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Art and the Power of Goodness: A Collection of John Agyekum Kufuor (Hardcover)
**Available from 16 June 2021
FOREWORD BY GORDON BROWN, Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom
There is a strong correlation between art and power and in this book, Ivor Agyeman-Duah, a cultural and literary historian, looks at it from the art collection of the former President of Ghana – John Agyekum Kufuor.
From a matrilineal household in Kumasi that is connected to the visual and palace art in the ancient imperial Kingdom of Ashanti, Kufuor travelled the world from Oxford into the pantheon of great personages and power. Along the way, whether in villages in Ethiopia or among the Maasai in Kenya, across the Maghreb into Morocco, infatuation with the Persia classical period, Ottoman or Asia Minor’s remains of modern day Turkey, northern Lebanon and parts of Greater Asia, some of these acquisitions came by way of gifts and purchases.
They reflect family life and belief, ancient trade relations and routes as well as patterns of contemporary geo-politics. It could be through Benin bronze sculpture with facial stratifications or of metal smelted Malian Islamic crusaders on horseback or a herdsman from a Sahel water well.
These works, seventy of which form the basis of this book with few external ones, include resistance art in the fashion of the ‘empire fights back’ against British West African colonial conflict engagements and resultant Independence.
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5 Ghanaian Presidents and China: Patterns, Pitfalls, and Possibilities
In Five Ghanaian Presidents and China, Lloyd Amoah tackles China’s meteoric rise to global prominence and what this means for African countries including Ghana. Focusing on Ghana’s relations with China over the last sixty years, the work discusses and interrogates how generations of Ghana’s leaders, from Kwame Nkrumah to Akufo-Addo, have approached the China question since the 1950s.Combining archival data, policy information, interviews and conversations with former Ghanaian presidents, scholars and high state officials, with the sounds and sights from his long years of travel through China and intimate observation of Ghanaian policy formation processes, Amoah, finds that ultimately Ghana’s engagement with China is a matter of strategy. In this work the case is made that descriptions of China’s engagement with Africa as “neo-colonial” are both alarmist and simplistic. Five Ghanaian Presidents offers a far more nuanced account and shines some light on how African and other countries in the Global South can exploit China’s tectonic reshaping of global trade, technology, diplomacy, finance, politics, business and economics.
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A Country to Love and to Serve: Memoirs of a Ghanaian Diplomat
This epic memoir chronicling the author’s diplomatic journey is a superb and enticing story, richly told. The narration provides great insights into the personal life and professional travails of a quintessential diplomat who rose from humble beginnings to be one of the eminent Ambassadors of the nation. Most fascinating is how adeptly the author combines the demands of motherhood and family with her tasks in the complex world of diplomacy.
The memoir provides great insights, important lessons and best practices in diplomatic practice that should be invaluable for the nation’s policy makers and diplomats. The story told through A COUNTRY TO LOVE AND TO SERVE should be a real inspiration for young diplomats and a must read for any student of diplomacy.
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Forward Ever: The Life of Kwame Nkrumah
A short biography of Kwame Nkrumah providing an introduction to his life and work. Set within the context of PanAfricanism the book covers the whole period of Nkrumah’s life from childhood through to his death in Bucharest on 27th April 1972.
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Who Owns the Land and Who Rules the Land?
Ghana is undergoing her fourth experiment in Constitutional Rule − the 4th Republic. She was the first Black African country south of the Sahara to gain her political independence in 1957 but economic independence has eluded her till now. Her development is at a snail-pace at best.
