LATEST ARTICLES

Ibrahim Says Netflix Exec Rejected Her Ghana Script

News Ghana
-
0
Ibrahim Says Netflix Exec Rejected Her Ghana Script

Ghanaian actress and Reffa Awards director Selassie Ibrahim says a former Netflix Nigeria executive rejected one of her scripts because it didn’t match his own cultural perspective.

Speaking at the Reffa 2026 Masterclass at Silverbird Cinema, Accra Mall, Ibrahim said the executive suggested after reviewing her script that the story be told from his viewpoint instead. She said she pushed back, arguing that Ghanaian stories need to be told from a Ghanaian perspective to preserve their authenticity, and that reshaping a story to fit another culture’s interpretation risks undermining its originality.

“I’m a Ghanaian, and I’m trying to tell you where I come from,” she said, recalling her response to the executive, and adding that a story failing to resonate with someone else’s culture doesn’t make it wrong.

She also addressed backlash she received after questioning aspects of Nigerian cultural representation, including dressing, in productions depicting Ghanaian stories.

Ibrahim moved to Nigeria in 2013 for its larger entertainment market but said she has kept her Ghanaian identity central to her work, including by speaking Ewe and Twi whenever she appears in Nigerian productions, as a way of preserving her cultural roots.

She called on African creatives to be intentional about protecting their cultural identities even as they pursue collaboration across the continent’s film industry, a theme she has raised before, including past criticism of Ghana’s reliance on Nigerian audiences for online views and a Reffa partnership with Rock Studios to fund Ghanaian-rooted scripts for platforms such as DStv.

Court Backs Police Action On Cheddar’s Hotel

News Ghana
-
0
Court Backs Police Action On Cheddar’s Hotel

An Accra court has authorised police to help a UK firm take possession of Osu’s No. 1 Oxford Street Hotel, tied to businessman Nana Kwame Bediako’s disputed multimillion-dollar debt.

Justice Samuel Faraday Johnson of the Commercial Division of the High Court in Accra issued the order on July 21, granting UK-based Cola Holdings Limited and its appointed receiver, Nii Amanor Dodoo, a warrant of police assistance after the company said it had been unable to take control of the property peacefully.

The application was opposed by Kensington Residential Partners 1 Limited (KRP1) through its director, Nana Kwame Bediako, popularly known as Cheddar, but the court dismissed the objections. It found that Cola Holdings had properly registered its security interest at the Collateral Registry and had obtained a Memorandum of No Objection to enforce it.

The court held that under the Borrowers and Lenders Act, 2020, Cola Holdings was entitled to seek police assistance once it could not gain access to the property without resistance, and found KRP1 had not put forward sufficient evidence to block the warrant. It stressed that its decision was limited to the request for police assistance and did not resolve any other claims between the parties.

The case is part of a broader dispute stemming from a roughly $14.9 million judgment the High Court of England and Wales issued against Bediako in January 2025 in favour of Cola Holdings, later registered and enforced in Ghana, with accumulated interest pushing the total liability above $16 million.

Bediako has disputed personal liability for that debt, saying it was contracted by KRP1, a company he co-owns with Azad Cola, the owner of Cola Holdings, rather than by him individually. He has described the UK judgment as obtained under what he calls fraudulent circumstances and said he has instructed lawyers to challenge its enforcement through Ghana’s courts.

The hotel is linked to an Aparthotel project on Oxford Street that was previously financed in part by the International Finance Corporation, with Bediako listed as the project’s contact person in IFC records.

Wontumi’s Conviction Splits Reaction In Ghana

News Ghana
-
0
Wontumi’s Conviction Splits Reaction In Ghana

Ghana’s conviction of opposition chairman Bernard Antwi-Boasiako on illegal mining charges has drawn praise from a civil society group and anger from within his own party.

The Accra High Court’s Criminal Division 4 sentenced Antwi-Boasiako, popularly known as Chairman Wontumi and the NPP’s Ashanti Regional Chairman, to 20 years in prison with hard labour on Monday. Justice Audrey Kocuvie-Tay found him and his company, Akonta Mining Limited, guilty of assigning mineral rights without ministerial approval and facilitating illegal mining on a forest concession near Samreboi in the Western Region. The sentences on the two counts run concurrently, and the court fined both Wontumi and the company. The conviction marks the first jailing of a senior political figure since President John Mahama returned to office.

