Ghana

A recent dispute over the rightful owner of a plot of land in Ghana has led the country's highest court to ask why people who sell the same land to several buyers in fradulent deals, are not prosecuted. The judges also expressed their shock at the state of Ghana's records from which it is often impossible to tell the rightful owners of plots of land. They said such chaos, combined with uncertainty about whether property deals are valid, would deter also foreign investors.  

When you are summoned by His Majesty, Ghanaian King Otumfuo Osei Tutu II, courtesy demands that you attend as quickly as you can. But how could London banker Mark Frank Arthur, second most senior official of Ghana International Bank, have known that the summons, via the king’s wife, would lead to his dismissal from the bank – and, he now fears, to his becoming unemployable in the financial sector?

A major challenge to Ghana’s planned national cathedral, brought on the basis of a challenge to alleged infringements of the country’s “secular” constitution, has just been dismissed by the supreme court. Ghana’s highest court found that secularism in Ghana “obviously” allowed and encouraged recognition and accommodation of religion and religious identity by the state. But this does not necessarily mean criticism is over – plenty of critics say it will be wasteful and an unjustified expense.