According to the author, there are certain fundamental bottlenecks in the country’s governance system which make it difficult for her to realize her economic potential. The author compares Ghana’s governance system to Singapore which gained political independence around the same time as Ghana but has successfully transformed from Third World to First World economic status in 30 years and asks why the difference. The author calls for a national debate on the country’s governance system that will lead to a total review of the 1992 Constitution. The following are some of the key issues he calls the nation’s attention to:
- A Feudal Land Tenure System whereby more than 90% of the land mass of Ghana is vested in the Chieftaincy institution as Stool Lands and the remaining 10% vested in the President on behalf of the people of Ghana as Public Lands. A system which greatly impedes development and benefits only a privileged few and yet there are no Land Reforms
- The Legacy of the Colonial Indirect Rule leading to a “bifurcated state” in which traditional authority runs parallel to civilian political authority
- An Ineffective Decentralization System which excludes the traditional leaders and refuses to allow the people to elect their own District Chief Executives whom they can hold accountable
- An Adversarial Political System in which the two main political parties have indulged in violence since independence and thus refuse to reach consensus for national development
- The Short Tenure of the Executive and Legislature which does not promote long term planning and execution for meaningful development
- An expensive electoral system which engenders corruption and prevents well-meaning and qualified candidates from offering themselves for governance
- The Lack of a National Agenda for development and dependence on party manifestoes thus ignoring the Directive Principles of State Policy. Development is thus not progressive but disjointed and depends on which party is in power
- A Council of State which is merely advisory and has no power to serve as a check on the Executive
- A National Mindset of Dependency Syndrome and Entitlement Mentality which has resulted in lack of effective mobilization of the populace by the political and traditional leadership. A national psyche that does not promote self-reliance and the can-do spirit
- A Governance System which tries to copy Westminster and American systems instead of a home-grown system which suits our situation and promotes development
- An Educational System that fails to build problem-solving abilities and patriotism into the youth and fails to make them proud of being Africans
- A Very Strong Religious Atmosphere which feeds on superstition and does not enable the teeming members to transform their mindset and focus on teachings which promote hard work, wealth creation and prosperity
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The Boy from Boadua: One African’s Journey of Hunger and Sacrifice in Pursuit of a Dream
*Available from 7 February 2023
Patrick Asare was born and raised by illiterate parents in the remote Ghanaian village of Boadua. His family was so large and impoverished that not even the earnings from crushing hard work could buy enough food to fill their bellies. No one in the village aspired to be educated beyond middle school.
Until Patrick.
Numerous obstacles stood in the way of Patrick’s yearning for higher knowledge, including gnawing hunger, lack of sleep, and backbreaking daily chores. During school vacations, he toiled in a jungle farm teeming with poisonous snakes and insects.
Dedicating every stolen moment to study, Patrick passed the common entrance exam with flying colors. Despite major setbacks, he kept his eye on the prize. He graduated from an elite secondary school and earned his engineering degree in the Soviet Union during the perestroika era. Finding his way to the United States, he taught Russian and math and eventually obtained a superb education from top American universities.
Patrick’s travels and adventures taught him that, regardless of his hardscrabble childhood, he was a lucky man. He was raised by loving and supportive parents and lived in a society where race was not an issue. Teaching in inner-city high schools alerted him to the particular challenges faced by America’s urban Black youth.
Patrick’s amazing story offers insights, hope, and inspiration to others who face astronomical odds.
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Swimming Upstream: The Story of Southern Cross
Kwame Donkoh Fordwor’s dream was realized due to the precision planning which was utilized to develop Southern Cross Mining Limited (SCML), as the company established itself as the first active gold mining operation to be brought to Ghana Since 1937. This came to pass by way of chance associations and the joint efforts of collaborators who possessed different backgrounds and motivations.
Even with the assistance of numerous people along the way, the inception of Southern Cross was not easy. It required aggressive action and time to fend or larger corporations and fight government officials for the rights and freedoms they felt they deserved.
Fordwor titles this book Swimming Upstream: The Story of Southern Cross because of the comparisons he draws between himself and the struggles of salmon attempting to reach their spawning grounds. Much like a salmon battling currents, fishermen, and other predators to reach its final destination, Fordwor had to struggle to make his own path and place in history, using keen instincts and good fortune to maintain the competitiveness and success of SCML.
Swimming Upstream vividly details the rich history of Southern Cross and other gold mining venturers who strived to achieve historical recognition. It is an illuminating work-powerfully written and inspirational to all who are still seeking to make a lifetime dream come true.₵180.00 -
Truth Without Reconciliation: A Human Rights History of Ghana (Pennsylvania Studies in Human Rights)
Although truth and reconciliation commissions are supposed to generate consensus and unity in the aftermath of political violence, Abena Ampofoa Asare identifies cacophony as the most valuable and overlooked consequence of this process in Ghana. By collecting and preserving the voices of a diverse cross-section of the national population, Ghana’s National Reconciliation Commission (2001-2004) created an unprecedented public archive of postindependence political history as told by the self-described victims of human rights abuse.
The collected voices in the archives of this truth commission expand Ghana’s historic record by describing the state violence that seeped into the crevices of everyday life, shaping how individuals and communities survived the decades after national independence. Here, victims of violence marshal the language of international human rights to assert themselves as experts who both mourn the past and articulate the path toward future justice.
