Van der Vaart: Bellingham Thriving Without Palmer, Foden

Roger A. Agana
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Van der Vaart: Bellingham Thriving Without Palmer, Foden

Former Real Madrid midfielder Rafael van der Vaart says Jude Bellingham is thriving at the World Cup partly because Cole Palmer and Phil Foden were left out of England’s squad.

Speaking in comments provided to AceOdds.com, van der Vaart argued that Bellingham plays best when he has room to work into games rather than sharing the final third with other creative players. “Bellingham needs space. He needs to work to get in the game,” he said, pointing also to how well Bellingham combines with Harry Kane, since Kane’s habit of dropping into midfield opens space for Bellingham to run beyond him. Van der Vaart tempered the praise by noting that England have so far only beaten sides they were expected to beat, and that the tougher tests are still to come.

That reading lines up with how manager Thomas Tuchel justified leaving Palmer and Foden out of his squad in May, citing squad balance and each player’s domestic form at the time, with Palmer having gone through a run of 14 goalless games for club and country and Foden struggling for form at Manchester City. With Bellingham installed as first choice in the number 10 role, he has scored six goals at the tournament, level with Kane and two behind Lionel Messi’s tournament leading eight in the race for the Golden Boot.

On goalkeeping, van der Vaart was more measured than complimentary. “I don’t think Pickford is world class,” he said, though he added that England simply do not have a better alternative, a view that lines up with Pickford’s status as Tuchel’s undisputed first choice, backed by a Premier League season in which he was tied for the third most clean sheets among all goalkeepers.

England now face defending champions Argentina in Wednesday’s semifinal in Atlanta, their first meeting with the Argentines since a David Beckham penalty settled a 2002 World Cup tie. The winner advances to the July 19 final against the victor of Tuesday’s semifinal between Spain and France.

OmniBSIC Donates Computers For School Robotics Hub

Roger A. Agana
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OmniBSIC Donates Computers For School Robotics Hub

OmniBSIC Bank has donated 20 computers to Prince of Peace International School in Accra, partnering with a Rotary club to launch a robotics and digital learning centre.

The donation, made with the Rotary Club of Accra-Cantonments East, coincided with the commissioning of a Teacher in a Box station, an offline digital learning system that gives students access to thousands of educational resources without needing an internet connection, and the inauguration of the school’s Interact Club, Rotary International’s youth service programme for young people. The computers will support classroom teaching while doubling as the hardware for the offline learning platform and for lessons in coding and robotics.

George Tetteh Ocansey, a Divisional Head at the bank, represented Managing Director Daniel Asiedu at the handover and framed the gift as part of a wider push into youth digital skills. “This initiative is very important to us because it aligns with our commitment to education,” he said, adding that the bank saw the donation as a strategic investment in the next generation of Ghanaian innovators and hoped it marked the start of a broader push to support schools with technology.

The gesture is not an isolated one. Earlier this year, on June 4, OmniBSIC launched a separate school based plastic recovery project with the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research’s Institute of Industrial Research and the Ocean Tribe Foundation, rolling it out across five senior high schools in Greater Accra that together generate an estimated 44,000 pieces of plastic waste a day. The bank has also taken on long term support for the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit at Shai Osudoku District Hospital, donating specialised equipment for premature and critically ill newborns. Taken together, the moves point to a CSR programme built around recurring, sector spanning commitments in education, health and the environment rather than one off donations.

OmniBSIC was formed through the merger of the former OmniBank and Sahel Sahara Bank, a consolidation driven by the Bank of Ghana’s 2017 sector reform that raised minimum capital requirements nearly fourfold to 400 million cedis. Headquartered in Accra’s Airport City, the bank now operates 41 locations across the country and has picked up a string of industry awards in recent years, including Best Corporate Bank Ghana in 2026 from Global Banking and Finance Review.

Deschamps Steps Down After France’s Cup Exit

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Deschamps Steps Down After France’s Cup Exit

France coach Didier Deschamps is leaving Les Bleus after a 2 0 semifinal loss to Spain ended his bid for a third World Cup title.

The 57 year old, who lifted the trophy as a player in 1998 and as a manager in 2018, had confirmed back in January 2025 that this tournament would be his last regardless of how far France went. He will take charge one final time in the third place match against the loser of Wednesday’s semifinal between England and Argentina, in Miami on Saturday, July 18. Speaking after the Spain defeat, Deschamps kept the focus on the team rather than his own exit. “I am extremely happy. I am very proud of everything we’ve done,” he said, adding that whether his run ended in a semifinal or a final mattered less to him personally than what the squad had achieved together.

