LATEST ARTICLES

AfCFTA Secretariat and ADI Foundation Partner to Develop Africa’s Digital Trade Infrastructure to Power the Future of Intra-African Trade

Prosper Kay
-
0
AfCFTA Secretariat and ADI Foundation Partner to Develop Africa’s Digital Trade Infrastructure to Power the Future of Intra-African Trade

A new joint venture to build an African-owned digital trade infrastructure under the AfCFTA Protocol on Digital Trade

The African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) Secretariat and ADI Foundation signed, on 18 July 2026 in New York, a Strategic Partnership Agreement providing for the creation of a joint venture to mobilise capital and build a digital trade infrastructure to boost intra-Africa trade. Fragmented systems are estimated to cost Africa’s economy as much as US$100 billion each year, due to the lack of the interoperable digital trade systems required to enable more efficient cross-border trade. The partnership is designed to bridge that gap, with the ambition of removing most of that cost within five years, while at the same time facilitating more inclusive, trusted and affordable trade at continental scale.

The joint venture will mobilise capital to deliver infrastructure designed to reduce the cost of cross-border settlement of payments by up to 90 per cent, with the priority of significantly reducing the cost of intra-Africa trade. Gradually, this digital infrastructure will enable African businesses to leverage assets that they already own — stock, invoices and other certified holdings — which has so far been possible only to a very limited extent across Africa, largely due to constraints in the requisite infrastructure.

The proposed infrastructure and governance arrangements will be developed in accordance with the AfCFTA legal framework — in particular the Protocol on Digital Trade — and applicable national laws. The infrastructure will be built on open, internationally recognised standards, and deployment will begin with identified corridor pilots under the AfCFTA from late 2026, scaling towards full continental coverage by 2030.

The partnership will focus on three persistent constraints affecting intra-Africa trade. First, it will explore mechanisms through which enterprises can establish verifiable digital commercial credentials, helping financial institutions and trading partners assess their transaction history across borders. Second, it will support the digitisation, digitalisation and verification of trade documentation, with the objective of reducing administrative costs and border transit delays. Third, it will facilitate interoperability with existing African digital platforms and infrastructure to support transactions and settlement of payments in intra-Africa trade.

“Too many African businesses, particularly MSMEs and women- and youth-led businesses, remain excluded from cross-border trade not because they lack competitive products, but because they lack verifiable digital identities, affordable access to finance, interoperable payment systems and trusted digital trade networks. This partnership presents an opportunity to change that trajectory by building the foundations of an integrated African digital market that is secure, inclusive and owned by Africa,” said H.E. Wamkele Mene, Secretary-General of the AfCFTA Secretariat.

“Africa has never lacked enterprise. It has lacked infrastructure equal to its ambition. This venture removes the cost of distance from intra-Africa trade — on open standards, under African governance — and we will measure our publicly stated ambition against the targets we have set together,” said Ajay Bhatia, Principal Council Member, ADI Foundation.

By 2030, the partnership’s joint assessment indicates that intra-Africa trade has the potential to exceed the continent’s current trajectory by around two-thirds, the trade finance gap to be more than halved, and eight times as many small enterprises to be brought into the formal economy — an aggregate of up to US$900 billion added to Africa’s output, approximately a fifth above the present path.

This partnership between the ADI Foundation and the AfCFTA Secretariat will not require budgetary commitments by African governments. Instead, the parties will jointly mobilise over US$1 billion from institutional, development-finance and private sources, prioritising participation by African investors.

World Gold Council Funds Ghana’s Small Scale Mining Cleanup

News Ghana
-
0
World Gold Council Funds Ghana’s Small Scale Mining Cleanup

The World Gold Council will fund cooperative registration for Ghana’s small scale gold miners under an agreement signed Tuesday with the Ministry of Lands and Natural Resources.

The Memorandum of Understanding commits both sides to formalising artisanal and small scale gold mining (ASGM), tightening supply chains and cutting off illicit finance. The Council’s opening contribution is a development grant of $250,000 to support cooperative registration under rCOMSDEP, Ghana’s responsible cooperative mining and skills development programme.

The sum is modest against the losses the state is trying to plug. An independent Swiss analysis estimated Ghana lost about $11.4 billion to gold smuggling between 2019 and 2023, and Swissaid put undeclared artisanal production at 24 to 30 tonnes in 2022 alone, worth up to $1.74 billion at prices of that period. Those figures explain why the government wants miners inside the formal system rather than selling through informal channels that feed cross border trafficking.