There are, however, risks as well as rewards for dredging up this survivors’ history of Ghana. The revealed truth of Ghana’s human rights history is the variety and dissonance of suffering voices. These conflicting and conflicted records make it plain that the pursuit of political reconciliation requires, first, reckoning with a violence that is not past but is preserved in national institutions and individual lives. By exploring the challenge of human rights testimony as both history and politics, Asare charts a new course in evaluating the success and failures of truth and reconciliation commissions in Africa and around the world.₵180.00 -
My Life in Law and Politics: Memoirs & Biography of B.J. da Rocha
This book chronicles the life of B.J. da Rocha as a lawyer and politician. B. J., as he was popularly known, was a legal luminary and politician extraordinaire. Born on May 16th 1927, he devoted the entire course of his professional life to entrenching the rule of law, development of legal education, and in the defence of human rights till his death on the 23rd of February 2010.
He was noted for forthrightness, integrity and principled stance on issues on the rule of law and national development.
He played various prominent roles in Law and Politics as a lawyer, director of legal education, law lecturer and first Chairman of the New Patriotic Party.
This account is related by B.J. himself in Part 1, followed by an Epilogue based on interviews B.J. conducted with Mr. Dei, a student of history, for his dissertation.
This book is an exciting read for students of political history in Ghana and is an insightful commentary on Ghana’s chequered political history.
“Here was a man, when comes such another” — Shakespeare, Julius Caesar
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Justice Daniel Francis Annan: In the Service of Democracy
Justice Annan’s public service in Ghana’s recent history embodies how an individual, acting in concert with compatriots, can direct the course of history using institutions which may prevail at a specific conjuncture in that history.
The objective of producing this biography of Justice Annan is to extrapolate from his life as a public servant, especially during the critical period of 1982- 1992 when he was a key member of the PNDC, and the 1993 – 2000 when he was Speaker of the first and second Parliaments of the Fourth Republic, the lessons and insights that add value to the existing knowledge of how social and political dynamics are purposefully managed even in the most challenging times; and how key institutions like Parliament are nurtured in a nascent democracy to literally turn dust into gold. The weight of the biography therefore leans heavily on Justice Annan’s public service during the two periods indicated above.
This biography was sponsored by the IDEG under its Senior Citizen Scholar in Residence Programme, which is non-partisan and open to all who have distinguished themselves in rendering service to our dear country Ghana. We hope that this publication will inspire institutions and individual philanthropists, both Ghanaian and foreign, to contribute generously to the funding of the programme. The programme aims at deepening our knowledge and understanding of the momentous conjunctures in our history that have shaped the content and trajectory of Ghana’s young democratic state.
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Beyond Fear and Power: Osahene Boakye Djan – Pioneer Journey from the Village to the City and Back
On 2nd June, 1979, the military high command of the Ghana Armed Forces picked up intelligence of an impending coup against their regime from the 5 Battalion, the only fighting unit in Accra at the time.
General Odartey Wellington, the then Army Commander, informed his lower commanders to take steps to order Captain Boakye Djan, the D Company Commander of the 5 Battalion of Infantry to stop it.
On 4th June, 1979, Captain Boakye Djan emerged to become the substantive head of government and official spokesperson of the Armed Forces Revolutionary Council of Ghana.
This is the story of one of Africa’s great military masterminds and why he has survived it all.
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Inside Out: Autobiographical Memoirs
The author recounts a journey that starts in a small town in Ghana, through an academic and professional career in finance in Canada and the United States, culminating at the Ministry of Finance in Ghana where he served as Technical Advisor to three different Ministers of Finance from different political parties.
The memoirs depict the complexities of decision-making that combine technical know-how with political reality using several instances of policymaking and financial transactions that he led at the Ministry. For the technical reader, the author recounts a 25-year history of his involvement in many key initiatives of financial market development in Ghana.
The sweetener in Inside Out is an interesting case study of how to navigate political transitions and maintain relevance as a senior advisor to Ministers in a “winner-takes-all” political environment.
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My Media Journey
This book is the autobiographical account of a young Ghanaian man’s unplanned entry into his country’s vibrant broadcasting industry at the turn of the century, and his largely triumphant yet occasionally tumultuous journey through it.