The Community Focus Foundation Ghana (CFF-Ghana), a civil society organisation, welcomed the sentence in a statement issued the following day, calling it a major step in the fight against illegal mining and evidence that politically connected individuals can be held accountable. The group said years of public perception that influential figures could escape punishment had weakened confidence in Ghana’s natural resource governance.

CFF-Ghana said enforcement must now apply equally regardless of political, social or economic status, calling on the Attorney-General’s office, the Office of the Special Prosecutor, the Ghana Police Service, the Environmental Protection Agency and the Minerals Commission to intensify investigations into illegal mining networks and pursue politicians, business leaders, traditional authorities, public officials and financiers connected to the practice. It also urged stronger enforcement of mining regulations, recovery of proceeds from environmental crimes, and restoration of degraded forests and polluted water bodies, warning that illegal mining continues to threaten food security, public health, biodiversity and community livelihoods. The group added that political parties and their supporters should respect the judicial process, noting that Wontumi retains a constitutional right to appeal.

Not everyone in Wontumi’s own party shared that view. Eastern Regional NPP Chairman Jeff Konadu Addo, speaking to reporters in Koforidua after his own vetting for re-election, called the conviction “a failure of justice,” saying illegal mining, or galamsey, remains widespread across Ghana even though “a lot of people are involved, but Wontumi was particularly picked on these issues.” He said the news was personally painful given his close relationship with Wontumi, and voiced hope that the party would pursue an appeal to the next highest court.

The party’s national organiser, Henry Nana Boakye, said separately that the NPP would not be intimidated and would back Wontumi’s appeal, while his defence lawyer, Bernard Owiredu, told reporters after the judgment, “We are disappointed about the outcome of the trial.”

Konadu Addo, who is seeking another term as Eastern Regional Chairman, said he is prepared to lead the party’s campaign to reclaim parliamentary seats it lost to the governing National Democratic Congress, including Akuapem South and Lower West Akim, and urged fellow aspirants in the regional elections to campaign cleanly to preserve party unity.

Motsepe: African Nation Will Soon Win World Cup

News Ghana
-
0
Motsepe: African Nation Will Soon Win World Cup

CAF President Patrice Motsepe declared Wednesday that an African nation will soon win the World Cup, after nine of the continent’s ten teams reached the 2026 tournament’s knockout stage.

Algeria, Cabo Verde, Côte d’Ivoire, DR Congo, Egypt, Ghana, Morocco, Senegal, South Africa and Tunisia represented Africa at the expanded 48-team tournament. Nine of the ten advanced to the Round of 32, a 90% qualification rate CAF says is the highest in the competition’s history. African nations made up 20.8% of the field but accounted for 28.1% of the teams that reached the knockout rounds, a share CAF said trailed only UEFA’s 40%.

Morocco reached the quarterfinals for a second straight World Cup, following its semifinal run in Qatar in 2022, while Egypt advanced to the Round of 16. Motsepe also praised the campaigns of Cabo Verde, Senegal, Côte d’Ivoire, DR Congo, South Africa, Ghana and Tunisia. “I am very proud of their performances,” he said in a statement, calling the group-stage qualification rate a historic milestone for the continent.

Motsepe said CAF has identified specific areas needing improvement and will convene a conference of national team coaches, technical staff, former players and football experts to review the 2026 campaign and shape recommendations ahead of the 2030 World Cup. He said CAF would continue investing in youth, amateur and professional football across all 54 African member countries to push the continent’s football closer to the global elite.

Speaking separately after the tournament, Motsepe said CAF intends to work with players and stakeholders toward the goal of an African team eventually becoming world champion, while acknowledging that greater investment, planning and development are still needed to close the gap with the sport’s traditional powers.

Court Reserves Judgment In Adetshina Deportation Case

News Ghana
-
0
Court Reserves Judgment In Adetshina Deportation Case

A Cape Town court has reserved judgment on whether to confirm the detention of former Miss Universe Nigeria Chidimma Adetshina as she fights deportation from South Africa.