The deal gives that effort international backing. Both parties plan a national network of trusted processing plants meeting responsible sourcing standards, with price and access incentives designed to pull artisanal gold into official channels. Cooperation will also cover policy development, traceability and origin verification technology, and training for mining communities.

The signing follows months of groundwork. In January, Council chief executive David Tait met the leadership of the Ghana Gold Board in Accra to discuss traceability technology, environmentally responsible processing plants and alignment of Ghana’s gold governance with international standards. The Gold Board, created to centralise purchases and exports from small scale producers, is credited with helping lift national output in 2025.

Lands Minister Emmanuel Armah Kofi Buah said the partnership shows Ghana’s commitment to turning ASGM into a well regulated sector that ends harmful practices and returns gold wealth to communities. Tait said the agreement gives both sides “a strong platform for collaboration” and can help build a value chain trusted by miners, communities and markets.

What happens next depends on delivery. Registration drives have stalled before when miners saw no price advantage in going formal, and neither party gave a timeline for the processing plant network. The test will be whether registered cooperatives earn more selling through official channels than smugglers offer at the border.

IEA Warns Oil Cushions Are Thinning as Hormuz Threats Grow

Roger A. Agana
-
0
IEA Warns Oil Cushions Are Thinning as Hormuz Threats Grow

The world’s energy watchdog warned Monday that the buffers shielding oil markets from the Middle East conflict are wearing thin, as fighting spreads to a second shipping route beyond the Strait of Hormuz.

International Energy Agency (IEA) Executive Director Fatih Birol said escalating attacks on the Strait of Hormuz and regional energy infrastructure are deepening supply concerns, now compounded by threats to the Bab el Mandeb strait, the very route traders have leaned on to bypass Hormuz. His warning carries added weight for import dependent economies: developing countries have been hit hardest by the crisis, and Birol has previously flagged that families in some, having lost affordable petroleum, have turned to dung and wood for cooking, with the associated health risks falling heavily on women.

For now, several factors are keeping crude flowing. Birol said Gulf producers, led by Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, are still getting oil to market through alternative routes and some volumes through Hormuz itself, with Gulf exports below their late June highs but well above the depths of March to mid June. Producers elsewhere, the United States, Brazil, Venezuela and Kazakhstan, have raised exports to offset Gulf losses, while China has stabilised markets from the demand side by cutting its crude imports by nearly half against pre war levels.

Emergency reserves remain the biggest shock absorber, and they are draining. Of the 400 million barrels the IEA’s member countries agreed to release on March 11, the largest coordinated action in the agency’s history, about 290 million have reached the market. Member countries still hold over 1 billion barrels of government controlled stocks in reserve. That release, prompted by what Birol has called a loss of barrels exceeding the 1973 and 1979 oil shocks combined, knocked roughly $20 off the price of a barrel when it landed, and the agency has signalled it could tap reserves again if conditions worsen.

Birol was blunt that comfort would be misplaced. He said there is no room for complacency as hostilities escalate and commercial inventories keep falling, and pointed to a specific pressure building beneath the headline crude figures: refinery activity and product supplies have not recovered as fast as crude deliveries, leaving diesel and gasoline markets considerably tighter than crude, the products that most directly reach motorists and hauliers.

Natural gas tells a parallel story. Increased liquefied natural gas flows, led by the United States and Canada, have replaced about 70 percent of the supply lost through Hormuz, but Birol warned that further delays in restoring Gulf exports risk keeping the market tight for longer, a strain every LNG importer will feel, including a Europe trying to refill storage before winter.

The agency’s bottom line has not moved: a resolution that fully and unconditionally reopens the Strait of Hormuz is essential to prevent a further slide in global energy security. Until that happens, the statement makes clear, the calm rests on stock releases and rerouted cargoes that cannot last indefinitely.

Rare Atoms in Nature Point to New Drug Leads

Roger A. Agana
-
0
Rare Atoms in Nature Point to New Drug Leads

Scientists have compiled the first comprehensive survey of natural compounds built around rare atoms such as fluorine, boron and arsenic, arguing these chemical oddities could seed new medicines and cleaner industrial methods.

The review, published in the journal Natural Product Reports on June 4, gathers discoveries reported between 1944 and 2025 and maps how living things weave unusual elements into their chemistry. Most natural products are made from the standard building blocks of life, carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen and oxygen. The rarer metabolites at the centre of this study reach beyond that toolkit to incorporate boron, fluorine, arsenic, selenium, iodine, vanadium and molybdenum, and in doing so gain properties that ordinary biochemistry struggles to produce.