Deschamps leaves having managed France since July 2012, compiling 120 wins, 35 draws and 29 losses across 183 matches. His run through major tournaments included a 2014 World Cup quarterfinal, a runner up finish at Euro 2016, the 2018 World Cup title, a round of 16 exit at Euro 2020, another runner up finish at the 2022 World Cup, and semifinal appearances at both Euro 2024 and this year’s tournament. That makes him one of only three men, alongside Brazil’s Mario Zagallo and West Germany’s Franz Beckenbauer, to have won the World Cup as both a player and a manager. As a player, Deschamps earned 103 caps between 1989 and 2000, captaining France to the 1998 World Cup and Euro 2000 titles before retiring from international football.

Zinedine Zidane, who played alongside Deschamps in that 1998 winning squad and scored twice in the final, is widely expected to take over, with ESPN reporting in March that he had reached a verbal agreement with the French Football Federation to succeed Deschamps once the World Cup ended. The federation has not yet made the appointment official, though its president, Philippe Diallo, told Le Figaro he already knows who the next coach will be, stopping short of naming Zidane publicly. Zidane, whose son Luca has been part of France’s squad at this tournament, last managed Real Madrid, where he won three consecutive Champions League titles before leaving in 2021.

Macron To Make State Visit To Nigeria This Fall

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Macron To Make State Visit To Nigeria This Fall

French President Emmanuel Macron will make a state visit to Nigeria this fall, France’s ambassador announced, two years after President Bola Tinubu’s state visit to Paris.

Marc Fonbaustier, French Ambassador to Nigeria and ECOWAS, revealed the trip at France’s National Day celebration in Abuja on Tuesday night, calling it a scoop as he broke the news to guests. He said the visit would let the two presidents assess how far their bilateral roadmap has progressed and set out priorities for the relationship going forward, describing the agenda as ambitious and designed to benefit both countries’ citizens.

The visit carries a personal thread for Macron beyond the diplomatic calendar. Fonbaustier told the gathering that Macron spent six months in Nigeria as a student 24 years ago, an experience the French president has said shaped the broad outlines of his Africa policy. “The new relationship between Africa and France was, in some way, born in Nigeria,” the ambassador said. Macron has visited the country before, touring Abuja and Lagos in 2018, when he became the first foreign head of state to visit Fela Kuti’s New Afrika Shrine nightclub, but this fall’s trip would be a formal state visit, reciprocating the one Tinubu paid to Paris two years ago.

Fonbaustier pointed to concrete commercial activity as evidence the partnership goes beyond ceremony, citing recent tie ups between Carrefour and HyperCity, Accor and Shoreline, and Canal Plus’s acquisition of MultiChoice, along with Nigerian businessman Abdul Samad Rabiu’s project to establish a House of African Worlds in Paris. He also highlighted agriculture as a growing area of cooperation, with the French Development Agency backing projects on food security and agricultural value chains in northern Nigeria and across the wider ECOWAS region, alongside efforts to help farmers reach markets in remote areas. On security, he said the two countries continue working together against terrorism and to build the capacity of regional forces confronting it.

Framing the relationship around the French Republic’s founding values of liberty, equality and fraternity, Fonbaustier said Nigeria and France deal with each other strictly as equals, without imposition or interference, and share common goals on economic development, job creation and environmental protection.

COCOBOD Warns Galamsey Could Collapse Cocoa Sector

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COCOBOD Warns Galamsey Could Collapse Cocoa Sector

A senior COCOBOD official has warned Ghana’s cocoa industry could collapse without immediate action, saying illegal mining has already destroyed more than 100,000 acres of high yield plantations.

Samuel Essuman, Western South Regional Manager for COCOBOD’s Cocoa Health and Extension Division, raised the alarm while addressing farmers at Samahu during the presentation of Gold Fields Ghana Foundation’s Cocoa Farmers Support Programme. He said the losses, concentrated in the Ashanti, Western and Central regions, are already showing up in national output figures. “The reduction in export volumes is limiting foreign exchange earnings,” he said, adding that the shortfall is straining COCOBOD’s ability to settle its own operational debts and fund farmer welfare programmes.

Essuman described galamsey, the local term for illegal mining, as the single biggest threat facing the industry today, precisely because it is undoing work COCOBOD has already paid for. He pointed to a recent project rehabilitating disease affected cocoa farms in the region that had benefited farmers substantially, only for illegal miners to move onto some of those same restored plots. “When you visit some districts, you will be surprised by the extent to which galamsey activities are destroying farms that COCOBOD has invested so much to restore,” he said.

