Ebenezer Forkuo Amankwaa- PhD
- Senior Lecturer at University of Ghana
Ebenezer Forkuo Amankwaa
- PhD
- Senior Lecturer at University of Ghana
About
58
Publications
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Introduction
My research focuses on urban sustainability and cuts across the fields of social, economic and development geography. I am particularly interested in promoting inclusive development and environmental sustainability including an analysis of pro-poor urban governance, climate change adaptation and the application of transdisciplinary research methodology.
Current institution
Publications
Publications (58)
This paper explores the health impacts and coping strategies for dealing with extreme indoor temperatures among vulnerable urban communities in Sekondi-Takoradi, Ghana. It examines the groups most affected, key vulnerability factors, and the health impacts of extreme temperatures, along with residents’ adaptation strategies. Data were gathered thro...
Climatic and atmospheric conditions impact mental health, including increased incidents of depression associated with air pollution. A growing body of research considers time-bound ‘snap-shots’ of climatic drivers and mental health outcomes. Less is known about the likely effects of future climate change on mental health. Research is often inhibite...
Contaminated vegetables grown and consumed in cities of the global South have adverse public health consequences. Through interviews with farmers, traders, consumers and institutional representatives, this article explores why stakeholders in the irrigated vegetable value chain in Accra continue unsafe practices. The multi-stakeholder data are anal...
The interplay between how people use mobile health (mHealth) technologies and its quality information for managing their health vulnerabilities in line with their protected characteristics remains unclear and underexplored. This paper examines the intersections between mHealth users’ experiences, informa-tion quality issues, and everyday health vul...
This paper examines how extreme weather events affect the mobility of low-income urban residents in Ghana. Bringing together scholarship on extreme weather and mobilities, it explores the differential impact of flooding on their everyday lives as they navigate the cities of Accra and Tamale. A range of qualitative methods were drawn on, including s...
Path-breaking transformative change is needed in human-environment relations to move towards more sustainable development trajectories at local, national and global scales. Crises may trigger transformative change and learning in the short and in the long term. However, in particular, a short-term response to crises may also be reactive, strengthen...
Electric mobility is gradually becoming popular in developing countries, with the potential to unlock investment opportunities and innovation for clean, safe and sustainable urban transport. However, empirical evidence on possible barriers which could frustrate the widespread adoption of electric vehicles (EVs) is lacking. This paper aims to fill t...
Occupant exposure to airborne pathogens in buildings can be reduced by a variety of means, including adequate provision of outdoor air by ventilation. This is particularly important in buildings, such as hospitals, which may house a higher number of infected individuals relative to the wider population. In tropical Africa, however, there is evidenc...
This National Electric Mobility Roadmap seeks to provide the implementation roadmap for guiding the deployment and scale-up of electric mobility in Ghana.
The policy framework intends to guide the deployment and scale-up of electric vehicles in Ghana. It also serves as one of the response measures to reduce the transportation sector's carbon footprint. The policy framework proposes a coordinated approach to deploying electric vehicles, charging infrastructure, research and development, and service de...
The novel coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is one of the biggest public health crises globally. Although Africa did not display the worst-case scenario compared to other continents, fears were still at its peak since Africa was already suffering from a heavy load of other life-threatening infectious diseases such as HIV/AIDS and malaria. Other f...
This market survey report provides insight into waste management and circular
economy in Ghana with the overarching aim of identifying business opportunities and potential penetration into the market to maximize profit.
This article contributes to shaping the discourse on unequal geographies of infrastructure and governance in the global South, opening up new ways of thinking through politics, practices and modalities of power. Conceptually, informality, governance and everyday urbanism are drawn on to unpack how the formal encounters the informal in ways that (re...
The evolving nature of the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) has necessitated periodic revisions of
COVID-19 patient treatment and discharge guidelines. Since the identification of the first COVID-19 cases in November 2019, the World Health Organization (WHO) has played a crucial role in tackling the country-level pandemi...
Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), a severe acute respiratory syndrome caused by SARS-CoV-2 has been declared a global pandemic by the World Health Organization (WHO) in March 2020. As of 21st April 2021, the disease had affected more than 143 million people with more than 3million deaths worldwide. Urgent effective strategies are required to con...
Climate change presents significant threats to human health, especially for low-income urban communities in the Global South. Despite numerous studies of heat stress, surprisingly little is known about the temperatures actually encountered by people in their homes, or the benefits of affordable adaptations. This paper examines indoor air temperatur...
Extreme weather events disproportionately affect residents of low-income urban settlements in the global South. This paper explores the impacts of extreme heat and flooding on water and electricity services in Accra and Tamale, Ghana. Interviews with water/electricity providers and water quality analysis are combined with household interviews, focu...
This paper responds to concerns that research in geography and allied disciplines on gendered experiences in Africa have struggled to comprehend the nuances that make up young men’s lifeworlds. Influenced by theoretical orientations in urban studies, which demonstrate how music offers a way to explore social dynamics in Africa, we examine the thoug...
Many cities in the Global South are facing challenges as they increasingly experience extreme weather events, which disproportionately affect the urban poor. Focussing on severe heat and surface water flooding, this paper explores how these extreme weather events impact on infrastructure provision and livelihoods in low-income urban communities in...
Geographers have shown how mobile phones are transforming urban economies in Africa by altering the temporal and spatial nature of commercial transactions. Less well‐documented is how young people in Africa are using mobile phones to navigate the interplay between personal hopes, social expectations and financial uncertainty associated with urban l...