Those properties are the reason the work matters beyond the laboratory. Adding an atypical atom can make a molecule more stable in the body, change how it dissolves, or switch on chemical reactivity useful in medicine, qualities drug designers prize. The compounds surveyed already include boromycin and the tartrolons, boron bearing agents with antibacterial, antiviral and antiparasitic activity, and fluorinated substances like nucleocidin that show antimicrobial potency, alongside selenium compounds such as selenoneine that guard cells against oxidative damage. Arsenic metabolites span the spectrum from relatively inert storage forms in marine food chains to more toxic and bioactive molecules.

The scientific interest lies partly in how nature manages feats chemists find difficult. Forming a carbon fluorine bond biologically is rare, and the review examines the enzymes that make such transformations possible, along with the dedicated pathways that stitch selenium into carbon frameworks or methylate arsenic. Understanding those enzymes is what the authors see as the practical prize: templates for environmentally friendlier ways to add fluorine or selenium to industrial and pharmaceutical molecules, processes that conventionally rely on harsher chemistry.

The study was led by Professor Seoung Rak Lee of the College of Pharmacy at Pusan National University in Busan, South Korea, working with colleagues at Gachon and Kyungpook National universities and collaborators at Princeton University. Lee said the compounds, though scarce, show how organisms overcome major obstacles to build molecules that are hard to achieve under normal biological conditions. He framed the survey as a framework for finding new bioactive compounds and the enzymes that make them, with potential applications in drug discovery, biocatalysis and synthetic biology.

The authors argue that maturing tools, genome mining, metalloproteomics, isotope tracing, cryo electron microscopy and machine learning among them, could speed the hunt for new pathways of this kind. As a review rather than a new experimental finding, the paper charts territory for others to mine rather than reporting a discovery of its own, and any resulting drugs or industrial processes remain prospects rather than products. Its contribution is a map of a neglected corner of natural chemistry, and an argument that the corner is worth exploring.

Vinicius Jr’s New Look Sparks Cosmetic Procedure Reports

News Ghana
-
0
Vinicius Jr’s New Look Sparks Cosmetic Procedure Reports

Real Madrid forward Vinicius Junior’s visibly changed appearance set social media alight this week, after a Brazilian outlet reported he underwent a chin harmonisation procedure days after Brazil’s World Cup exit.

The claim rests on a single source that others have amplified. Brazilian site TMC Esporte reported that the 26 year old had the treatment at a dermatology clinic in Goiânia, performed by dermatologist Dr Alessandro Alarcão, describing a technique that “uses fillers to sculpt the facial contour” to give the chin sharper definition. Neither Vinicius nor his representatives has publicly confirmed the report, and details of timing and scope remain unverified; what is beyond dispute is the reaction, with new photographs and video of the player, including one signing a Real Madrid shirt in profile, drawing millions of views and widespread comment that he looks markedly different.

Chin harmonisation is a non surgical cosmetic treatment using dermal fillers to reshape and balance the chin and jawline against the rest of the face, distinct from surgical chin augmentation despite the two often being conflated online.

The timing explains the intensity of the attention. Brazil crashed out of the 2026 World Cup in the Selecao’s earliest elimination in 36 years, despite Vinicius scoring four goals, including two against Scotland, and his appearance drew public scrutiny and commentary during the tournament. He has also endured years of documented racist abuse, much of it targeting how he looks, though any suggestion that this motivated the reported procedure is speculation no one close to him has confirmed, and this story does not make that claim.

Attention now turns back to football. Vinicius, who congratulated new teammate Marc Cucurella after Spain beat Argentina in the July 19 final, joins Real Madrid’s pre season under new coach Jose Mourinho, with the club chasing a first major trophy in two seasons. Whatever the truth of the Goiânia report, his sharpest answer to the commentary, as ever, is available on the pitch.

Trump Invokes Dormant 1930 Law for Canada Tariffs

News Ghana
-
0
Trump Invokes Dormant 1930 Law for Canada Tariffs

US President Donald Trump reached for a Depression era trade weapon unused in more than 75 years on Monday, signing proclamations that impose 50 percent tariffs on about $20 billion of Canadian goods.

