October 2019

By Isaac Ato Mensah Accra – 31 October, 2019 Yesterday my Copywriting class having enjoyed See Ghana Magazine – Parody #1, asked why I had not written part 2. “You want me to say that the magazine has not been successful as I predicted?” I asked. “The lesson for copywriters and radio presenters is that when a client asks you to promote a product you must ask CRITICAL questions. Catherine Afeku, the former minister for tourism, creative arts and culture herself was going about in Western style wigs as she was promoting ‘Ghanaian culture’ and the See Ghana Magazine.” She also engaged Abeiku Aggrey SantanaRead More →

By Isaac Ato Mensah Accra – 25 October, 2019 “There is no business plan that says the business will not work,” says my mentor. Pasico Ghana have done their best, and failed, and the government of Ghana through the Ghana Revenue Authority has shut down their operations this week for non-payment of an estimated 4.8 million cedis (close to a million dollars) tax revenue owed over a period of time. This is the government of “The private sector is the engine of growth” mantra. Some years ago, I wrote an article commending Nana Akufo-Addo’s visit to Germany as an opposition leader. He was welcomed byRead More →

By Isaac Ato MensahAccra – 23 October, 2019 In the age of the convergent media, branding an online radio station means that practically all of your public relations skills must be brought to bear on your team. But as my mentor has stated, “public relations and the other mass communications programmes for which bachelor’s degrees are awarded are not enough to make you a professional.” Currently, this is especially difficult for Ghanaians to understand. When you switch on and hand over a microphone to untrained and uneducated persons you will always have a real problem on your hands. Radio station managers therefore have a greaterRead More →

By Isaac Ato MensahAccra – 21 October, 2019 “Mr Kevin Taylor”, writersghana.com says, “May God bless you abundantly.” “Bold to defend forever the cause of freedom and of right,” these are some of the words of the Ghana National Anthem. Kevin Taylor has been a lone crusader against the fraudulent Power Distribution Service (PDS) deal for several weeks now. How many of us know that to be a crusader is to adopt the cross – a symbol of truth? That is what it means, period. Before Saturday’s midnight announcement of the cancellation of the PDS contract, the powers that be had created rival social mediaRead More →

By Isaac Ato Mensah Accra – 18 October, 2019 BlueCrest College in Kokomlemle Accra is organising a matriculation ceremony today for 260 students. It is no secret that private universities in Ghana are struggling to enroll new students. Many of these institutions are relatively new; all of them established within the last 20 years. “Ensuring that Africa’s youthful population is healthy, educated and well-equipped for the future is the best way to eradicate poverty in Africa and contribute to the world’s stability and prosperity,” wrote Hafez Ghanem, World Bank vice president for Africa on 18 October 2018 on worldbank.org. Guided by such a philosophy, AureosRead More →

By Isaac Ato MensahAccra – 16 October, 2019 President Akufo-Addo has told the first batch of the free Senior High School (SHS) corps to “pass well and shame” the detractors and critics of the policy. The media have widely reported him as saying so during visits to St Monica’s Senior High School in Kumasi and also at Nkawkaw Senior High School, Nkawkaw, during his recent tour. The president mentioned civil society groups and individuals as those to be shamed and this presents several problems. Respectfully, where is the shame Mr President? Does anyone expect our children to fail so that they go and pay forRead More →

By Isaac Ato MensahAccra – 12 October, 2019 Joshua Attoh Quarshie, (a well known “former Gold Coast politician”); has been reported by Ghanaweb to have resurrected the tired issue of tribe, ethnicity and hometown as the acceptable parameters for citizenship. To paraphrase him, Kwame Nkrumah is Liberian. Let us leave it at that.“It is all so sad,” my mentor will say, “when Kwame Anthony Appiah, the renowned Ghanaian philosopher, has addressed such matters comprehensively. But do we read anything important?” Before colonialism we were Africans, not Ghanaians. Even the Gold Coast boundaries have evolved, and tribe as an administrative construct was not an issue beforeRead More →

By Isaac Ato MensahAccra – 11 October, 2019 The BBC “Sex for Grades” documentary has achieved its aim. “This is nothing more than a ‘sting’ operation,” clarifies my mentor. “Or if you like, a quality assurance/control audit of the compliance of lecturers – who are public servants, to accepted standards. In the US, every now and then a male urine/blood sample was taken to the lab for a pregnancy test. If it came back positive, the lab was closed down.” This addresses the concerns of Prof Kwame Karikari, founder of Media Foundation for West Africa: “In investigative journalism, the journalist is known by the subjectRead More →

By Isaac Ato MensahAccra – 9 October, 2019 Reverend EJ Klufio produced “9 works in 12 publications in 1 language in 27 library holdings,” according to worldcat.org. The Ghana Academy of Arts and Sciences (GAAS) requires 10 publications (textbooks) and an MPhil/PhD before one could be “invited” to become a Fellow. Klufio easily qualifies; his publications cover Ga Bible translation, novels and history (Odoi Diŋ; Legon Mantsɛ). As a former headmaster of Presbyterian Boys’ Secondary School (Odumase Krobo and now Legon), he is a peer of F.K. Buah, (known for a popular History textbook among the older Ghanaian generation), Rev. E.A.W Engman and Dr JamesRead More →

By Isaac Ato Mensah/Augustine Williams-Mensah Accra – 7 October, 2019 Patience Asante, an educationist – yes, a teacher, taught us the rubrics of radio and TV production on 29 September, when we visited to wish her happy birthday. She was among the first ten persons Kwame Nkrumah sent to Manitoba and Winnipeg in Canada to study TV Production. How did the switch happen? Asante “was a teacher at Odumase” [Krobo] when she was “roped into school broadcasting.” When Ghana television was started in 1965, Nkrumah selected 10 individuals to travel to Canada and study TV Production. “You have a radiogenic voice, grandma,” we said, whenRead More →