The warning is not a new one, even if the scale keeps growing. COCOBOD has previously said its National Cocoa Rehabilitation Programme, a roughly 4.8 billion cedi effort to revive diseased and moribund farms, has been losing ground to illegal mining for years, with officials citing cases such as 36.5 hectares of newly rehabilitated farmland in the Aowin municipality cut down for mining within a few years of restoration. Abdul-Majid Mumuni, Deputy Executive Director of the Cocoa Health and Extension Division, told farmers at Samahu that cocoa remains one of Ghana’s most important economic commodities and should not be traded away for short term mining income. “There is a future for the cocoa sector, and under no circumstances should farmers give out their cocoa farms for illegal mining activities,” he said, adding that government and COCOBOD are working on stronger sanctions to protect cocoa growing areas.

Robert Wisdom Cudjoe, MP for Prestea Huni-Valley, echoed the appeal, noting that some farmers sell their land to illegal miners for quick cash without weighing what they give up. “The money they take will feed them for a short time, but cocoa is there forever,” he said.

The Samahu event itself illustrates the kind of investment now at risk. Gold Fields enrolled 105 additional farmers this year from Awudua, Huniso, Pepesa, Tebe and Samahu, adding to 100 farmers admitted in 2025, with each beneficiary receiving inputs for a four acre cocoa farm and technical support over three production cycles. The Foundation says it has invested close to 112 million dollars in community development across education, health, agriculture and related sectors, a body of work officials say becomes harder to justify if illegal mining keeps reclaiming the land it is meant to help.

Court Backs GSA’s Container Charge Cap

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Court Backs GSA’s Container Charge Cap

An Accra High Court has dismissed shipping agents’ bid to block Ghana’s Shippers’ Authority from capping container charges at 720 cedis per container, clearing the way for enforcement.

The Ship Owners and Agents Association of Ghana (SOAAG) and several shipping agents had asked the court for an interlocutory injunction to halt the Ghana Shippers’ Authority’s (GSA) Regulatory Directive of May 11, which sets the Container Administrative Charge at a ceiling of 720 cedis per twenty foot equivalent unit. Ruling on Friday, July 10, the court held that the directive had already taken effect the moment it was issued, and that blocking it now would undermine the Authority’s statutory regulatory mandate. That leaves the directive fully valid and operational.

The dispute traces back further than the injunction itself. GSA first notified shipping lines in March that it planned a lower cap of 550 cedis per TEU, due to take effect from May 1, only for Transport Minister Joseph Bukari Nikpe to defer that implementation date to July 1 while approving a 720 cedi interim cap to hold in the meantime. SOAAG members pushed back hard, organising petitions and mobilising a group calling itself the Coalition of Concerned Shipping Line Workers before taking the matter to court on May 22. GSA had promised at the time to mount what it called a spirited defence, describing itself as “unfazed, resilient and committed” to its regulatory role regardless of the legal challenge.

With the injunction dismissed, GSA has ordered every shipping line and agent to comply fully and immediately with the 720 cedi cap, warning that non compliance will trigger enforcement under Sections 36 and 47 of the Ghana Shippers’ Authority Act, 2024 (Act 1122). It has asked importers, exporters, freight forwarders and the wider shipping public to report any breaches through its complaint channels so it can act on them.

The ruling has also opened a new front. The Importers and Exporters Association of Ghana welcomed the decision and is now pressing GSA to force shipping lines to refund any charges collected above 720 cedis per TEU since May 11, when the directive took effect, arguing the money should be paid into a GSA designated account for transparent verification and repayment to affected businesses. The Association has warned that letting shipping lines keep those excess collections would reward non compliance and erode confidence in the regulator. GSA, for its part, has framed the cap as part of a broader push to lower the cost of doing business in Ghana while continuing to describe its relationship with the industry as one built on dialogue rather than confrontation.

Ato Forson To Present Mid-Year Budget July 23

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Ato Forson To Present Mid-Year Budget July 23

Ghana’s Finance Minister will present the 2026 Mid-Year Budget Review to Parliament on Thursday, July 23, with updates on revenue, spending and the exit from the IMF programme.

Deputy Majority Leader Kweku Ricketts-Hagan, MP for Cape Coast South, confirmed the date on the floor of Parliament on Tuesday after a question from First Minority Chief Whip Habib Iddrisu, MP for Tolon, during the weekly business statement. “The date is Thursday, July 23; that is when the Finance Minister will come here to present,” Ricketts-Hagan said, adding that whether Dr Cassiel Ato Forson delivers it as a full statement or another format is a decision that rests with the minister and not something he could pre-empt.

