Albert Abane

University of Cape Coast | UCC · Department of Geography & Regional Planning

Access to public transport increases vulnerable people's social mobility, facilitates economic integration and improves general well-being. This is possible given the low vehicular acquisition and low cost required to enjoy public transport services. Unfortunately, the discourse on the responsiveness of public transport services to the disability c...

Commuter trains are a popular mode of transportation among low-income earners in Ghana. However, due to the economic turmoil of the 1970s, the government struggled to invest in and manage this travel option effectively. With the increasing trend towards mass commuter services worldwide, this study aimed to examine how commuters perceive the quality...

Transit Oriented Development (TOD) encourages densification around transport nodes with a combination of work, educational facilities, commercial activities and other essential services. Implementing TOD in Ghana would, however, be faced with several challenges. The systematic review approach, which is based on published scholarly works was adopted...

Transit Oriented Development (TOD) encourages densification around transport nodes with a combination of work, educational facilities, commercial activities and other essential services. Implementing TOD in Ghana would, however, be faced with several challenges. The systematic review approach, which is based on published scholarly works was adopted...

Although Ghana's Persons with Disability Act 715 calls for the provision of an accessible environment, attention paid to the mobility needs of persons with disability has focused on their access to public facilities like libraries and schools without paying attention to the transport environment connecting the homes of commuters to these public fac...

In sub-Saharan Africa, the past two decades have witnessed a phenomenal increase in the use of mobile phones which has attracted diverse research. This paper explores mobile phone use and livelihood activities in some urban and rural areas of Ghana. Qualitative data were extracted from a larger study that covered 24 sites ranging from urban to remo...

The report concludes that Ghana’s urban sprawl is not matched by a corresponding improvement in its transport system and therefore. With an over-reliance on road transport system and a limited mass public transport infrastructure to support the mobility of its citizenry, access and transport needs of its vulnerable population is restricted to a lar...

Data from qualitative and survey research with young people in 24 locations (urban and rural) across Ghana, Malawi, and South Africa expose the complex interplay between phone ownership and usage, female empowerment, and chronic poverty in Africa. We consider gendered patterns of phone ownership and use before examining practices of use in educatio...

In sub-Saharan Africa, the past two decades have witnessed a phenomenal increase in the use of mobile phones which has attracted diverse research. This paper explores mobile phone use and livelihood activities in some urban and rural areas of Ghana. Qualitative data were extracted from a larger study that covered 24 sites ranging from urban to remo...

There is a long history of migration among low-income families in sub-Saharan Africa, in which (usually young, often male) members leave home to seek their fortune in what are perceived to be more favourable locations. While the physical and virtual mobility practices of such stretched families are often complex and contingent, maintaining contact...

Issues surrounding youth employment and unemployment are central to the next development decade. Understanding how youth use mobile phones as a means of communicating and exchanging information about employment and livelihoods is particularly important given the prominence of mobile phone use in young lives. This paper explores and reflects on yout...

For many young people across sub-Saharan Africa, work—whether paid or unpaid—is a fundamental element of everyday life. This chapter encompasses not only work activities that require mobility to reach or conduct work but also work activities that are specifically generated by Africa’s transport failures (the need to carry water in the absence of wa...

This chapter introduces the field studies on which the book is based and traces the development of the mixed-method, child-centred approach to mobilities research, embedded in participant observation and culminating in the Child Mobility (CM) study in 24 sites. The incorporation of peer-investigation by young people themselves, working with academi...

This chapter is concerned with the intersections between children’s mobility and educational uptake and achievement. It introduces some important pupil experiences that have received little consideration in conventional academic debates about educational access issues and failures across Africa (which tend to focus on what happens in the classroom)...

This chapter focuses on young people’s access and travel to health services (for personal consultation and treatment) in rural and urban locations, situating the discussion, where feasible, with reference to the wider therapeutic landscapes (material, symbolic and virtual) within which these health-care practices and experiences are played out. Unl...

This chapter follows on directly from Chap. 7, as the transport theme moves from walking and cycling to motor-mobility, but it brings to the fore a very different set of mobility experiences. Young people discuss their views and experiences of travelling in the shared space of the motor vehicle: motor-mobility not only enables an extended spatial r...

The focus of this chapter (and the next) is the felt, everyday experiences young people have of specific travel modes and their journeys using them, drawing on Cresswell’s (2010) disaggregation of mobility into constituent parts, each with a politics which can be used to differentiate people and things into hierarchies of mobility. Following a brie...

