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The purpose of this paper is to explore the increasing role of financial auditing in the fight against government sector fraud and financial mismanagement in Ghana, Africa. Using a Foucauldian‐inspired theoretical framing, the paper explores the growing cases of fraud in the Ghanaian public sector and the technologies of government that have been enlisted to combat it. The paper also discusses the particular interests that are likely served by the push for financial audits as the preferred weapon for fighting government sector fraud in the country.

The approach of the paper is qualitative involving the use of a variety of archival material and interviews with employees of the Ghana Audit Service, the Controller and Accountant‐General's Department, and global agencies like the World Bank and United States Agency for International Development (USAID).

The paper finds that contrary to the view of “auditing as an alien phenomenon in most parts of the Third World, certainly Africa,” financial auditing is the preferred approach to fighting government sector fraud in Ghana. The paper also shows that financial auditing is privileged over other technologies of government, in this context, largely because it reinforces the hegemony of international development agencies like the World Bank and the imperialism of the big four accounting firms.

The paper adds insight into the increasing role of financial auditing in the fight against government sector fraud and financial mismanagement in Ghana.

In Covid-19 pandemic era when most households' members have lost their jobs and incomes, the government assistance and programs in ensuring household consumption smoothing is very significant. The main objectives of this study are to analyze the impact of government expenditure and free maternal healthcare (FMHC) policy on household consumption expenditure in Ghana in both long run and short run.

They used the ARDL to estimate the impact of government expenditure on household consumption and Segmented Linear Regression to examine impact of FMHC policy household consumption using longitudinal data from 1967 to 2018.

The results revealed that government expenditure had a negative and statistically significant effect on household consumption expenditure suggesting that government expenditure crowed-out private consumption in Ghana. Also, it was observed that before the implementation of the FMHC policy, there was an increase household consumption expenditure, but after the introduction of the FMHC policy, the study household consumption expenditure decreases significantly suggesting that FMHC policy has strong association with household consumption in Ghana.

Due to limited data availability, this study did not assess the impact of the FMHC policy at the household or district level. Also, Ghana has introduced a free senior high school education policy in 2017 so further research could analyze the implications of these policies for household consumption in Ghana at the micro-level using different estimation technique such as the difference in difference.

The study suggests the need to increase public spending on basic social amenities and also extend the free maternal healthcare policy to all pregnant women especially those in the rural areas of Ghana as these have a greater impact on household consumption in Ghana. The findings from this study have important implications for household savings and interest rate in Ghana. The findings from this study also have important implications for both fiscal policy and healthcare policy in Ghana and other developing countries.

To the best of my knowledge this is the first empirical study to examine the effect of government expenditure and free maternal healthcare policy on household consumption in Ghana.

Following decades of weak financial capacity of local governments in raising enough revenues to finance their budgets, this paper aims to examine the impact of jurisdictional fragmentation on property taxes in Ghana. Since independence in 1957, many local governments in Ghana are yet to build their fiscal capacity to collect enough own source revenues to support their local budgets. All local government laws in Ghana have assigned property taxes to local governments.

The paper uses quantitative econometric techniques with local level panel data from 2010 to 2016 to examine the impact of fragmenting assemblies in Ghana.

The paper finds that fragmenting local governments have an overall negative effect on property taxes in district assemblies in Ghana. However, fragmentation of metropolitan assemblies has an overall positive effect on property taxes, relative to district assemblies. In the case of municipal assemblies, fragmentation has a net positive effect on property taxes but an overall marginally negative effect, relative to district assemblies. Also, the paper finds that grants, capital expenditure and administrative expenditure of local governments do not impact on the collection of property tax revenues in all types of assemblies in Ghana.

The paper concludes that relative to metropolitan assemblies, fragmenting districts assemblies is not congruent with government efforts to promote the collection of property taxes in Ghana.

