Ghana Social Science Journal

The influence of ethical leadership on the research performance of academic staff in public institutions of higher education in Tanzania

Elias Mseti — 2024-12-30

This study looks at how research performance is affected by ethical leadership in Tanzania's public Higher Learning Institutions (HLIs). The study specifically looks at how role clarification and integrity impact employee performance in research. The study's target group consists of 4863 academic staff members of Tanzania's public higher learning institutions, from which 350 respondents were selected using a simple random selection procedure. A self-administered questionnaire with closed-ended questions was used to collect the data. With the use of SPSS software, regression analysis was used to analyse the data quantitatively. The results demonstrate that role clarity and integrity have a favourable impact on staff members' research performance at Tanzanian public higher learning institutions. This study recommends that HLIs leadership should be on the forefront in building ethical leadership among its staff by conforming to rules and regulation (codes of ethics).

Enhancing democracy in Nigeria: Exploring the strategies of US democracy promotion and the new approach of democratic socialization

Christopher Amrobo Enemuwe — 2024-12-30

Since independence, many African countries have grappled with autocratic systems, predominantly characterized by military and civilian autocratic governance, which has impeded the advancement of democratic principles. Structural challenges, corruption, and ethnic politics rooted in colonialism have plagued the continent. During the 1990s, Southern Africa made notable progress toward democratic governance, while West Africa remained entrenched in a post-colonial order dominated by military and pseudo-democratic regimes. The United States (US), a contentious yet pivotal partner in Africa’s development, has increasingly emphasized the support of democratic governance in West African countries such as Nigeria as a strategic element of its foreign policy framework. This paper employs qualitative research methodology, utilizing secondary data and foreign policy documents concerning events, funding, and activities since the early twenty-first century to examine US efforts to promote democracy in Nigeria. While findings indicate that the US has implemented various strategies, including the Integrated Country Strategy (ICS), support for civil society organizations, the US-Nigeria Binational Commission, assistance to the election management body, and diplomatic visits, the study highlights the importance of aligning these strategies with political literacy education to cultivate an inclusive and democratic society in Nigeria. This novel approach to democratic socialization through political education goes beyond the rhetorical dispositions of foreign policy, bilateral agreements, or election observation strategies, aiming to cultivate an inclusive and democratic society in Nigeria.

The mediating role of duration of disclosure in the relationship between disclosure and psychological wellbeing among children living with HIV in Accra, Ghana

Delight Abla Klutsey — 2024-12-30

While the relationship between HIV status disclosure and mental health outcomes (i.e. depression and anxiety) among children and adolescents living with HIV is well studied, less is known about the mediating role played by length of HIV disclosure among children living with HIV. Using a purposively selected sample of 134 children living with HIV and their caregivers, this study examined the mediating role of duration of disclosure in the relationship between disclosure of status and psychological wellbeing of children living with HIV. Participants were administered standardised questionnaires that measured psychological wellbeing and length of HIV status disclosure. Hayes Process Model in the Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS version 23) was used to examine the direct and indirect effects of disclosure of HIV status on psychological wellbeing. The results showed psychological wellbeing was positively associated with both duration of disclosure and disclosure of child’s HIV status. Further analysis showed that the duration of disclosure mediated the relationship between disclosure of a child’s HIV status and psychological wellbeing. Disclosure of HIV status significantly predicted duration of disclosure and had a direct positive influence on psychological wellbeing. These findings suggest that HIV status disclosure does not adversely affect the wellbeing of children living with HIV as this relationship is mediated by how long the child has been aware of his or her HIV status.

Politics of news-sharing in contemporary mass media channels in Ghana: Reflecting indigenization of communicative acts and protocols

Collins Adu-Bempah Brobbey — 2024-12-30

Ghana’s resilience to terrorism: Costly signalling of terrorist groups or strength of counter terrorism strategy?

Sulley Ibrahim — 2024-12-30

West African countries show some degree of readiness to combat terrorism; however, not all countries in the subregion have encountered direct terrorist attacks. This raises the question of what experiences inform counter terrorism strategies of terrorism resilient countries and why such countries seem to avoid terrorism despite sharing borders and histories as well as combating terrorist groups alongside countries devastated by terrorism. This paper explores Ghana’s resilience to terrorism and seeks to understand whether such exceptionalism is due to costly signalling of terrorist groups or strength of the state-led counter terrorism strategy. The paper demonstrates how Ghana’s resilience is linked more directly with the socio-political set-up of the nation-state. The construction of the nation-state provides prohibitions against identity-based extremism, a dynamic that increases the cost of home-grown terrorism, unlike the state-led counter terrorism strategy which sometimes seems to be vulnerable to terrorism. The paper concludes with insights for sustainable management of terrorism resilience.

Researching an unmentionable (Ammbɔdin) among the Akans in Ghana: Suicide taboos, discursive representations and subject positionings

Johnny Andoh-Arthur — 2024-12-30

Death and dying are highly emotive, and in some contexts hard to research. However, when a particular mode of death, like suicide, does not fit into a people’s notion of ‘acceptable’ deaths, disclosures on and researching it from the perspectives of persons who are bereaved by such deaths often get complicated with contested discourses and languages. These complications, however, could also present sites for a discursive construction of situated meanings and many ways people’s world can be represented. Using critical discourse analysis, this article takes a discursive journey into the linguistic tensions and negotiations that characterized the interviews with persons who had been bereaved by suicide in Ghana. Findings reveal five discourses of censure, denial and contestation, fear and insights, trapped pain and release, and insults and distancing. Underlying these discourses are various subject positionings that discursively construct the suicides, the suicide bereaved, their interviews and the researcher differently.