Godfred Amankwaa

Access to water and sanitation services is still a major problem in many countries. While institutional performance is a key driver of underperformance, there is little attention as to where variations in institutions that affect service provision originate from. Major incisions in countries' institutional landscape that continue to echo through ti...

Background Cross-sectoral collaborations as exemplified by the One Health approach, are widely endorsed as pragmatic avenues for addressing zoonotic diseases, but operationalisation remain limited in low-and-middle income countries (LMICs). Complexities and competing interests and agendas of key stakeholders and the underlying politico-administrati...

In this commentary, I discuss the potential effects of the upcoming elections on Ghana's WASH sector, examining impacts on the policy landscape, infrastructure investments, institutions and WASH service governance. By exploring these areas, I do not seek to promote any political party or influence voting decisions, nor do I aim to compare past perf...

There are fundamental unresolved questions about the nature of the interplay between digital innovations and water management processes. However, there has been little research on how increasing digital transformation impacts water management and infrastructure in the Global South. This article draws on a socio-technical lens and primary field data...

Time poverty remains a critical issue for water access across the globe. However, research on the time spent for water collection and the factors associated with collection time inequalities and access heterogeneities is limited, especially in sub-Saharan Africa. Drawing on the 2014 Ghana’s Demographic and Health Survey (DHS) data, and statistical...

Worldwide, smart metering is becoming increasingly prevalent in the utility sector, sometimes as part of extensive smart grid projects or within strategies aimed at the digital transformation of utilities. In the water sector, smart water metering infrastructure has been positioned to alleviate key water management and water access challenges. To d...

Ensuring adequate access to clean water remains a major challenge throughout the world, particularly in off-grid and low-income neighbourhoods in the Global South. Digital water infrastructure such as water ATMs (automated standpipes) has been a common policy response to this challenge, targeted particularly at off-grid citizens in urban and peri-u...

- Increasing implementation of digital water innovations has been accompanied by a growth in research on this topic - However, there is little understanding of the scope of digital water in cities of the global South. - A first systematic literature review of digital water is presented by investigating three thematic subdomains: profile of the lite...

Digital technologies are becoming central to water governance and management, yet their impact and developmental implications are under-researched, particularly in the global South. This paper addresses this knowledge gap by examining the process of water service digitalisation and the resulting effects on service providers. Drawing on qualitative...

Emergency water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) programming often fails to meet defined humanitarian or sectoral standards and the needs of those affected by crises. There have been calls to shift toward more resilient, durable and sustainable WASH interventions. Drawing on a mix of qualitative methods, this paper traces the nature and evolution of...

Increasing implementation of digital water innovations in cities of the Global South has been accompanied by a growth in research on this topic. This paper presents a first systematic literature review of this domain, analysing a total of 43 papers using a range of thematic categorisations. Overall profiling finds literature to be recent, limited i...

Digital technologies are becoming central to water governance and management, yet their impact and developmental implications are under-researched, particularly in the global South. This paper addresses this knowledge gap by examining the process of water service digitalisation and the resulting effects on service providers. In this paper, we apply...

Global manufacturing is shifting from Asia to Africa, and Ethiopia is at the forefront of regional industrial development. Notable is the installation of the ‘Zero Liquid Discharge’ (ZLD) industrial effluent treatment plant at the Hawassa Industrial Park (HIP), where Ethiopia aimed to combine economic growth-oriented light manufacturing and sustain...

Digital water transformation is often written about as though universally desirable and inevitable, capable of addressing the multifaceted socioecological challenges that water systems face. However, there is not widespread reflection on the complexities, tensions and unintended consequences of digital transformation, its social and political dimen...

Where public supply has failed and made unsatisfactory progress in supplying drinking water, the private sector has readily stepped in to supply citizens with drinking water – most often to make big money. Much of the water bottling industry (i) provides a highly inelastic good, (ii) is immensely profitable and (iii) has significant negative extern...

In this paper, we critically examine the operationalization of Ghana’s nationwide COVID-19 free water initiative (FWI) and its implications for equitable and sustainable water services. We argue that although it helped resolve the affordability challenge of accessing safe water among citizens, it might have failed to holistically benefit the “water...

Access to safe Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH) services have been recognized as a highly precautionary measure essential to protecting human health during this COVID-19 outbreak. However, it is currently unknown whether poor or non- availability of these services are also closely related to COVID-19 fatalities. We analysed the latest data on C...

Recent advances in mobile technologies, especially in the utility payment space, are having an increasingly profound impact on our daily lives and offer advantageous services in the utility sectors. This paper examines the prevalence and patterns of customer uptake of an electronic water payment (EWP) system and its implications for water delivery...

Background: Interest in mHealth interventions, defined as the use of mobile phones to access healthcare is increasingly becoming popular globally. Given its technology-based applications, university students may be key clients of the mHealth adoption but studies are rare in sub-Saharan Africa. This study provides a snapshot and baseline evidence o...

This study analyses the quality of sachet water consumed by university students in Metropolitan Kumasi, Ghana. Thirty sachet water samples from ten different brands were tested for their physical and bacteriological quality using Meters and Titrimetric method and Most Probable Number method respectively. Overall, 50% of the sachet water samples wer...

Objective: Problematic access to and use of sexual and reproductive health (SRH) services potentially endanger the well-being of adolescents and retards progress towards attainment of United Nations health-related Sustainable Development Goals. Drawing on a qualitative research approach, this paper examines the level of SRH-related knowledge, servi...

This qualitative study was conducted in some selected rural communities within the Birim South District between March to June 2017 with the main aim of teasing out insights into Ghana's perspective of pregnant women's attitudes and perceptions about modern and traditional midwives and perceptional impact on health seeking behaviour and status. To t...

Perceptual studies on the environment and natural resources are important, if unsustainable use of these resources is to be abated. This paper unravels the hitherto unknown drivers of deforestation and/or forest degradation, and the causes of climate variability and change (CVC), by assessing their synergy based on participants self-reported cases...

Background. Recently, complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) therapies have become popular in maternity care as many midwives either use or recommend them to women. Studies in Ghana, however, have conspicuously missed the standpoint of the persons working within maternity care, specifically midwives' perspectives concerning their perception a...