The importance of housing in enhancing the quality of life has been widely reported. It represents one of the basic human needs, provides protection from harm and ensures survival. Like many developing countries, different Ghanaian governments have variously pursued several programs and interventionsdirected at addressing the country's housing challenges including housing loan schemes in the colonial era to affordable housing projects in the 2000s. Notwithstanding, access to adequate housing for the low to middle-income groups still remains unresolved. This paper is an attempt to gain deeper insights into Ghana's housing situation, its challenges and the efforts made by governments during the periods before independence and after independence. The nature of the housing policies implemented during such eras is explored and the reasons for the implementation failures examined. In the end, the paper provides policy recommendations that could potentially help increase the supply of affordable urban housing in the country. The paper calls for a strong political will and pragmatic intelligence in the implementation of housing policies and programs in the country. Mechanisms to provide sufficienthousing finance for the poor to adequately participate in the housing market have also been outlined. It is concluded that the over-empowerment of the private real estate sector to be the major providers of housing may not be optimal. Rather, it would only lead to the inability of the poor to be able to actively participate in the housing market, consequently exacerbating housing poverty. Effective public-private partnership has the potential to guarantee the supply of reasonably-priced and affordable housing provision.

The Ghana chapter on special education begins with the history of service provisions for persons with disabilities. It includes information on educational and rehabilitation services, special schools and integrated education. Detailed data is related concerning prevalence and incidence rates and special needs among the Ghana population. This is followed by a comprehensive section on regular and special education teacher roles, expectations, and training. An important aspect of Ghana’s special education is its movement towards inclusive education. The support for this movement comes from the Ministry of Education’s policy, namely, The Education Strategic Plan (ESP), which adopts inclusive education and promotes it as the future special education direction for the country. The chapter provides detailed information on the issues related to the implementation of the ESP plan, four models that have been developed for inclusive education, the progress and effort that Ghana has made towards inclusive education as well as significant challenges that are present.

In recognition of corruption as a major obstacle to the development processes of poor countries, the search for effective strategies in combating the phenomenon in developing countries has become a major preoccupation of the international donor community, particularly since the early 1990s. The purpose of this paper is to examine the role of “political will” in combating corruption in Hong Kong, Singapore and Ghana with the view to drawing significant lessons for all developing and transition countries in their anticorruption crusades.

The findings in this paper are based on an extensive review of relevant literature and personal experiences in Ghana.

This paper concludes that controlling corruption in a sustained manner requires a consistent demonstration of genuine commitment on the part of the top political elite towards the eradication of the menace. Where the commitment of the top political leadership to the goal of eradicating corruption in a country is weak, as has been the case in Ghana, governments are only likely to engage in “zero tolerance for corruption” talk but continue to play a “tolerant corruption” game. Anticorruption reforms, in this regard, are bound to fail.

The paper highlights a number of lessons from the successful anticorruption crusades of Singapore and Hong Kong that are significant for Ghana and other developing countries in their fight against corruption. These include the need for anticorruption reform initiatives to be participatory and inclusive of all stakeholders including public and private sectors as well as civil society; the need to provide adequate budgets and staff for specialized anticorruption agencies and grant them independence in the execution of their mandates; and the need to establish effective mechanisms for: providing positive incentives for those who comply with anticorruption laws; and exposing and sanctioning compromised individuals and institutions.

Whilst studies on the role of political will in combating corruption in developing countries abound, most of these have either not provided in‐depth country experiences or relied on single country cases. One major departure of this paper from extant literature is its cross‐country comparative nature.

In recent decades, governments in developing countries have experienced relentless pressure from key supranational finance providers (particularly the World Bank) to focus on the achievement of financial efficiency. This pressure persists despite evidence that basic institutions necessary for sustainable infrastructure and competitive commercial arrangements are often not present. This paper aims to examine the steering of urban water management in Ghana as it progressed through a first failed public-private partnership in this sector (from 2005 to 2011), and beyond to 2017. Throughout this 12-year period, the authors consider progress and barriers to the achievement of steering for sustainable development.

Publicly available documentation is examined through the lens of steering for sustainable development (Voß et al., 2007) to consider the challenges of urban water management between 2005 and 2017.

Progress towards a more sustainable approach to urban water management was achieved through greater democratic governance, public accountability and public engagement. This acted as a counter foil to power and affected improvements of knowledge and clarity of related goals. Effective sustainable management continued to be challenged, however, by on-going World Bank pressure to focus on financial efficiency.

The provision of a sustainable water supply continues to be a significant challenge for many developing countries, including Ghana. This study provides insights into how progress beyond crippling financial dependency might begin to be achieved.

Safe and sustainable water supply is critical for both the health and economic progress of citizens in developing countries such as Ghana. This study provides insight into the value of drawing from a broad range of stakeholders in seeking viable pathways towards those goals.

