News stories by Jamila Akweley Okertchiri

Accra, May 10 (IPS) - “It feels like yesterday when I was deceived by one man who claimed to be a travelling agent. He promised me a work opportunity and a good salary,” says 25-year-old Cissy, as she prefers to be called. “As a young lady coming from an average family who really needed help, I fell for his lies.”

Bangui, Central African Republic, Mar 17 (IPS) - Nine-year-old Marguerite Doumkel sits among other children in a classroom in Paoua, a sub-prefecture of Ouham Pende, in the Central African Republic (CAR).

ACCRA, May 27 (IPS) - Seventeen-year-old Muniratu Adams, a form two student of the Jeyiri D/A Junior High School at Funsi in the Wa East District of the Upper West Region of Ghana, is fortunate to have returned to school this January after the long COVID-19 shutdown.

ACCRA, Jan 22 (IPS) - Education Cannot Wait (ECW) - the first global fund dedicated to education in emergencies and protracted crises – was on the ground in Burkina Faso last week with its Director, Yasmine Sherif, to launch a new multi-year programme that aims to provide an education to over 800,000 children and adolescents in crisis-affected areas.

ACCRA, Dec 05 (IPS) - IPS correspondent Jamila Akweley Okertchiri interviews DR. HANS FRIEDERICH, Director General of the International Network for Bamboo and Rattan (INBAR)

The bamboo industry in China currently comprises up to 10 million people who make a living out of production of the grass. But while the Asian nation has significant resources of bamboo — three million hectares of plantation and three million hectares of natural forests — the continent of Africa is recorded to have an estimated three and a half million hectares of plantations, excluding conservation areas.

KUMASI, Ghana, Nov 12 (IPS) - Yaw Owiredu Mintah from Ghana has been working as an all-round processor of bamboo and rattan trees since the 1980s. And while he says that he can do most things with bamboo like weaving, framing and finishing, he admits, "I need to improve my skills and designs because all of us are, most of the time, doing the same things."

ACCRA and DONKORKROM, Ghana, Aug 17 (IPS) - Paul Ayormah and his fellow farmers make their way home after hours spent manually weeding a friend's one-acre maize farm in Ghana's Eastern Region.

"Tomorrow it will be the turn of my maize farm," he tells IPS.

ACCRA, Jul 12 (IPS) - Beatrice Boateng, a member of parliament with the New Patriotic Party, Ghana’s official opposition to the ruling New Democratic Congress, has earned her place among the country’s lawmakers.

Beatrice Boateng, a member of parliament with the New Patriotic Party, Ghana’s official opposition to the ruling New Democratic Congress, has earned her place among the country’s lawmakers.

At first glance Nortey Quaynor looks like any ordinary 29-year-old Ghanaian. If you spend a little time with him, though, you soon realise that something is different.