavioral loyalty among bank
customers. However, between attitudinal and behavioral loyalty, customers will be more behaviorally loyal to
banks that successfully anticipate their needs than they would be in attitude. The relationships between CVA
and satisfaction and loyalty are such that the level of competition among sector players does not alter the effect;
thus, when a bank can anticipate customer value, customers are going to stay loyal to such a bank
irrespective of the competitive offers.
Originality/value – Although the impact CVA has on satisfaction and loyalty is justified in the existing
literature, extant research has not systematically examined the influence of external boundaries and situational
effects on the potency of anticipating customer value in detail. The current study shows the effect of
competition on CVA and customer behavioral outcomes. The study further concludes that irrespective of
competition, banks that are perceived to be high on CVA will have their customers being loyal. This is very
important in the development of bank marketing and product innovation strategies.
A (Re)turn to Older Conversations in African Studies
(African Studies Review, 2021) Darkwah, A.K.; Lawrance, B.N.
In an interdisciplinary journal such as the African Studies Review, we are all
enriched by the unique perspectives that writers from different disciplines
bring to the table. Historians, political scientists, economists, literary scholars,
and sociologists can draw on their disciplinary perspectives as well
as on the perspectives of other disciplines to gain insights into the continent,
and we all are better off for it. What do we do, though, with disciplines that are
considered ill-fitting for a study of Africa? Fifty years ago, the South African
anthropologist Archie Mafeje remarked about how historically,
on the continent, sociology had been viewed as a discipline best suited to
making sense of the civilized European settler communities in the eastern
and southern parts of the continent, while the rest of Africa could be left to
anthropologists to study. He expressed the belief that these African sites,
conceptualized as static and non-modernizing, lent themselves better to a
discipline that had been developed to study the Other than one developed to
study the metropole. Concepts such as modernity, civilization, and knowledge, as developed by sociologists, were perceived at the time as inappropriate for describing Africa, hence the decision to leave the study of the
continent to those who worked with concepts such as kinship, “tribes,” and
witchcraft beliefs. No wonder, then, that the early academics in many departments of sociology on the continent such as Kofi Abrefa Busia, Godwin
Nukunya, and Max Assimeng, all of whom taught in the Department of
Sociology at the University of Ghana in its early years, were trained
primarily in the United Kingdom as social anthropologists. Even today, there
are many more African and Africanist anthropologists than there are sociol ogists.
Strengthening Applied Epidemiology in West Africa: Progress, Gaps, and Advancing a Regional Strategy to Improve Health Security
(Health Security, 2021) Lokossou, V.K.; Kenu, E.; Sombie, I.; et al.
The ability to prevent, promptly detect, and appropriately respond to a public health threat is essential for health security.
Field epidemiology training has helped increase the quality and quantity of the public health workforce to strengthen disease
surveillance, outbreak preparedness and response, and general public health capacity. We conducted a desk review on the
status of the Field Epidemiology and Laboratory Training Program model in 16 countries in West Africa. We also developed
a questionnaire and shared it with West African Health Organization (WAHO) member states to document their experiences
and the status of training in their countries. WAHO organized a regional 3-day consultative meeting with major stakeholders
in the region to examine progress, gaps, and challenges, and outline a roadmap to strengthen the Field Epidemiology and
Laboratory Training Program. Stakeholders shared their experiences, engaged in discussions to identify strengths and gaps,
and made plans for a way forward. Member states are at different levels of implementing field epidemiology and laboratory
training programs in their countries, and, therefore, major gaps remain in the number and distribution of trained episode biologists throughout West Africa. Member states implement different variants of the program and in some instances, the
same cadre of health workers are trained in different but comparable programs with different funding streams. Two member
states had not begun implementing the training program. Developing regional centers of excellence was recommended in the
long term while collaboration among member states to train the required number of epidemiologists to fill the acute needs
could be helpful in the short and medium term. Curriculum harmonization and expansion, deployment and use of trained epidemiologists, accreditation of training institutions, and generation of indigenous funding streams are recommended to
improve the Field Epidemiology and Laboratory Training Program in West Africa.
The Effect of Aid on Growth in the Presence of Economic Regime Change
(African Finance Journal, 2019) Samanhyia, S.; Cassimon, D.