While water management challenges for developing countries have been significantly researched, particularly in the context of private financing arrangements, little empirical insight is provided into how governments can move forward with sustainable progress beyond the failure of such arrangements. Water management in Ghana beyond 2011 provides that unique context.

The world's economies are on their knees following the negative impact of the coronavirus pandemic over the past 8 months. Growing number of researches has been conducted on the impact of COVID-19 pandemic on developed countries with little attention on developing countries, who are still grappling with the negative impact of the coronavirus. The rationale for this study is to assess the socio-economic impact of COVID-19 on Ghana's economy and government response to the pandemic as well as policy options to revive the ailing economy.

This study explored the socio-economic impact of the coronavirus on Ghana's economy using a discourse analysis with data from various secondary sources to analyze the impact of the pandemic from the Ghanaian perspective.

The findings from the discourse analysis revealed that the coronavirus pandemic has negatively impacted on the socio-economic situation of the citizens of Ghana. Whiles an estimated 42,000 people lost their jobs in the first two months of the pandemic in Ghana, tourist attraction sector of the country alone lost $171 million dollars in the past three months due to the partial lockdown and closure of tourism and hospitality centers in the country. The study revealed that Ghana's healthcare system has been overwhelmed by the number of increasing cases in the country to extent of making use of temporary structures as isolation and treatment centers of the pandemic. The study revealed that Ghana may convert these challenges posed by the COVID-19 pandemic into prospects and opportunities by investing massively in the health sector and creating support for the SMEs which creates massive employment for many Ghanaians.

This study focuses on the impact of the COVID-19 on Ghana's economy and how the pandemic has negatively affected the country. The study is an exploratory study that makes use of secondary data. However, conducting a study with primary data sources from specific communities or regions in the country may not produce the same results. The results from the primary level or community level may be different from the general results obtained from the study. In future it is expected that the study focuses specifically on the extent of the coronavirus pandemic on Ghana's fiscal deficit which seems to have ballooned in recent times.

The study is the first of its kind to extensively explore the socio-economic impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the Ghanaian economy. The novelty of this paper is that it recognizes governments response to the pandemic and proposes three practical measures adopted to put the country's economy back on its feet through survive, revive and ensuring growth in all sectors of the economy.

Using the recent attempts by the Ghanaian Government to privatize its urban water services, this paper seeks to understand the role and functioning of accounting within the global move to “reinvent government.”

Unlike the attempts made in other African countries such as Kenya and Tanzania, the case of Ghana is interesting because of the vociferousness and length of the debate that has been going on. Using Bourdieu's notion of field and capital and Foucault's idea of governmentality, and relying on a variety of archival documents and interviews with 27 key participants, the study examines the positioning of accounting practices, vocabulary and experts in this debate.

The study shows how accounting is enlisted at an almost sub‐conscious level, how its use can engender significant resistance and how accounting can be used to position the debate in various terms, including “profitability” “affordability” and “accountability.”

The paper shows that within new democracies such as Ghana policy‐making requires the enlistment of technologies of government – including accounting – to articulate and justify divergent policy options.

The findings of the paper have implications for regional policy‐makers and their various development partners.

Researchers and practitioners working in the area of public sector management and reforms should find significant value in the paper.

In the era of the knowledge economy, universities are expected to contribute to the economic development of their countries. Therefore, their research agendas must be relevant to the local context and geared, though not uncritically, to the national educational agenda. To do this diligently requires research autonomy. However, due to the low government investment in research on the African continent, universities have had to rely on other sources of funding, which usually come with strings attached. Our study investigates the case of Ghana, in particular, the University of Ghana, the leading research university in the country. We drew on resource dependence theory, which suggests that, despite external pressures on universities, they can enhance their autonomy through the implementation of strategic measures. Primarily, we analyzed documents such as research reports, journal articles and speeches in the light of Clark’s (1998) model of the “entrepreneurial university,” which, if adapted with care and in a localized form in Ghana, may contribute to the research autonomy of its universities. We found that, although research autonomy in Ghanaian universities is limited due to their over-reliance on external donor funding, it is likely to be strengthened if the government of Ghana follows through on plans to increase research funding and universities continue with measures to diversify their funding sources.