The Ghana Academy of Arts and Sciences (GAAS) inducted seven distinguished Ghanaian personalities into Fellowship on Tuesday, 12th November 2024, as part of its Founder’s Week Celebrations, which runs from 12th to 15th November 2024. These individuals were honoured for their outstanding contributions to the fields of Arts and Sciences.
GAAS News
Prof. Regina Appiah-Oppong, FGA, has warned that uncontrolled deforestation and illegal mining threaten Ghana’s potential to generate billions of dollars from medicinal plants for national development. In her inaugural lecture titled “Medicinal Plants: A Rich Natural Resource of Ghana to Be Harnessed for National Development” on October 31, 2024, she described the medicinal plant sector as a gold mine that could provide significant revenue if the right investment and policy directions are applied.
Ghana is unlikely to meet SDG 6 by 2030, particularly targets 6.1 and 6.3 which focus on universal access to safe and affordable drinking water and improving water quality, respectively. Prof. Samuel Agyei-Mensah, FGA, raised this concern during his inaugural lecture on the topic, “Flavours of Spatial Diversity in Drinking Water Access in Ghana,” held on October 17, 2024, at the Ghana Academy of Arts and Sciences (GAAS) in Accra.
OFORI-SARPONG AKUFFO, FGA, MSME Professor of Minerals/Metallurgical Engineering Grace Ofori-Sarpong Akuffo (Mrs) is a Professor of Minerals Engineering, and currently…
As Ghana approaches its upcoming elections on December 7, 2024, understanding the evolving political landscape and the pressing issues that will shape the nation’s future is more crucial than ever. The insights gathered from the 3- day Ghana Academy of Arts and Science (GAAS) Public Forum, held from June 24 to 26, 2024, are particularly important during this pivotal time. The forum served as a vital platform for dialogue among experts across various sectors of national development.
This year’s event which focused on the theme, “National Elections in Ghana: Issues and Prospects”, featured six distinguished speakers who contributed their insights on various aspects of the electoral landscape. Their presentations addressed key challenges and opportunities that could influence the outcomes of the upcoming elections.
In 2023, the Academy held its 3 flagship programmes as follows:
1. The 56th J. B. Danquah Memorial Lectures took place from 20 – 22 February 2023 on the theme “African Politics and the Mystical Realm: Religion and Governance in Ghana” by Rev. Professor J. Kwabena Asamoah-Gyadu, FGA and President of the Trinity Theological Seminary, Legon.
Food and Public Health are inseparable. We talk about food in terms of safe food, healthy food, junk food, unhealthy food, and ultra-processed food. The healthiness of food (or lack thereof) is influenced by multiple factors including food marketing, food fraud, food policy, food politics, food justice, food democracy, and food environments. Of equal importance are the impacts of unhealthy food on human health and planetary health. Such impacts include hunger, and diet-related non-communicable diseases (NCDs) – obesity, hypertension, stroke, ischemic heart disease, and diabetes.
Food and Public Health are inseparable. We talk about food in terms of safe food, healthy food, junk food, unhealthy food, and ultra-processed food. The healthiness of food (or lack thereof) is influenced by multiple factors including food marketing, food fraud, food policy, food politics, food justice, food democracy, and food environments. Of equal importance are the impacts of unhealthy food on human health and planetary health. Such impacts include hunger, and diet-related non-communicable diseases (NCDs) – obesity, hypertension, stroke, ischemic heart disease, and diabetes.
Nation-building is an effort by a State – a political and legal entity in international law – to attune its citizens to its pursuit of the ideals of nationhood. Nation-building, thus, signifies both a political and moral need. Political because of the aspiration to forge a political unit whose citizens think, act and live in unified pursuit of demarcated ideals – in the case of Ghana – of the ideals of freedom and justice. And moral because the ideals such as freedom and justice are moral, in as much as they seek to ensure the harmonious coexistence of Ghanaians; as well as their survival, interests and welfare. For these reasons, politics furthers the ends of ethics, and so the former ought to be guided by the latter. Thus, the nation-state of Ghana, as a political entity in pursuit of the ideal of nationhood, ought to assume a moral duty to work unceasingly toward achieving the common good of Ghanaians. This lecture enunciates and defends the thesis that philosophers who have been affiliated with the University of Ghana have produced a body of thought and a systematic approach to philosophy that merits the status of a tradition of philosophy; and that this tradition is exemplified by distinctive moral philosophical perspectives that are germane to the task of nation building in Ghana.
The Ghana Academy of Arts and Sciences (GAAS), the nation’s premier learned society, today publicly launched a twenty-four-month Higher Education project on the theme, “Motivating Higher Education Reforms in Ghana – Towards Equity and Sustainability”. The US$116,000 project is sponsored by the Carnegie Corporation of New York.
Prof. Clifford Nii Boi Tagoe, Chair of the Project Steering Committee said in his welcoming remarks that over time, increasing low levels of public investment in, and support to, knowledge-producing institutions such as the Academy, has hampered their abilities effectiveness in commissioning and disseminating research findings to influence policy and shape public education. He said that notwithstanding, the Academy had not rested on its oars and continues to leverage its convening power to assemble learned teams and panels on critical issues in the arts and sciences at regularly organized public lectures, symposia, and forums.