The legal vehicle is the story as much as the tariffs. Trump signed three proclamations under Section 338 of the Tariff Act of 1930, which lets a president levy duties of up to 50 percent on countries found to be discriminating against American commerce, a provision trade lawyers have found no public record of being applied since 1949. The choice follows the US Supreme Court’s ruling in February that Trump lacked authority to impose earlier tariffs by declaring an economic emergency, forcing the administration to hunt for alternative legal bases. Scott Lincicome of the Cato Institute called the move a crossing of the Rubicon, warning that “the invocation of 338 is the nuclear option for Trump tariffs,” and former US trade official Ryan Majerus described it as legally risky but designed to build leverage in trade talks. Several Democratic lawmakers proposed repealing the section last year precisely because it could be used this way, and fresh legal challenges are widely expected.

The tariffs take effect in 30 days, in late August, covering hundreds of products from wine, dairy and hockey sticks to cement, electrical equipment and Christmas ornaments. Energy products, potash, fish, critical minerals and goods already under sector specific duties are excluded, but goods previously shielded by the United States Mexico Canada Agreement (USMCA) lose their exemption, a significant break since that 2020 pact was not renewed by Washington and is now the subject of negotiations that could run for years. The three proclamations respond to what the White House calls Canadian discrimination against American cars, alcohol and dairy, citing provinces pulling US alcohol from shelves and restrictions on vehicle exports, with US Trade Representative Jamieson Greer framing the duties as accountability for retaliation Canada has maintained since 2025. Officials said the measures are unrelated to Trump’s separate threats of wildfire linked tariffs, though they confirmed he has requested options on those too.

Canada’s response mixed diplomacy and defiance. Prime Minister Mark Carney called the tariffs another unilateral action violating the USMCA’s terms, said Canada’s own measures had merely matched previous US steps, and offered to intensify negotiations, having already proposed paths to resolve disputes and modernise the pact. Ontario Premier Doug Ford was blunter, urging Canada to respond tariff for tariff, dollar for dollar if the duties proceed. Canadian goods already face US tariffs of 25 percent on steel and aluminium and duties on softwood lumber.

Doubts attach to the substance as well as the law. Analysts note some of the disputed Canadian dairy measures stem from Canada’s trade agreement with the European Union rather than anti American design, and even sympathetic industry voices hedged: Chris Swonger of the Distilled Spirits Council welcomed attention to Canadian alcohol restrictions while warning that escalation could wound businesses already struggling. The tariffs also carry domestic risk for Trump ahead of November’s midterm elections, given the market turmoil his April 2025 tariff round triggered before he partially retreated.

The 30 day fuse leaves room for a deal, and Trump has pulled back from announced tariffs before. Whether this round ends in negotiation, retaliation or a courtroom will shape trade far beyond the two neighbours, since a validated Section 338 would hand any president a 50 percent tariff tool against nearly anyone.

Combs Seeks Sanctions Against Yacht Lawsuit Accuser and Lawyers

News Ghana
-
0
Combs Seeks Sanctions Against Yacht Lawsuit Accuser and Lawyers

Sean “Diddy” Combs has asked a federal judge to financially penalise a woman suing him and her attorneys, escalating a two year jurisdictional fight over a lawsuit stemming from an alleged 2022 yacht assault.

The sanctions motion is the latest turn in a case Combs already once escaped. Court documents obtained by TMZ show Combs seeking sanctions against Grace O’Marcaigh and her legal team for filing an amended complaint after a judge ruled California courts lacked personal jurisdiction over him, a ruling delivered in October 2025 when he was dismissed from the case. His lawyers argue the amended filing recycled jurisdictional arguments the court had already rejected rather than curing the defects the judge identified, forcing him to spend money defending what they call a meritless case, and they want O’Marcaigh and her attorneys ordered to pay his attorney fees and costs.

Her side calls the request baseless. In correspondence attached to the filing, O’Marcaigh’s attorneys say the amended complaint adds new allegations tying Combs to California through the yacht charter at the heart of the case, and note the court granted permission to amend. Their position throughout has been that jurisdiction should follow control: in earlier filings they argued Combs chartered the vessel, controlled its guests and staff, and maintains a residence and business base in California, contending that “denying application of California law would incentivize misconduct beyond the reach of accountability.” Combs has countered in past filings that he was neither signatory nor party to the charter agreement.

The underlying lawsuit, filed in April 2024, concerns events O’Marcaigh alleges took place on 28 December 2022 aboard the yacht Victorious in waters near the US Virgin Islands, where she worked as a steward. She accuses Combs’s son, Christian “King” Combs, of sexually assaulting her, and contends Sean Combs bears civil responsibility for enabling the environment in which it allegedly occurred. All of these are allegations in a civil suit; no court has made findings on them, both men deny the claims, and a lawyer for the family has previously dismissed the suit as containing manufactured lies. The defence has also argued the alleged incident occurred in international waters beyond California law’s reach.

