Understanding adolescents’ diet and eating behaviours is crucial for informing public health strategies and policies, allowing interventions to be tailored effectively to enhance dietary patterns and improve overall health and quality of life. This study examined dietary patterns, dietary diversity, eating habits, food choice and the factors influencing these among adolescent girls in the Mion District, Ghana. A convergent parallel mixed-method design employing in-depth interviews (n = 30), two focus group discussions (n = 10) and survey data from 882 mother-daughter pairs was used. Key findings indicate that approximately 90% of girls achieved the minimum dietary diversity for women of reproductive age (MDD-W), with most consuming three meals daily. Staples were eaten daily, while fruits and unhealthy foods were less frequently eaten. Moderate/severe food insecurity was negatively associated with the MDD-W, whereas larger household size was positively correlated with the MDD-W. Older girls were less likely to eat breakfast, while household crop farm diversity increased the odds of eating supper on weekends. Moderate/severe food insecurity was inversely associated with intake of animal-sourced foods (ASFs), fruit, and unhealthy foods but positively correlated with vegetable consumption in the past month. Maternal non-literacy was linked to a lower intake of unhealthy foods, while specific ethnic backgrounds negatively influenced ASF intake. Wealthier households demonstrated higher consumption of staples. Qualitatively, health considerations, availability, taste, and cravings were major influencers of food choices. Food aversions were often tied to intolerance, fatigue from consuming the same foods repeatedly, and preferences related to taste and texture. These findings underscore the need for targeted nutritional interventions considering socio-economic and household factors to improve adolescent girls’ dietary habits and overall health.

This article critically examines the antislavery activism of Francis P. Fearon, an African activist based in late nineteenth-century Accra. His correspondence with the Aborigines’ Protection Society (APS) provides a profound insight into the dynamics of African abolitionism. By analysing a collection of letters housed in the APS archive, this study sheds light on Fearon’s commitment to abolishing slavery, driven by his principled opposition to family separation. The article underscores Fearon’s active involvement in a network of African antislavery advocates who sought to disrupt the institution of slavery through legal challenges and international advocacy. This research extends the growing literature on African abolitionism, which primarily focuses on the efforts of African missionaries, educated elites, and grassroots movements, adding a new dimension by exploring the operations of a dedicated network committed to the abolitionist cause.

Menarche and pubertal onset vary across populations but understanding age-at-menarche (AAM) and pubertal growth tempo is limited in low-income settings. Identifying factors influencing pubertal development is vital for creating targeted health and education programmes supporting adolescent girls’ well-being. Baseline data (n = 1045) from the Ten2Twenty-Ghana study were analysed to examine menarche attainment, pubertal development, AAM, and the associated factors among girls aged 10-17 years in the Mion district, Ghana. The data collection methods included anthropometry, body composition, haemoglobin status, a qualitative 24-hour dietary recall, a food frequency questionnaire, and a pubertal development score (PDS). Binary logistic and linear regression analyses were used to model odds ratios for menarche attainment and regression coefficients for AAM and PDS. About 19.9% of the girls had experienced menarche, with a mean AAM of 13.4 ± 1.5 years. Among post-menarche girls (n = 205/1045), 12.2% and 15.1% experienced early (AAM < 12 years) and late menarche (AAM < 15 years), respectively. The mean PDS was 1.8 ± 0.7 out of 4. Among the adolescent girls, 36.2% were prepubertal, 17.0% early –pubertal, 18.6% mid-pubertal, 27.9% late pubertal, and less than 1% were in the post-pubertal stage. An increase in fat mass (FM), fat-free mass (FFM), height-for-age-z-score (HAZ), and body mass index-for-age-z-score (BAZ) was observed with puberty progression, but a steep decline in HAZ was noticed for girls in late puberty, increasing again post-puberty. Being older (adjusted odds ratio (AOR) = 2.06, 95% C.I.: 1.83, 2.31), stunted (AOR= 0.20, 95% C.I.: 0.10, 0.40), thin (AOR = 0.30, 95% C.I.: 0.11, 0.80), and overweight/obese (AOR = 7.29, 95% C.I.: 2.60, 20.43) were the significant predictors of menarche attainment. Being older (β = 0.39, P < 0.0001), stunted (β= -0.92, P = 0.01), thin (β = 1.25, P = 0.01), and having a literate mother (β = -0.72, P = 0.03) were significantly associated with AMM. A higher HAZ, FM, FFM, age, and Konkomba ethnicity were positively associated with higher PDS. This study highlights the complexity of factors influencing menarche and pubertal development. These insights are essential for developing targeted health and educational programmes that address nutritional and socio-demographic disparities to promote adolescent girls’ well-being and healthy pubertal development.

