The Rise and Demise of the Boys’ Company

2019 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 33-65
Author(s):  
Humphrey Asamoah Agyekum
Keyword(s):  
African Country ◽  
Military Training ◽  
West African ◽  
Training Institution ◽  
West African Country ◽  
Political Arena ◽  
The West ◽  
Political Actors ◽  
The Military

Abstract Graduates of Ghana's defunct Army Boys’ Company, a specialized military training institution for boys, participated to varying degrees in all five successful coups in the West African country. Most significantly, their prominent role in the coups of 1979 and 1981 catapulted them into the heart of the Ghanaian political arena. They thus became political actors; a position with far reaching consequences for the Boys’ Company. Coups in Ghana have received considerable academic attention. However, the focus of this body of literature tended to be on the coup leaders with rarely any attention for the soldiers who facilitate the power seizures by conducting the fighting. This article addresses this lacunae by assessing how the so-called “ex-Boys” radicalized politically, while bringing to the fore their experience at the Army Boys’ Company and in the military. Additionally, the article scrutinizes the conditions that led to demise of the Boys’ Company.

scholarly journals Strategies and Initiatives in Acculturation: Voices from Ghana

2017 ◽  
Vol 7 (4) ◽  
pp. 1065-1079
Author(s):  
Susan Boafo-Arthur ◽  
Dzifa A. Attah ◽  
Ama Boafo-Arthur ◽  
Thomas D. Akoensi
Keyword(s):  
Student Affairs ◽  
African Country ◽  
Culture Shock ◽  
International Study ◽  
West African ◽  
West African Country ◽  
The West ◽  
Student Affairs Practitioners ◽  
Institutional Strategies ◽  
Respective Host

Culture shock and acculturation are salient aspects of any international study trip. Over the years, many institutions have devised several strategies to help international students transition to life in the host country. However, most of these strategies are insensitive to diverse cultural or country specifics. Drawing from Social Learning Theory, this paper provides narratives from four former students from the West African country of Ghana and how they navigated the process of acculturation in their respective host nations. The narratives discuss their feelings during the study abroad trip, some of the challenges they faced, and personal as well as institutional strategies that aided in ameliorating the experience of culture shock. A few recommendations for Student Affairs Practitioners are also provided.

BLAMING THE GODS: CHRISTIAN RELIGIOUS PROPAGANDA IN THE NIGERIA–BIAFRA WAR

2010 ◽  
Vol 51 (3) ◽  
pp. 367-389 ◽  
Author(s):  
NICHOLAS IBEAWUCHI OMENKA
Keyword(s):  
African Country ◽  
Causal Explanation ◽  
West African ◽  
West African Country ◽  
The West ◽  
Humanitarian Organizations ◽  
War Rhetoric ◽  
Good For ◽  
Relief Efforts ◽  
Religious War

ABSTRACTThe consensus among many analysts of the Nigeria–Biafra War is that the conflict cannot be reduced to a mono-causal explanation. The tragedy that befell the West African country from 1966 to 1970 was a combination of many factors, which were political, ethnic, religious, social, and economic in nature. Yet the conflict was unduly cast as a religious war between Christians and Muslims. Utilizing newly available archival materials from within and outside Nigeria, this article endeavours to unravel the underlying forces in the religious war rhetoric of the mainly Christian breakaway region and its Western sympathizers. Among other things, it demonstrates that, while the religious war proposition was good for the relief efforts of the international humanitarian organizations, it inevitably alienated the Nigerian Christians and made them unsympathetic to the Biafran cause.

scholarly journals ‘Never say never’: the first successful management of a type A aortic dissection in Liberia

2019 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. e227511
Author(s):  
Callum Patrick Swift ◽  
Emmanuel Ekyinabah ◽  
Sally Graglia ◽  
Mukhtar Abdulmajeed Adeiza
Keyword(s):  
Aortic Dissection ◽  
African Country ◽  
Surgical Intervention ◽  
West African ◽  
Lessons Learned ◽  
West African Country ◽  
Successful Management ◽  
The West ◽  
Type A Aortic Dissection ◽  
Resource Limited

The West African country of Liberia ranks as one of the lowest in the world in most measures of health. The diagnosis and management of complex surgical cases such as aortic dissection is extremely challenging, for reasons ranging from lack of diagnostic imaging capabilities to the high resources required for definitive surgical intervention. We present the first known successfully managed case of aortic dissection in the country’s history and with it highlight the challenges faced and a number of lessons learned that are beneficial to anyone working in resource-limited environments.

scholarly journals Molecular Evidence that a Distinct Vibrio cholerae O1 Biotype El Tor Strain in Calcutta May Have Spread to the African Continent