This chapter explores the everyday mobility of pre-pubescent children and older teenagers outside of school and work arenas. Life beyond formal education and work is crucial not only to young people’s health, well-being and happiness of and in the moment, but will contribute to shaping their identity in the long term, not least through the construc...

The concluding chapter reflects on the findings presented throughout the book. Mobilities as social constructs are experienced and imagined very differently, not least according to age, gender and family context. Most significant of all is the issue of gender equality, which permeates the material reality of so many mobilities stories. Attention is...

This introductory chapter describes the research gap that existed regarding young people’s everyday mobilities and immobilities in sub-Saharan Africa prior to the field studies on which this book is based. It introduces key issues and concepts that are central to ensuing discussions on this theme, setting the work within the context of the ‘new mob...

There are increasing calls for regular monitoring and evaluation of safety and security strategies of public transport (PT) operators, especially in developing countries where PT safety and security concerns abound. In respect of this, this study examined the passenger safety and security interventions of PT operators in Ghana. Both the accident-in...

This book explores the daily mobilities and immobilities of children and young people in sub-Saharan Africa. The authors draw on findings from rural and urban field research extending over many years, culminating in a 24-site study across three African countries: Ghana, Malawi, and South Africa. Wider reflections on gender, relationality, the polit...

The paper assesses perceived quality of intercity bus transport service provided by quasi-government owned (Intercity State Transport Corporation and Metro Mass Transit Ltd) and private transport operators (Ghana Private Road Transport Union, VVIP, VIP, FORD and DIPLOMAT). Qualitative data from in-depth interviews and observations were used to butt...

Africa’s recent communications ‘revolution’ has generated optimism that using mobile phones for health (mhealth) can help bridge healthcare gaps, particularly for rural, hard-to-reach populations. However, while scale-up of mhealth pilots remains limited, health-workers across the continent possess mobile phones. This article draws on interviews fr...

Cell phones present new forms of sociality and new possibilities of encounter for young people across the globe. Nowhere is this more evident than in sub-Saharan Africa where the scale of usage, even among the very poor, is remarkable. In this paper we reflect on the inter-generational encounters which are embedded in young people’s cell phone inte...

The African communications 'revolution' has generated optimism that mobile phones might help overcome infrastructural barriers to healthcare provision in resource-poor contexts. However, while formal m-health programmes remain limited in coverage and scope, young people are using mobile phones creatively and strategically in an attempt to secure ef...

Young people's use of mobile phones is expanding exponentially across Africa. Its transformative potential is exciting, but findings presented in this paper indicate how the downside of mobile phone use in African schools is becoming increasingly apparent. Drawing on mixed-methods field research in 24 sites across Ghana, Malawi and South Africa and...

The purpose of the study is to qualitatively ascertain the factors influencing intercity bus transport travel time on the Accra-Takoradi route in Ghana. The cross sectional study involved the use of in-depth interviews conducted on fourteen drivers and forty two passengers of GPRTU, VIP, VVIP, ISTC, MMT, DIPLOMAT and FORD on the route. This was sup...

The study sought to find out factors influencing modal choice on Accra-Takoradi route. This was achieved with the use of methodological triangulation approach not only involving qualitative and quantitative methodology but other sources of data collection such as questionnaire administration, in-depth interviews, and observations. The analysis bega...

The Intercity State Transport Company is one of the two state funded transport companies in Ghana competing with a range of other service providers mainly from the private sector in the industry. Once well respected and described as the pride of intercity travels in Ghana, it is currently a mere shadow of its former glory with rapid decline in pass...

Summary A growing body of research suggests that orphanhood and fostering might be (independently) associated with educational disadvantage in sub-Saharan Africa. However, literature on the impacts of orphanhood and fostering on school enrolment, attendance and progress produces equivocal, and often conflicting, results. This paper reports on quant...

The term social exclusion has been employed to explain a culmination of negative processes of social relations shaped by gender, spatial, economic, political, socio-economic, environmental and cultural circumstances and ideologies. Despite the economic gains Ghana has made since the fourth Republic, spatial and social segments of the Ghanaian socie...

Across sub-Saharan Africa, women and children play major roles as pedestrian load-transporters, in the widespread absence of basic sanitation services, electricity and affordable/reliable motorised transport. The majority of loads, including water and firewood for domestic purposes, are carried on the head. Load-carrying has implications not only f...