This short report discusses the resources to be found in the Railway Archive in Sekondi-Takoradi, Ghana. This report is also the result of various exploratory missions, as part of a cooperative effort between the Ghana Railway Company, the Institute of African Studies of the University of Ghana, and the International Institute of Social History, the Netherlands. The archive under consideration is classified as an institutional archive which provides unique insights into the social and labour history of Ghana– then Gold Coast– with some connections to West Africa and Great Britain. The archives provide additional material to the resources in the national archives in Ghana, best known as the Public Records and Archives Administration Department (PRAAD).

This note seeks to bring awareness to the wide variety of archival documents available for research in urban history in Kumase, Ghana’s second city and capital of the historic Asante Kingdom. We draw mainly on our experiences researching the history of Jackson Park, one of colonial Kumase’s earliest public parks.

This paper examines the development of the University of Ghana’s Institute of African Studies (IAS), arguing that the landscape of decolonial epistemology is more complex than is often assumed. Drawing on new archival documents it maps out the different landscape of ideas regarding its decolonial origins — phase one (1948–50), phase two (1954–61), and phase three (1960–63) — not only to elucidate problems of defining what decolonial work should entail but also as a historical study of how people associated with the IAS contributed to defining and activating a decolonial project. It shows Nkrumah’s specific instrumentality to its emergence through an African-centred or “Afroepistemic” approach to African Studies. It also highlights how the decolonial imperative was shaped by different historical moments.

Much of the research on public trust in courts focuses on countries with strong rule of law traditions and clear judicial norms. Less is known about such attitudes in young democracies with developing judicial institutions. To address this, we examine public confidence in Ghana’s court system. Ghana’s courts have faced various scandals, from judges’ personal conduct to separation of power conflicts. Using Afrobarometer data, we evaluate public attitudes toward Ghana’s courts. We find that Ghanaians generally have low trust in their courts, with factors such as partisanship, education, standard of living, and gender strongly influencing trust.

This paper constructs the intellectual histories of learned societies in Ghana to illuminate African agency in pursuing knowledge production and dissemination. Academics and politicians founded some of Africa’s first scientific societies in Ghana. Previous scholarship on scientific research and higher education in Africa has overlooked the role of disciplines-based learned societies and national academies. This paper contributes to that literature using a historical comparative approach to construct the histories of learned societies that emerged during the colonial and postcolonial periods to understand how such scientific associations contributed to research productivity. I advance two arguments based on case studies of three scientific societies. First, there is linearity in the evolution of learned societies. Second, the institutionalization of scientific communities along interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary lines provided flexibility and enabled learned associations to contribute relevant knowledge to the “developmental state” that the political leaders were constructing.

To enhance the capacity for early and effective management of genital tract infections at primary and secondary levels of the healthcare system, we developed a prediction model, validated internally to help predict individual risk of self-reported genital tract infections (sGTIs) at the community level in Ghana. The study involved 32973 men and women aged 15–49 years from three rounds of the Ghana Demographic Health Survey, from 2003 to 2014. The outcomes were sGTIs. We applied the least absolute shrinkage and selection operator (LASSO) penalized regression with a 10-fold cross-validation model to 11 predictors based on prior review of the literature. The bootstrapping technique was also employed as a sensitivity analysis to produce a robust model. We further employed discriminant and calibration analyses to evaluate the performance of the model. Statistical significance was set at P-value <0.05. The mean±standard deviation age was 29.1±9.7 years with female preponderance (60.7%). The prevalence of sGTIs within the period was 11.2% (95% CI = 4.5–17.8) and it ranged from 5.4% (95% CI = 4.8–5.86) in 2003 to 17.5% (95% CI = 16.4–18.7) in 2014. The LASSO regression model retained all 11 predictors. The model’s ability to discriminate between those with sGTIs and those without sGTIs was approximately 73.50% (95% CI = 72.50–74.26) from the area under the curve with bootstrapping technique. There was no evidence of miscalibration from the calibration belt plot with bootstrapping (test statistic = 17.30; P-value = 0.060). The model performance was judged to be good and acceptable. In the absence of clinical measurement, this prediction tool can be used to identify individuals aged 15–49 years with a high risk of sGTIs at the community level in Ghana. Frontline healthcare staff can use this tool for screening and early detection. We, therefore, propose external validation of the model to confirm its generalizability and reliability in different population.