Geography Archives: Ghana

  • U.S. drone base at Agadez, Niger. [Source: plymouth.ac.uk]

    U.S. planning to establish new drone bases in Ghana, Ivory Coast and Benin

    Journalist Nick Turse has shown that terrorist attacks have spiked exponentially as a result of the growing U.S. military presence in the Sahelian region.

  • French soldiers in the Central African Republic. Photo: http://www.hispantv.com

    The French are going, but the war in the Sahel continues

    Captain Ibrahim Traoré, who leads the Burkinabé government, came to power through a coup d’état in September 2022. He ousted Lieutenant Colonel Paul-Henri Sandaogo Damiba, who had himself come to power through a coup in January 2022. Neither of these coups was a surprise.

  • Africa Remains at the Center of a 21st Century Cold War

    Africa remains at the center of a 21st Century Cold War

    Leaders and officials from Russia, France and the United States are vying for influence over the 1.3 billion people living within the African Union’s 55 member-states.

  • Congress of the Ghana Socialist Forum, which approved the transformation of the Forum into the Ghana Socialist Movement. Photo: Facebook of the SMG

    Ghana’s Socialist Movement: A Revolutionary Experiment in Communication

    The SFG was born in 1993, first as a Marxist study group, at the beginning this group was made up of four people, today there are more than three thousand members organized in 25 collectives throughout the country.

  • Illustration by Anastasya Eliseeva, courtesy of New Frame (Illustration by Anastasya Eliseeva, courtesy of New Frame.)

    98.3 percent of Ghana’s gold remains in the hands of multinational corporations

    Disproportionate focus on corruption of national leaders distracts from the systemic theft of Ghana’s wealth.

  • Against a New Cold War, For a Rendezvous With Reality

    Speech at the Bundestag, 19 March 2015, in response to Angela Merkel’s government’s statement on the European Council, 19-20 March 2015 Meine Antwort auf Angela #Merkel in der heutigen Bundestagsdebatte zum Europäischen Rat: https://t.co/BFcZNoW2Jx #Griechenland #Ukraine #EU — Sahra Wagenknecht (@SWagenknecht) March 19, 2015 Mr. President, honored ladies and gentlemen, Mrs. Chancellor! At your best […]

  • Why Is Cuba’s Health Care System the Best Model for Poor Countries?

    Furious though it may be, the current debate over health care in the US is largely irrelevant to charting a path for poor countries of Africa, Latin America, Asia, and the Pacific Islands.  That is because the US squanders perhaps 10 to 20 times what is needed for a good, affordable medical system.  The waste […]

  • Libya: NATO Provides the Bombs; The French “Left” Provides the Ideology

      Last April, former Le Monde diplomatique director Ignacio Ramonet published (in Mémoire des Luttes) a text entitled “Libya, the Just and the Unjust.”  The war had been started a few weeks earlier, inaugurated by French aircraft which had the honor of dropping the first bombs on Tripoli.  On March 19, “a wave of pride […]

  • The New Scramble for Africa

      Is current U.S. foreign policy in Africa following a blueprint drawn up almost eight years ago by the right-wing Heritage Foundation, one of the most conservative think tanks in the world?  Although it seems odd that a Democratic administration would have anything in common with the extremists at Heritage, the convergence in policy and […]

  • A New Bandung?

      Would you say that you’re among the pessimists who regard the five decades of African independence as five lost decades? I’m not a pessimist and I don’t think that these have been five lost decades.  I remain extremely critical, extremely severe with respect to African states, governments, and political classes, but I’m even more […]

  • Merkel, Muslims, and Multi-Kulti

    It’s those foreigners again!  In June and July, during the World Cup, Germans cheered their soccer team’s every skilled pass, every goal — and seemed proud that so many of its players had immigrant backgrounds, from Tunisia, Nigeria, Brazil, Spain, Yugoslavia, Ghana, Poland, and Turkey.  Hurrah! But now it’s October.  The leaves have changed color […]

  • Radical Black Women, Leadership, and the Struggle for Liberation

      Dayo F. Gore, Jeanne Theoharis, Komozi Woodard, eds.  Want to Start a Revolution?: Radical Women in the Black Freedom Struggle.  New York: New York University Press, 2009.  ix + 353 pp.  $79.00 (cloth), ISBN 978-0-8147-8313-9; $25.00 (paper), ISBN 978-0-8147-8314-6. In the last two decades, a growing field of movement scholarship has complicated conventional representations […]

  • Who Will Allow Brazil to Reach Its Economic Potential?

    The biggest economic question facing Brazil, as for most developing countries, is when it will achieve its potential economic growth.  For Brazil, there is a simple, most relevant comparison: its pre-1980 — or pre-neoliberal — past. From 1960-1980, income per person — the most basic measure that economists have of economic progress — in Brazil […]

  • Treasure Islands: Mapping the Geography of Corruption

    When is a tax haven not a tax haven?  When Mauritius’ Vice Prime Minister Ramakrishna Sithanen says so.  “We are a not a tax haven,” stated Sithanen, who is also the country’s Minister of Finance.  Ironically, Sithanen would go on to reveal that ring-fenced financial services (FS) — the legal and financial secrecy vehicles facilitating […]

  • The Magic Kingdom

    Pacho Maturana, Colombian, a man of vast experience in these matters, says that football is a magic kingdom, where anything can happen.  The recent World Cup confirmed his words: it was a strange World Cup. Strange were the ten stadiums where the matches were held, beautiful, immense, which cost a fortune.  No one knows what […]

  • Toronto G20: Remembering Politics, Celebrating Activism

    As news of the G20’s Toronto Summit recedes from the headlines, which memories shall prevail?  The answer to this question will not only shape official decisions, such as whether allegations of police brutality are seriously investigated, but may also have a profound impact on the political sensibilities of a generation of Canadians.  Given the constant […]

  • Glimpses of Alternatives to Neoliberalism

      Social Justice and Neoliberalism: Global Perspectives.  Adrian Smith, Alison Stenning, and Katie Willis, eds.  Macmillan/Zed Books, 2008.  253 pages. Following the tradition of critical geographers, this book explores the expansion of neoliberalism into different spheres and spaces of everyday life.  It consists of a collection of essays by writers from the global South, the […]

  • Food Crisis before Financial Crisis

      What are the consequences of the implementation of neo-liberal economic philosophy for industrialization and development of poor countries?  The answer: de-industrialization of many low-income countries; destruction of their food production (influenced also by protectionist agricultural policies of developed countries), thus their heavy dependence on food imports.  The boom in commodity prices had improved the […]

  • Walking with the Comrades

    The terse, typewritten note slipped under my door in a sealed envelope confirmed my appointment with India’s Gravest Internal Security Threat.  I’d been waiting for months to hear from them.  I had to be at the Ma Danteshwari mandir in Dantewada, Chhattisgarh, at any of four given times on two given days.  That was to […]

  • The Lures and Perils of Gender Activism in Afghanistan

      The Anthony Hyman Memorial Lecture, School of Oriental and African Studies University of London, 2009 I feel both honoured and gratified to be offering the 7th Anthony Hyman Memorial Lecture.  This gives me the opportunity to acknowledge my debt of gratitude to Tony for his unwavering support and friendship over the years.  When I […]