Abstract Radical reforms and liberalisation in Ghana’s mining sector have stimulated increased investment with new multi-national mining companies coming on board as well as the rehabilitation of old mines. The cumulative effects are the intensification of mining activities and the expansion in operations across the mining zones in the country. Wit...

Children are increasingly engaged in the research process as generators of knowledge, but little is known about the impacts on children's lives, especially in the longer term. As part of a study on children's mobility in Ghana, Malawi and South Africa, 70 child researchers received training to conduct peer research in their own communities. Evaluat...

The penetration of mobile phones into sub-Saharan Africa has occurred with amazing rapidity: for many young people, they now represent a very significant element of their daily life. This paper explores usage and perceived impacts among young people aged c. 9–18 years in three countries: Ghana, Malawi and South Africa. Our evidence comes from inten...

This was an exploratory study on how dressmakers and hairdressers in the Assin South District of Ghana receive education on sexual and reproductive health. The respondents comprised mainly of full time female dressmakers and hairdressers as well as their apprentices (aged between 15 and 35 years, had attained basic education and were never married)...

This paper examines the gendered implications of Africa's transport gap (the lack of cheap, regular and reliable transport) for young people in rural Ghana, with particular reference to the linkages between restricted mobility, household work demands, access to education and livelihood potential. Our aim is to show how mobility constraints, especia...

This paper draws on rich ethnographic data and complementary survey research from a three-country study (Ghana, Malawi, South Africa) of young people's mobility to explore the gendered nature of children's journeys to school in sub-Saharan Africa. In most African countries, girls' participation in formal education is substantially lower than boys',...

The paper examines the travel behaviour of residents in four key metropolitan areas in Ghana with data from 926 respondents including 451 females obtained at intra-commuter vehicle terminals. The analysis of the data showed that the Ghana Private Road Transport Union (GPRTU) continues to dominate in the intra-urban commuter service. Also, in spite...

This paper explores young people’s experiences and perceptions of mobility and mobility constraints in poorer urban areas of Ghana, Malawi and South Africa within the specific context of inter-generational relations. Drawing principally on qualitative research findings from a study involving both adult and child researchers, our aim is to chart the...

This paper reflects on issues raised by work with children in an ongoing child mobility study in three sub-Saharan African countries: Ghana, Malawi and South Africa. There are now 70 school pupils of varying ages involved in the project, but the paper is particularly concerned with the participation of those children 14 years and under. We examine...

This paper draws on mobility research conducted with children in three countries: Ghana, Malawi and South Africa. It has two interlinked aims: to highlight the potential that mobile interviews can offer in research with young people, especially in research contexts where the main focus is on mobility and its impacts, and to contribute empirical evi...

Outreach of microfinance institutions has been saddled with the definition of who is poor specifically within the context of an individual's capability to access financial and non-financial services. This paper presents empirical results of the structure of the microfinance market in Ghana as per institutions and defines the market target of each o...

This paper examines the potential for applying child-centred research methodologies which involve children doing their own research (with adult facilitators) within a transport and mobility context in West Africa. Relatively little attention has been paid to the transport needs of the poor and powerless within African transport policy and planning:...

The paper examines road-related-accidents in the Accra metropolis of Ghana. The Disability Adjusted Life Years (DALY) approach was employed to estimate the social cost of accidents to the city. The estimated cost was noted to be high and also vary with age and sex.

Following the detection of the first HIV/AIDS in Ghana, a number of programs were undertaken to create awareness of the disease and to generate behavioural change among the population. However, the expected behavioural changes have not occurred, especially among the most vulnerable groups such as those aged 20-29 years. A study was conducted among...

Mode choice for the journey to and from work among a cross-section of workers in the formal sector of Accra (Ghana) is analysed using the multinomial logit (MNL) model. The evidence suggests that travel-to-work behaviour of employees in the sector is influenced mainly by perceived service quality of the commercial commuter vehicles as well as emplo...

A fast emerging component of the urban transportation problem in cities of the Third World is the problem of traffic congestion. Rapid increases in car ownership coupled with poor land use planning, inadequate road space, lack of regulated parking systems, uneducated use of the road by pedestrians, and bad driving behavior of motorists have all com...

This paper focuses on the linkages between education, mobility and livelihood potential for young people in rural areas of three sub-Saharan countries: Ghana, Malawi and South Africa. Young peopleslives in rural locations are commonly shaped by both economic and political exclusions: poverty and lack of voice. Their labour contributions are usually...