1998 ◽  
Vol 36 (3) ◽  
pp. 843-844 ◽  
Author(s):  
Charu Sharma ◽  
Amit Ghosh ◽  
A. Dalsgaard ◽  
Anita Forslund ◽  
R. K. Ghosh ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Vibrio Cholerae ◽  
African Country ◽  
Pulsed Field Gel Electrophoresis ◽  
West African ◽  
Molecular Evidence ◽  
African Continent ◽  
West African Country ◽  
The West ◽  
Vibrio Cholerae O1 ◽  
El Tor

We present molecular evidence that a distinct genotype ofVibrio cholerae O1 which appeared in Calcutta, India, in September 1993 and which is characterized by a unique ribotype that is not found in the standardized ribotyping scheme of V. cholerae and that shows a specific pulsed-field gel electrophoresis profile may have spread to the west African country of Guinea-Bissau where it was responsible for an epidemic of cholera which began in October 1994 and continued into 1996.

scholarly journals Mobile Misfortune

2015 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 233-253 ◽  
Author(s):  
Henrik Vigh
Keyword(s):  
African Country ◽  
Young Men ◽  
Global South ◽  
West African ◽  
West African Country ◽  
The West ◽  
Guinea Bissau ◽  
End Point

This article examines how the emergent cocaine trade in Bissau, the capital of the west African country of Guinea-Bissau, has become entangled with and trickled into the life worlds, hopes and fears of the city’s many impoverished young men. The article is divided into two parts. While the first part looks at the predicament of youth and the hope of migration in Bissau, the second illuminates the anguish of deportation and the despair of being forcefully ‘displaced back home.’ Following in the footsteps of the young men that seek to navigate the cocaine trade, in order to obtain better lives for themselves and their families, it shows how involvement in the cocaine trade is both a curse and a catalyst. Though trading the drug may facilitate migration and mobility, generating social being and worth in the process, it is an activity that is haunted by the threat of deportation and the termination of the mobility it enables. This article, thus, looks at the motives and manners in which young men in Bissau become caught up in transnational flows of cocaine. It shows how motion is emotively anchored and affectively bound: tied to and directed toward a feeling of worth and realisation of being, and how migration from the global South often has negative potentiality as an end-point via the ascription of illegality and condition of deportability that shade it.

Legitimising State Capitalism: Malian Militarism in Third-World Perspective

1980 ◽  
Vol 18 (2) ◽  
pp. 281-295 ◽  
Author(s):  
Miles D. Wolpin
Keyword(s):  
Third World ◽  
African State ◽  
West African ◽  
The West ◽  
State Capitalism ◽  
West African State ◽  
Unusual Occurrence ◽  
The Third World ◽  
The Military ◽  
World Perspective

Although the analysis which follows centres upon the West African state of Mali, much of what is said applies in varying measure to other examples of military state capitalism in Africa and elsewhere. Its importance is underscored by the fact that this is an increasingly common régime variant in the Third World. Similarly, domestic militarism has been transformed from an unusual occurrence to a phenomenon which evokes little more than a déjà vu response. Today nearly half of the governments of the ‘South’ are directly or indirectly dominated by the military, whereas three decades ago little more than 15 per cent could be so classified.

English in Sierra Leone

English Today ◽  
1997 ◽  
Vol 13 (3) ◽  
pp. 52-56 ◽  
Author(s):  
Miriam Conteh-Morgan
Keyword(s):  
Sierra Leone ◽  
African Country ◽  
West African ◽  
West African Country

A description of the language as used in this West African country and a consideration of its status there

Election dispute belies Togo's deeper stability risks

2015 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
Child Mortality ◽  
Mortality Rates ◽  
West African ◽  
The Political ◽  
The West ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Franc Zone ◽  
The Military ◽  
Democratic Norms

Subject The political outlook in Togo. Significance On April 28, the Independent National Electoral Commission (CENI) announced that President Faure Gnassingbe had won re-election in the presidential ballot held on April 25, with 58.75% of the vote. His controversial third term will extend his family's rule to nearly 50 years. Opposition candidate Jean-Pierre Fabre secured 34.95% of the vote. His Combat for Political Change (CAP) alliance rejects the result. Impacts Western donors' effectiveness at pushing for democratic norms will wane as Togo, like other African states, accesses new debt sources. Togo's membership of the West African CFA franc zone, which is backed by the French treasury, will ensure currency stability. A Burkina Faso-style ouster of Gnassingbe is unlikely, for now -- he enjoys the support of the military who first installed him. Despite being spared the Ebola crisis, standards of public health will remain poor, with child mortality rates far above global averages.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document