Author: TNRgh

By Prince AhenkorahOver 100 Ghanaian PhD students in the UK have fired off a desperate petition to Prime Minister Keir Starmer, begging for mercy as unpaid scholarships a toxic inheritance from Kingsley Agyemang’s tenure at the Scholarships Secretariat push them towards deportation, eviction and academic oblivion.The £32-35mn debt pile, owed to some 110 British universities since 2021, stems from the New Patriotic Party (NPP) era under ex-Registrar Dr Kingsley Agyemang, now Abuakwa South MP. Students at UCL, Warwick, Liverpool and others report 2-3 years without maintenance cash, frozen 2023-24 tuition, library bans and stalled graduations. ‘Administrative recklessness’, says group leader…

By Ruth Aboagye Ghana’s ambition to industrialise through agriculture, create jobs, stabilise the cedi, and build a 24-Hour Economy depends heavily on agro-processing. Yet one policy the 20% excise duty on natural fruit juices is quietly undermining these national objectives.Introduced as a revenue and health measure, the tax is producing the opposite effect: weakening local industry, discouraging healthy consumption, destroying value-chain jobs, and blocking Ghana’s path to import substitution and export growth.Natural Fruit Juice Is Not a “Sin Product”Excise duties are traditionally reserved for alcohol, tobacco, and highly sweetened or harmful products. Natural fruit juices especially 100% juice, not-from-concentrate (NFC),…

By Nelson Ayivor Millions of Ghanaian workers lose more than two full workdays every month, not because of a slow internet or bad management, but because of the daily chaos, delays, and risk embedded in the trotro system. A World Bank policy note shows that on average, formal-sector workers lose 0.88 hours per day due to congestion and inefficient transport, amounting to 9% of productive hours daily. Scale that across just 1 million workers earning GH₵ 200/day, and you’re looking at GH₵ 400 million lost in productivity monthly, or over GH₵ 4.8 billion per year. That’s value bleeding out of the economy, straight out of…

-But Who’s Watching the Watchers?By Prince AhenkorahA regional taskforce set up to tackle the environmental fallout of illegal mining in Ghana’s Central Region says it has reclaimed over 10 hectares of degraded land but questions remain over the long-term sustainability of the effort, the role of foreign actors, and the state’s capacity to enforce its own mandates.The Central Regional Land Reclamation Committee, a multi-agency body born out of a June 2025 Regional Security Council (REGSEC) resolution, has been quietly filling in abandoned mining pits and restoring scarred landscapes in Upper Denkyira East and surrounding districts. The Committee’s December 15 statement,…

By Our Front Desk Ghana’s economic landscape has brightened significantly as the country heads toward the Christmas season, offering a rare window of relief for households and shoppers. According to the Ghana Statistical Service (GSS), headline consumer inflation fell to 8.0% year-on-year in October 2025, down from 9.4% in September, marking the tenth consecutive month of decline and the lowest level since mid‑2021. The drop in prices has been broad‑based. The October data reveal that food inflation slowed to 9.5%, while non‑food inflation eased to 6.8%. Month-on-month, overall consumer prices actually declined by 0.4%, a strong sign that price pressures…

By Prince Ahenkorah In a damning revelation that shames the world, the World Health Organization (WHO) drops a bombshell: nearly one in three women globally 840 million souls have endured brutal physical or sexual violence from intimate partners or rapists at some point in their lives.This landmark report, unveiled ahead of the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women on November 25, exposes how pathetically slow progress has been. Since 2000, intimate partner violence has dipped by a measly 0.2 percent per year a glaring failure in tackling what experts call humanity’s most stubborn human rights atrocity.Just last…

By Nelson Ayivor The recent passage of the Road Traffic Amendment Bill 2025, which legalizes commercial motorcycle operations (Okada), has opened a sharp and fundamental debate over Ghana’s developmental vision. While Ibrahim Adjei, former Secretary to the Office of the former President, has strongly endorsed the bill as a pragmatic move that will “create jobs and bring order,” Political Commentator, Elvis Darko, has vehemently opposed the legislation, calling it an “admission of a systemic failure,” in national public transport policy. Ibrahim Adjei urged the public to support the new law, arguing that its passage is a critical step toward regulating…

By Nelson Ayivor A new and alarming trend in educational access has been identified in Northern Ghana, where the lure of quick economic gains from illegal mining, also known as galamsey, and sports betting is actively pulling older children out of the classroom. The Executive Director of the education think tank, Africa Education Watch (Eduwatch), Kofi Asare, revealed that approximately 70% of the out-of-school children (OOSC) population, aged between 12 and 17, are now being driven by these activities, marking a significant reversal of previous national educational patterns. “One interesting finding is that, contrary to the national trend establishing the…

African Trade Ministers and senior government officials responsible for trade convened in Marrakech from December 11-12, 2025 for a high-level Ministerial Retreat to sharpen Africa’s collective priorities and strengthen coordination ahead of the 14th WTO Ministerial Conference (MC14), scheduled for March 2026 in Yaoundé, Cameroon. Held on the margins of the 2nd AfCFTA Business Forum, the retreat aimed to build stronger coherence within the African Group and agree on a common roadmap to advance and defend Africa’s priorities in multilateral trade negotiations. During the debates, the Honourable Eilizabeth Ofusu Adjare (MP), the Minister for Trade, Agribusiness and Industry recalled that…

…As Night Market Economy Operations Intensifies  By Philip Antoh The Domestic Tax Revenue Division of the Ghana Revenue Authority (GRA) has stepped up its enforcement actions against businesses in the night economy as part of its ongoing compliance efforts. This comes after it was found that many night-time businesses were either unregistered or not meeting their tax responsibilities. Alpha Senanu Hossoo, the Coordinator of the GRA Night Market Economy Project, stated that the Authority’s intervention was necessary after two years of monitoring compliance among night businesses. He noted that nightlife in Accra has developed into a lively economic area with…