Adetshina was arrested on June 6 in Cape Town’s Summer Greens area after the Department of Home Affairs alleged she and her minor son were living in the country without lawful immigration status. She appeared again Monday at the Cape Town Regional Court, where the matter was further adjourned, with proceedings now set to continue on August 19.

Her lawyer, Advocate Giles Barclay-Beuthin, has argued Home Affairs failed to prove she poses a flight risk, noting she has offered to surrender her South African passport and that her public profile makes it unlikely she could disappear. Immigration officials have alleged in court filings that she does not hold lawful South African residential status and has knowingly remained in the country unlawfully, contrary to the Immigration Act, allegations that have not been tested at trial.

The case has been complicated by a separate Western Cape High Court ruling that found magistrates lack jurisdiction to issue warrants of arrest for immigration detention, adding uncertainty over how her proceedings can move forward.

Her mother, Anabela Rungo, has faced a parallel legal matter after Home Affairs alleged her South African identity documents were fraudulently obtained; the department withdrew Rungo’s documentation in 2024 after determining it had been improperly issued, and she was later granted bail in a related case.

Adetshina’s situation has drawn hostile public reaction since 2024, when scrutiny of her Nigerian and Mozambican family background during her run for Miss South Africa triggered a wave of xenophobic abuse that led her to withdraw from that competition. Her recent court appearances have again drawn crowds and hostile online commentary, with members of the public confronting her outside court and calling for her to leave the country.

No final decision has been made on whether Adetshina will be deported, and the matter remains before the Cape Town Regional Court.

IBM Confirms Miss After Record Stock Plunge

News Ghana
-
0
IBM Confirms Miss After Record Stock Plunge

IBM confirmed weaker second-quarter results and cut its full-year outlook Wednesday, a week after a surprise warning triggered the steepest one-day stock drop in its history.

Revenue rose 1% to $17.16 billion, missing the roughly $17.58 billion analysts expected, while adjusted earnings per share came in at $2.93 against a $2.97 consensus. Net income fell to $2.17 billion, or $2.30 per share, from $2.19 billion, or $2.36 per share, a year earlier. The figures matched the preliminary numbers IBM disclosed a week earlier.

That earlier disclosure was the real shock. On July 14, IBM’s stock plunged 25% after CEO Arvind Krishna released preliminary results in an investor letter rather than waiting for the scheduled earnings call, the steepest single-day drop in the company’s history, wiping out more than $73 a share as shares fell from $290.23 to $217.07. “These conditions require our teams to execute perfectly, and this quarter we faltered,” Krishna wrote at the time.

Wednesday’s roughly 3% share price gain reflects a market that had already absorbed the bad news; investors focused more on management’s explanation for the shortfall than on figures that were no longer a surprise.

The weakness centred on hardware. Infrastructure revenue fell 7% to $3.8 billion, driven by a 42% collapse in IBM Z mainframe sales, partly offset by a 37% rise in Distributed Infrastructure. Krishna attributed the miss to clients shifting spending toward hardware purchases, including memory chips, ahead of expected price increases, rather than a broader pullback.

CFO James Kavanaugh said the pattern reflects customers building out AI infrastructure rather than abandoning IBM’s software, calling it “as simplistic as that.” He noted IBM itself had built up inventory by about $600 million to get ahead of rising component costs.

Software remained the bright spot, up 5% to $7.8 billion, though still below the $7.88 billion consensus, with Hybrid Cloud revenue up 11% on Red Hat and Data revenue up 19%. Consulting revenue held roughly flat at $5.3 billion.

IBM lowered its full-year constant-currency revenue growth forecast to 4% to 5%, down from more than 5% previously, though it maintained its forecast for free cash flow to rise by more than $1 billion for the year and said it expects annual cost savings above $5.5 billion by year-end. Kavanaugh also pushed back on speculation that IBM should break itself apart, saying the company reviews its portfolio regularly but remains strongest as one company.

Alphabet’s EPS Beat Masks Anthropic Stake Gain

News Ghana
-
0
Alphabet’s EPS Beat Masks Anthropic Stake Gain

Alphabet reported second-quarter earnings per share of $9.11, triple Wall Street’s estimate, largely because a surge in its Anthropic stake’s value flowed through as accounting income.