Beyond the usual accounting of revenue, expenditure and macroeconomic targets for the year, the review is expected to update Parliament on Ghana’s transition out of the International Monetary Fund’s Extended Credit Facility programme, which the country completed earlier this year, and into the Fund’s Policy Coordination Instrument, the framework meant to guide macroeconomic policy now that the bailout has ended. The presentation follows the pattern set by Forson’s November 2025 budget statement, themed “Resetting for Growth, Jobs and Economic Transformation,” which reported inflation falling from 23.8 percent in December 2024 to 8 percent by October 2025 and real GDP growth of 6.3 percent in the first half of last year.

This year’s review carries a sharper edge than the usual midpoint check. Last year’s mid-year statement laid out debt service humps of 20 billion cedis in 2026, 50.3 billion in 2027 and 45.75 billion in 2028, alongside a sinking fund meant to smooth those payments, figures Parliament will be watching for signs of whether that schedule still holds. The review also arrives days after the World Bank downgraded Ghana’s Energy Sector Recovery Programme to unsatisfactory, blaming delays by Forson’s own ministry in releasing funds implementing agencies needed to carry out reforms, a finding likely to sharpen Minority questions about the Finance Ministry’s own execution record even as it presents the government’s broader fiscal report card.

As with previous mid-year statements, the presentation is expected to follow Cabinet consultation and a briefing for President John Dramani Mahama before Forson addresses the House. Under Section 28 of the Public Financial Management Act, 2016, the mid-year review is a statutory requirement, and the Majority is expected to defend the government’s record while the Minority presses on expenditure management, revenue shortfalls and fiscal discipline.

World Bank Downgrades Ghana’s Energy Recovery Plan

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World Bank Downgrades Ghana’s Energy Recovery Plan

The World Bank has downgraded Ghana’s Energy Sector Recovery Programme from moderately satisfactory to unsatisfactory, citing Finance Ministry funding delays that have stalled reforms nationwide.

The verdict, in an Implementation Status and Results Report dated June 30, covers a programme the Bank approved in June 2024 and declared effective in March 2025. Two years in, only one of its performance indicators has been fully achieved. The Bank traces most of the shortfall to the Finance Ministry’s repeated failure to issue Commitment Authorizations, the approvals implementing agencies need before they can spend, compounded by new procurement directives and tighter disbursement caps. The stalled list is long. A planned rollout of more than a million smart electricity meters for households and government offices has not moved. Distribution of LPG stove packages to households, schools and caterers has slowed to a crawl, reaching about 38,000 people against a target of 457,000, under 10 percent of the goal.

The financial picture has moved in the wrong direction entirely. Combined losses at the Electricity Company of Ghana (ECG) and the Northern Electricity Distribution Company (NEDCo) have grown to roughly 1.5 billion dollars, nearly three times the 525 million dollar figure the programme was meant to reach by the end of 2027. ECG’s own collection efficiency has slipped to 85 percent, below the 86 percent starting point and further from the 93 percent the programme targets for 2027. An electronic invoicing system meant to improve billing accuracy with independent power producers remains unbuilt for lack of funding, and only a fifth of ECG’s operating districts have adopted the new energy accounting system meant to tighten revenue monitoring. ECG did clear one benchmark, publishing its audited 2025 accounts in May, though the Bank noted the statements still are not posted on the company’s own website. A customer satisfaction survey has been completed but sits unpublished in draft form, again for lack of released funds.

Ghana’s transmission operator has run into the same wall. GRIDCo has been unable to hire consultants to build its Security Constrained Economic Dispatch methodology, a system meant to ensure the country draws power from its cheapest plants first, because the necessary funding was never approved. Without it, the Bank said, Ghana keeps paying more for generation than it needs to.

The downgrade lands alongside a separate warning from the IMF in May that ECG cannot fix its finances without changing its underlying business model, reviving a long running debate over bringing in private participation in electricity distribution. Government has since ordered a nationwide audit of electricity infrastructure. Money has not been the missing ingredient at the macro level. Despite adding a one cedi levy on petroleum products in 2025, government still transferred 12.9 billion cedis, roughly 830 million dollars, from the budget to cover energy sector payments that year, a bill the Bank argues would shrink if the reforms it is financing actually moved forward. Neither the Ministry of Energy and Green Transition nor the Ministry of Finance responded to requests for comment on the downgrade. The Bank maintains the programme can still recover if coordination between the Finance Ministry and implementing agencies improves and approvals start moving faster than they have so far.