Although his father, Sam Clegg, had been a fixture of journalism as a formidable national newspaper editor for nearly a decade, from 1983 to 1992, Robert Nii Arday Clegg wasn’t drawn instinctively to the media. Young Clegg appeared to have fallen some distance away from the old tree that fruited him. It took a fair bit of coaxing and cajoling to bring him round to broadcasting, initially as a university campus studio cub, transitioning subsequently into the major leagues of radio talk show hosts in Ghana. The obstruction all along, he reveals, was his first love – no, not Mimi his beloved girlfriend who he was to marry later, but the Law profession.
My Media Journey is candid, completely unencumbered by flattery or camouflage. Clegg doesn’t dress b.s. up in make-up and polite synonyms. Excuse the Trumpian expression, but spades aren’t tremendous cutlery. What he sees as corporate shenanigans and acts of meanness are laid out unlaundered in the public square for readers, but so are acts of kindness and brotherly charity warmly and generously recounted.
From chapter to chapter, Clegg’s character emerges of a focused, self-confident and fiercely stubborn young man with an unwavering sense of political independence. He demonstrates this in his on-air and editorial encounters at Radio Gold and Starr FM, both broadcast stations based in the capital, Accra, and which have politician owners. His values-based approach to broadcasting is evident when on multiple occasions he rejects, with ease, offers of under-the-table monetary rewards from newsmakers for work done in the regular line of duty, as well as from unnamed government officials. The title of this book notwithstanding, Clegg throws in his love of sports and regales us with his own prodigious exploits at hockey and the sprints, and how that passion helps to open the doors to his media journey.
Also, he makes no pretence of his pride in his academic achievements borne out of intelligence, hard work and self-belief which, consequently, put him top of his law faculty class and reward him with a long-held dream — a place at Harvard Law School.
As Shimon Peres put it in his foreword to Start-Up Nation – the Story of Israel’s Economic Miracle, this book should be taken as an “interim report” on the evolving life and career of Clegg. It is but a small chapter in a much fuller story that is still writing itself.
— FOREWORD BY KWAKU SAKYI-ADDO
₵150.00My Media Journey
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Kwame Nkrumah: Africa’s Man of the Millennium
This book seeks to review various presentations made about the life of the man who led this country in her march towards independence and caught the imagination of the entire continent in the 1960s as he advocated and pushed the frontiers towards continental unity.
The man at the centre of it all – Kwame Nkrumah – is captured in all his facets; his humble beginnings, studies abroad, his return home to work with the UGCC, his political agitations, tenure of office as Leader of Government Business, Prime Minister and President, his removal from office and the role played by internal and external forces, his days in exile, his death and other aspects of his life. These are all presented with a view to enable the reader learn some history as well as good lessons of life.
Interestingly, though largely seen as the first universal African of the 19th Century, Kwame Nkrumah was actually a man of two halves; much loved and much hated all at the same time. How a single personality could be viewed in that manner is better appreciated by reading the book.
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Working with Rawlings
Flight Lieutenant Jerry John Rawlings burst on the Ghanaian political scene with a failed military mutiny on May 15th, 1979. On June 4th 1979, following a successful uprising staged by junior officers and other ranks of the Ghana Armed Forces, he emerged as the Chairman of the Armed Forces Revolutionary Council (AFRC) which ruled Ghana for three months and handed over to a civilian constitutional government on 24th September 1979. On 31st December 1981, he overthrew the constitutional government and formed the Provisional National Defence Council (PNDC) as the Government of Ghana. He was elected a constitutional President in 1992 and assumed office as such on 7th January 1993. He served two terms as President of the Republic of Ghana, finally leaving office on 6th January 2001.
Jerry John Rawlings is an enigma. It was a privilege working with him and being close to him. He and I went through many exciting experiences together. I have documented some of those experiences in this book. But there are many other experiences which I have not documented either because they belong to the realm of confidentiality or of privacy. What I have documented, however, is enough to give present and future leaders some ideas about governance at the highest levels; the dos and don’ts of governance; the skills required for governance and the importance of human relations as a leadership trait.
This is not a book about Jerry John Rawlings. It is not a book about Kwamena Ahwoi. It is not a book about the PNDC. It is not a book about the NDC. It is a book about Kwamena Ahwoi working with Jerry John Rawlings; our working relationship; our ups and downs and our joint commitment to building a better Ghana than the one we found it. Somewhere along the line, we drifted apart. This book is about that as well. It is my hope that Ghana’s leaders of today and our leaders of the future will learn some lessons from my account of Working with Rawlings, leaving out the negatives and accentuating the positives.
₵150.00Working with Rawlings
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