The empirical literature on aid effectiveness is mired in controversy. In this regard, the paper
aims to investigate the effect of aid on economic growth in Ghana. Using Auto-Regressive
Distributed Lagged Models as the main estimation strategy, the study concludes that aid has a
positive and statistically significant effect on economic growth. The effect of aid on economic
growth is more pronounced taking into account the marginal effect of a shift in economic policy
from a controlled economic regime to an open market system. The result is robust when the
data is triangulated with other estimation methods. Following the key findings, the study
recommends that government pursues economic policies that promote more private-sector
participation. Also, alternative financing that focuses on the domestic market should be
encouraged to avoid the negative impact of dwindling aid inflows.
Migrants in Countries in Crisis: The Experiences of Ghanaian and Nigerien Migrants during the Libyan Crisis of 2011
(African Human Mobility Review, 2019) Kandilige, L.; Hamidou, M.N.
Using the experiences of Ghanaian and Nigerian migrants who were implicated
in the 2011 Libyan crisis as a case study, this paper highlights the importance of
examining micro-level factors in explaining migration decision-making
processes. It therefore challenges the uncritical use of macro-level factors as
exogenous ‘root causes’ of migration especially in developing country contexts.
Adopting mainly qualitative approaches among seventy-five key informants
from six distinct categories, the study finds that migration culture, household
livelihood aspirations, geographical propinquity, the existence of social networks
and migrant smuggling rings motivate migrations to Libya. The paper also
challenges scholarship on the 2011 Libyan crisis that treats the experiences of
sub-Saharan African (SSA) migrants in the country as an undifferentiated group.
The paper concludes that within a developing country context, the political
economy of the origin country contributes to the establishment, over time, of a
migration culture especially among youth who feel trapped in ‘waithood’ and are
unable to realize basic socio-cultural and economic markers in life. The paper
recommends the regionalization of evacuation and repatriation programs to
facilitate the timely extraction of trapped migrants from countries in crisis.
Exploring Perspectives of the Validity, Legitimacy and Acceptability of Environmental Valuation using Q Methodology
(Journal of Ocean and Coastal Economics, 2021) Ankamah-Yeboah, I.; Armstrong, C.; Tinch, R.
There is increasing interest from research providers, policymakers, and private
sector decision-makers in using the economic valuation of ecosystem goods and
services to improve decision-making (Austen et al., 2019). Market systems and
economic appraisal methods offer powerful tools for supporting decisions about allocating scarce resources (Tinch et al., 2019). However, there are many
Important aspects of human activity that are not fully reflected in market prices.
These include our impacts on the natural world and our dependence on the many
valuable goods and services ecosystems provide. Assessing the values of these
impacts, goods, and services in monetary terms, combined with various
economic analysis and appraisal tools, could help environmental management.
Generational Perspective of Digital Literacy Among Ghanaians in the 21st Century: Wither Now?
(Medijske Studije, 2019) Dovie, D.A.; Dzorgbo, D.B.S.; Mate-Kole, C.C.; et al.
This paper investigates the nexus between generations and digital literacy. For the study,
simple random sampling was undertaken in selecting 361 respondents, while 10 participants were
selected through purposive sampling. The authors made use of mixed methods, including the interview
survey method. The data were subjected to bivariate, correlation, and thematic analysis. Concerning the
results, younger people turn out to be comparatively more digitally active and more digitally skilled than
older people, which is indicative of the fact that there is a generational gap between the two distinct
generations in terms of being in a technologically savvy position. This was influenced significantly by
the era in which they were born, as each generation comes with its technological innovations, the
phenomena of socialization, and social interaction with self-organization as the focus. It is concluded
that digital literacy, expositions, and exploits are significant in how they shape generational
interactions, including the adaptation to digital device utilization in later life.
Vegetable production technical efficiency and technology gaps in Ghana
(African Journal of Agricultural and Resource Economics, 2019) Tsiboe, F.; Asravor, J.; Osei, E.
This study characterizes the nature of the vegetable production shortfall throughout Ghana for
remedial action to be taken. By applying the meta-stochastic frontier analysis to a sample of okra,
pepper, and tomato farmers, the results show that the ranking of production inputs in production is in
the order of the land, hired labor, fertilizer, pesticide, and family labor. Furthermore, the results also
suggest that vegetable production is characterized by diseconomies of scale. Technical efficiency for
okra, pepper, and tomato farmers in Ghana is estimated at 54%, 74%, and 58% respectively, and this
has generally increased for okra and pepper but remained stable for tomato. Technology gaps are
close to non-existent for pepper cultivation, modest for tomato, and severe for okra. This implies that,
whilst there is no potential for production gain from redistributing pepper technology throughout
Ghana, there is limited potential for tomato and substantial potential for okra. Pepper farmers could
potentially benefit from managerial improvements.