GoldBod Funds Fix For Galamsey Hit Water Plants

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GoldBod Funds Fix For Galamsey Hit Water Plants

GoldBod has signed an 8.4 million cedi deal with Ghana Water Limited to rehabilitate three plants hit by illegal mining, the first phase of a far larger repair bill.

The agreement, covering the Bonsa, Daboase and Sekyere Heman Water Supply Systems in the Western and Central Regions, follows an independent technical assessment GoldBod carried out after Ghana Water Limited’s managing director approached the board for support in October last year. Under the deal, GWL will carry out the physical rehabilitation work while GoldBod’s technical team monitors implementation against agreed standards and timelines. GoldBod chief executive Sammy Gyamfi said the board treated the intervention as part of its statutory sustainability mandate. “This intervention demonstrates our commitment to responsible mining and environmental sustainability,” he said.

The Bonsa plant illustrates how severe the damage has become. Illegal mining along the Bonsa River silted the facility’s intake so badly that Ghana Water shut it down entirely in January 2025, cutting off a plant that normally supplies about 75 percent of potable water to the Tarkwa Nsuaem Municipality. Daboase, which serves parts of the Sekondi Takoradi Metropolis, has not shut down but has absorbed years of rising sediment loads that push up chemical costs and strain equipment, while Sekyere Heman has dealt with recurring breakdowns tied to sludge and silt from its polluted source water.

The three plants are only part of a much bigger problem. Ghana Water’s managing director, Adam Mutawakilu, disclosed last year that siltation has seriously affected at least 17 treatment plants nationwide, including Owabi, Mampong, Kwanyako, Nsawam, Anyinam, Kibi and several others beyond the three covered by this agreement. He put the cost of desilting all of them, aside from Barekese, which alone holds roughly six million cubic metres of silt and needs a separate large scale intervention, at around 300 million cedis. Ghana Water had already spent 64 million cedis dredging Owabi and 13.8 million cedis on Mampong the previous year just to keep those plants running, money Mutawakilu said came at a direct cost to the company’s operations and to consumers. He has also cautioned that galamsey is not the only cause of the siltation crisis, even where it is the most visible one.

Framed against those numbers, GoldBod’s 8.4 million cedis marks a first step rather than a full fix, which is why officials on both sides described it explicitly as phase one of a broader rehabilitation programme. Mutawakilu welcomed the funding as a timely and necessary intervention, noting that the financial demands of restoring the plants had outgrown what Ghana Water could cover from its own revenue, and both institutions said they intend to keep working together to protect water infrastructure as the fight against illegal mining continues.

Gold Fields Hands Over Water System As It Exits Damang

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Gold Fields Hands Over Water System As It Exits Damang

Gold Fields Ghana Foundation and World Vision Ghana have handed over a solar powered water system to Damang, one of the foundation’s last projects before Gold Fields’ exit from the mine.

The Damang Water Supply System, in the Tarkwa Municipality of the Western Region, combines newly drilled and rehabilitated boreholes with a 100 cubic metre reservoir and a solar powered pumping network that has connected more than 200 households while extending dedicated supply to local schools and health facilities. The project grew out of a 2024 memorandum of understanding between the two organisations, with Gold Fields Ghana Foundation covering the bulk of a budget reported at between 270,000 and 340,000 dollars. “Access to clean water has the power to transform lives,” said Tinah Mukunda, National Director of World Vision Ghana, at the handover ceremony.

The timing gives the project a different weight than a routine donation. Gold Fields no longer operates the Damang Mine. After the company’s 30 year lease expired, the government declined to renew it and instead ran a tender restricted to companies wholly owned by Ghanaian citizens, a contest won by Engineers and Planners, the firm led by Ibrahim Mahama, brother of President John Dramani Mahama. The formal handover of the mine took place in April, ending Gold Fields’ operations at the site. Foundation officials have previously described projects completed since then, including this one, as among the last the Foundation will deliver to Damang host communities as its presence in the area winds down, though the Foundation has said it remains willing to support the community further if needed.

Abdel-Razak Yakubu, Executive Secretary of the Gold Fields Ghana Foundation, said the water project reflects a strategy of creating lasting value rather than treating community investment as a one off gesture, arguing it shows what is possible when the private sector and development partners align around a community’s actual needs. To guard against the system falling into disrepair once outside support ends, a local Water and Sanitation Committee has been trained to manage operations, set up revenue collection and monitor water quality independently. Moses Asumaku, the committee’s secretary, said the project answers one of the community’s most pressing needs and thanked both organisations for the investment.

The Damang handover follows a smaller water project the Foundation completed for the nearby Mehuntem community in February, part of a stated commitment to finish its remaining host community projects even as its role in the area comes to a close.

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