The motion arrives with Combs’s broader legal position transformed. He was sentenced in October 2025 to just over four years in federal prison after a jury convicted him on two counts of transportation to engage in prostitution, while acquitting him of the more serious racketeering and sex trafficking charges, and he continues to face numerous civil suits. Those matters are separate from O’Marcaigh’s case and involve different allegations.

The judge has not ruled on the sanctions request. If granted, it would effectively end the California case against Combs with the accuser paying his costs; if denied, the jurisdictional battle over the amended complaint resumes. Either outcome will signal how far courts will let plaintiffs stretch to keep the music mogul within their reach.

Nigeria Denies Borrowing ₦80 Trillion Under Tinubu

News Ghana
-
0
Nigeria Denies Borrowing ₦80 Trillion Under Tinubu

Nigeria’s government pushed back Monday against claims that President Bola Tinubu’s administration borrowed about ₦80 trillion in three years, telling senators most of the rise came from currency revaluation and accounting recognition, not new loans.

The dispute matters because the number frames Nigeria’s biggest economic anxiety. Public debt stood near ₦75 trillion when Tinubu took office in 2023, and commentators comparing that figure with today’s stock have concluded the administration nearly doubled it, feeding public alarm over debt sustainability amid continuing hardship.

Finance Minister and Coordinating Minister of the Economy Taiwo Oyedele made the government’s case before the Senate Committee on Finance, chaired by Senator Sani Musa, in response to questioning from Senator Adamu Aliero of Kebbi Central. His explanation rests on two large adjustments. First, the naira’s sharp depreciation under the administration’s reforms inflated the local currency value of Nigeria’s existing foreign debt, since national debt is reported in naira. “That accounting adjustment alone added more than ₦40 trillion to the public debt figure,” he said. Second, the National Assembly’s approval to securitise the central bank’s Ways and Means advances added about ₦33 trillion, which he described as formally recognising obligations inherited from the previous administration rather than fresh borrowing. He added that much of the administration’s domestic borrowing has refinanced existing debt, and framed its approach as borrowing strictly for infrastructure, with debt treated as leverage expected to generate more value than it costs.

Taken together, the two adjustments Oyedele cited account for roughly ₦73 trillion of the disputed ₦80 trillion increase, implying actual new borrowing in the low trillions of naira on the government’s own telling. Two caveats attend that framing. The revalued foreign debt is not merely a bookkeeping entry for citizens: servicing dollar obligations now consumes far more naira than before the depreciation, so the burden the larger figure represents is real even if the borrowing is not new. And the securitised Ways and Means advances, while inherited, remain debts Nigeria must repay.

The senators did not confine themselves to definitions. Committee members, led by Chief Whip Mohammed Monguno, criticised what they called poor implementation of the capital component of the 2026 budget, and Monguno questioned Federation Account allocations, asking why about ₦1.7 trillion was reportedly retained after roughly ₦3.7 trillion accrued. Oyedele said he was not familiar with those specific figures but maintained no monthly allocation under the administration had fallen below ₦2 trillion. Aliero, while acknowledging infrastructure gains such as the Lagos Calabar Coastal Highway, pressed that budget delivery fell short of expectations.

The exchange leaves the factual question answerable: Nigeria’s Debt Management Office publishes the debt stock and its currency composition, and independent analysts can separate revaluation from new issuance. Until that reconciliation is laid out publicly, line by line, both the ₦80 trillion charge and the government’s rebuttal will keep passing each other in the dark.

Ride With MoMo Drive Reaches Pragya Riders in Ho

Roger A. Agana
-
0
Ride With MoMo Drive Reaches Pragya Riders in Ho

The Ride with MoMo digital payments campaign has moved beyond Accra with a roadshow in Ho, taking its pitch for cashless fares to Pragya riders and commercial transport operators in the Volta Regional capital.

The extension is the news; the campaign itself is not. MobileMoney Fintech LTD (MoMo) launched the initiative in Accra earlier this month with Ghana Interbank Payment and Settlement Systems (GhIPSS), targeting ride hailing, taxi, trotro, haulage and tricycle operators, and NewsGhana covered both the launch and GhIPSS’s ambition to use it as a template for other sectors. The Ho leg signals the promised nationwide rollout is actually happening, and its focus on tricycle riders tests the model in exactly the segment where cash is most entrenched.