Extreme weather events pose significant threats to urban health in low- and middleincome countries, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa where there are systemic health challenges. This paper investigates health system vulnerabilities associated with flooding and extreme heat, along with strategies for resilience building by service providers and com...
Amidst growing concerns about the negative environmental and health implications of single-use plastic waste in Ghana, the government of Ghana is considering a ban on the production and use of single-use plastics. However, given the important socioeconomic consequences of such as ban, this study seeks to provide primary evidence on the environmenta...
Smartphones present new forms of spatiality and sociality for cities worldwide. The sudden outburst in smart-phone technologies has revolutionised human relations creating new possibilities of encounter and connectivity. This paper examines people's smartphone usage patterns and highlights how this is increasing human vulner-abilities in cities wit...
E-waste recycling remains a major source of livelihood for many urban poor in developing countries, but this economic activity is fraught with significant environmental health risk. Yet, human exposure to the toxic elements associated with e-waste activities remains understudied and not evidently understood. This study investigates the impact of in...
Existing research on urban Ghana mainly focuses on processes occurring within the country’s major cities, thereby reproducing a trend within the social sciences to overlook the role of intermediate and secondary cities. This paper aims to address this shortcoming by exploring spatial and social transformations in Sekondi–Takoradi, one of Ghana’s se...
In most developing countries, the provision of municipal services and infrastructure invariably fails to match the pace and demands of urbanization. The outcome is often increased informality due to improper planning, official bureaucratic barriers and perhaps insufficient and shrinking public resources, which then makes leveraging private capital...
This article explores the experiences of sachet water vendors along traffic lights in Accra, Ghana. It particularly focuses on the entry dynamics, job orientation, and the possible existence and consequences of job discomfort. The findings reveal that vendors fall into three main work categories: ‘seekers’ (who actively chose the ‘female’ occupatio...
During the past decade, there has been an increased focus on mobility in the social sciences linked to the so-called ‘mobility turn’, which claims that as mobility is so pervasive it should not be viewed as a rupture in society but as a normal way of life. This is certainly the case in urban contexts of sub-Saharan Africa where mobility forms an in...
The aim of this paper is to examine water access in Abuja, an informal settlement in Accra, by assessing the coping strategies and their determinant factors used by the urban poor in their daily struggles for water. Data collection was done using mixed methods. The study shows that water is served by a few private vendors, and chiefly among the cop...
Ghana’s e-waste sector has expanded significantly in recent years, due to high volumes of imported secondhand electronics and a wide range of employment opportunities within the sector.
Whilst e-waste recycling provides livelihood opportunities for thousands of informal workers, it can
incur considerable health risks for workers.
This IGC Ghana stu...
During the past decade, there has been an increased focus on mobility in the social sciences linked to the so-called ‘mobility turn’, which claims that as mobility is so pervasive it should not be viewed as a rupture in society but as a normal way of life. This is certainly the case in urban contexts of sub-Saharan Africa where mobility forms an in...
The optimal management of water resources requires that the collected hydrogeological, meteorological, and spatial data be simulated and analyzed with appropriate models. In this study, a catchment-scale distributed hydrological modeling approach is applied to simulate water stress for the years 2000 and 2050 in a data scarce Pra Basin, Ghana. The...
The marketing and promotion of tourist sites through modern technologies such as geographic information system (GIS) and dynamic web technologies are slow in developing countries. This paper explores the potential of GIS in marketing tourism and examines how this can influence tourists' destination choice. The study mapped 41 tourist destination sp...
The lack of appropriate infrastructure and legislation regarding the proper way of handling ewastes has encouraged informal recycling as in the case of the Agbogbloshie e-waste site. The burning and dumping of these wastes at the bank of the Odaw River eventually end up in the river. To ascertain the level of trace metal contamination in the Odaw R...
The informal sector in developing countries plays a particularly important role in the overall economic development, yet due to epistemological neglect, its conceptualization focuses on the prism of poverty and social exclusion, hence overshadowing its embedded innovativeness, adaptability and contributions to job creation, poverty alleviation and...
The urban landscape of Ghana, like most developing countries, is characterised by a mix of areas without water supply, and those with erratic and unreliable supply. These inadequacies are felt disproportionally in low-income communities, where their needs are often hidden in the aggregate statistics of the wider urban context. Using transect walks,...
E-waste is currently the fastest-growing waste stream, posing major global management challenges. One of the unintended outcomes of this growth in the developing world is the increasing presence of informal e-waste recyclers, providing livelihood opportunities, albeit under elevated health-threatening risks and limited protection. Based on a detail...
This paper assesses qualitatively, the presence of PBDEs in ashes, soils and vegetables found at the Agbogbloshie e-waste recycling site in Accra, Ghana. The motivation for the study was not only because the area serves as a major food center of the city where vegetables are cultivated extensively but additionally, a place where informal e-waste re...
This study evaluates the relationship among livelihood, environment, and health, focusing particularly on how
livelihood patterns and environmental health burdens are experiencing transformations in response to rapid
urbanization and current dynamics within urban economies. Corroborated by a mixed method at the
Agbogbloshie scrap yard in Accra, the...
Ghana's pursuit of socio-economic growth has necessitated joining the information communication technology (ICT) revolution, thus increasing the consumption and obsolescence rate of electrical and electronic equipment (EEE) and the creation of what is popularly called e-waste. The absence of legislation governing its importation and disposal, combi...
E-waste micro-entrepreneurship occurs in many African economies, including Ghana, where gaps in policies governing importation and environmental management, and high demand for secondhand electronic products have stimulated the growth of a burgeoning informal enterprise. The seeming limited knowledge on this phenomenon has occasioned sensational ca...