The mechanics remain as launched. Drivers register for a MoMo Merchant Wallet and display a GhQR code; passengers scan it with the MoMo app or any GhQR compatible banking or fintech application, and the exact fare lands instantly, removing change disputes and cash handling risks. Because GhQR runs on national interoperable infrastructure, payments come from any participating bank, wallet or fintech, not only MTN customers, and GhIPSS has said a list of participating institutions will be published so drivers can show passengers their options.

In Ho, the appeal was framed around changing passenger habits. A representative of the riders said the system suits customers who increasingly go without physical money: “Many passengers do not always carry cash.” The Ho event brought together transport unions, the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Authority, the Motor Traffic and Transport Department, the National Communications Authority and financial institutions, according to the organisers.

The company’s case, restated by Chief Executive Officer Shaibu Haruna, is that merchant wallets help drivers separate business from personal income, keep records and build the transaction histories that unlock loans, with monthly rewards tied to transaction volumes as an added incentive. GhIPSS Chief Business Officer Akosua Blay positioned the campaign within the payment infrastructure body’s wider goal of pushing digital payments into underserved sectors.

The unstated stakes sit in GhQR’s own history. GhIPSS launched the national QR standard in 2020, and adoption has been slower than hoped, which makes transport, with its millions of daily small transactions, both the biggest prize and the hardest test. Whether Pragya riders in Ho keep using the codes after the roadshow leaves town, and whether passengers scan rather than hand over coins, will say more about Ghana’s cashless transition than any launch event. Adoption figures from the campaign’s first months would be worth requesting.

Kumasi Traders Plan Protest Over Stalled Market Project

News Ghana
-
0
Kumasi Traders Plan Protest Over Stalled Market Project

A coalition of Kumasi trade unions and market associations announced plans Monday for a mass demonstration over the stalled Kumasi Central Market Phase II, making good on warnings issued when a May deadline for the government passed unmet.

The announcement lands seven years after the project began and against a presidential promise now on the clock. Phase II was sod cut on May 2, 2019 under the previous administration with a 48 month completion timeline, is financed to the tune of roughly 248 million (reported variously in dollars and euros) by Deutsche Bank with a United Kingdom export credit guarantee, and reached about 70 percent completion before work halted more than three years ago, a stoppage traced in earlier reporting to renegotiation of the loan following Ghana’s IMF bailout. President John Mahama pledged during his July 2025 regional tour to deliver the project by the end of 2026 and directed contractors to accelerate, but the Coalition of Trade Unions (CTU) says construction has still not resumed, and traders’ patience has “been overstretched.”

The human cost is the coalition’s core case. Thousands of traders evicted from the old market in 2021 remain scattered across temporary sites at the Racecourse, Adum and elsewhere, where earlier trader accounts describe broken roads, poor lighting, weak sanitation, insecurity and roadside selling that has bled customers and income. The coalition says the dispersal has also worsened congestion across Kumasi’s central business district.

Its demands go beyond restarting the cranes. The group wants premium payments collected from traders for the completed Phase I, held in accounts at Fidelity Bank and Yaa Asantewaa Rural Bank, ring fenced solely for finishing Phase II; immediate decongestion measures for Adum; and management of Phase I handed to a professional operations and maintenance company, arguing government administration of the market has bred overcrowding and inefficiency. It warned that continued inaction could see traders occupy spaces in the unfinished structure regardless of official allocations, and said the protest’s date and route will be announced later.

The pressure has been building in stages. The Combined Kumasi Central Market Traders Union gave the government until the end of May 2026 to release funds and restart work, an ultimatum backed by an appeal to the Asantehene, Otumfuo Osei Tutu II, and trader groups have petitioned, marched in warning and sought clarity on budget allocations repeatedly since the stall began. What has changed is that the deadline came and went.

The stakes for the city are substantial. The completed Phase II is designed to house 6,500 leasable commercial spaces, including 5,400 stores, 800 kiosks, 50 restaurants and dedicated fishmonger, butcher and livestock areas, with an estimated 900 direct and 2,500 indirect jobs, capacity Kumasi’s overloaded trading areas visibly need. The government had not publicly responded to the coalition’s latest demands at the time of publication. With the President’s own end of 2026 delivery pledge now less than six months from expiry and no work reported on site, the demonstration’s timing writes its own question.

123...49,590Page 1 of 49,590