Alphabet holds roughly a 14% stake in Anthropic, whose valuation rose from $380 billion to $965 billion during the quarter after a $65 billion fundraising round. Under mandatory accounting rules, Alphabet must record that markup, estimated at around $98 billion, as income even though no cash changed hands. Analysts said the gain accounts for most of the gap between the reported EPS and the roughly $2.88 Wall Street had expected.

Alphabet’s shares swung sharply on the news, spiking as high as $353 before falling below $332 and settling near $342, essentially flat, as investors focused on the underlying business rather than the one-time gain.

Stripped of that accounting effect, the operating results were still strong. Revenue rose 24% year-on-year to $119.8 billion, beating the $116.52 billion consensus and marking Alphabet’s 12th straight quarter of double-digit revenue growth. Operating income rose 30%, with operating margin expanding to 34%.

Google Cloud was the standout, with revenue up 82% to $24.8 billion on demand for AI infrastructure and solutions. Cloud’s backlog reached $514 billion, ahead of the roughly $488 billion analysts had projected. Chief Financial Officer Anat Ashkenazi said about 60% of the quarter’s $44.9 billion in capital spending went to servers, with the rest split between data centers and networking equipment.

That capital spending nearly doubled from $22.4 billion a year earlier. Alphabet also completed a $49.6 billion equity offering to help fund the buildout and raised its full-year capital expenditure guidance to $195 billion-$205 billion, up from a previous range of $180 billion-$190 billion.

CEO Sundar Pichai said Cloud continues to add customers quickly. “We’re winning new customers, more than doubling our acquisition velocity year-over-year,” he said, adding that existing clients are spending well beyond their original contracts.

Search and other revenue rose 17% to $63.3 billion, which Pichai attributed to AI-powered search features, though Alphabet did not disclose specific query growth figures. Nearly 90% of Fortune 100 companies now use Gemini Enterprise, Pichai said, and Gemini models now process 22 billion API tokens a minute, up sharply from 16 billion just a quarter earlier, while the Gemini app has grown to 950 million monthly active users.

Not everyone thought the market’s reaction was warranted. Gene Munster, managing partner at Deepwater Management, argued the sell-off overlooked Cloud’s performance. “The Cloud number is the most important number and it was a massive beat,” he said.

White House Accuses Moonshot Of Copying Anthropic’s AI

News Ghana
-
0
White House Accuses Moonshot Of Copying Anthropic’s AI

A top White House official accused Chinese startup Moonshot on Wednesday of copying Anthropic’s Claude Fable 5 and using banned Nvidia chips to build its Kimi K3 model.

Michael Kratsios, Director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, wrote on social media that Moonshot built an internal system for large-scale distillation of American AI models, allowing the company to rotate between different access methods to avoid detection. He described the conduct as “covert industrial distillation aimed at stealing proprietary U.S. technology,” distinguishing it from what he called the legitimate use of distillation to build smaller, more efficient models.

Kratsios also said Moonshot acquired servers equipped with Nvidia’s GB300 chips and accessed additional GB300-equipped infrastructure in Thailand, likely to train its models. The GB300 belongs to Nvidia’s Blackwell generation, which the U.S. bars from export to Chinese companies, though lower-tier chips such as the H200 remain exempt under current rules.

Distillation is a technique in which a smaller model is trained on the outputs of a stronger “teacher” model to reproduce some of its capabilities at a fraction of the computing cost. Kratsios initially described his claims as based on solid evidence before later softening that characterization to describe the material as information, according to reporting on his posts.

The allegation extends an April White House memorandum that described “deliberate, industrial-scale” campaigns by foreign entities, principally in China, to distill U.S. frontier AI systems using tens of thousands of proxies and jailbreaking techniques. It also comes a day after Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said on Fox Business that the administration could consider sanctions against Chinese AI models found to have been built through intellectual property theft.

Anthropic itself raised related concerns in February, saying it had detected extraction campaigns by Moonshot, DeepSeek and MiniMax that involved roughly 24,000 fraudulent accounts and produced more than 16 million exchanges with Claude.

Nvidia said it complies with all applicable export regulations and enforces strict compliance across its sales channels but did not immediately respond to the latest allegations. Moonshot has not publicly responded either.

The dispute follows Moonshot’s July 16 release of Kimi K3, a 2.8-trillion-parameter open-weight model that has drawn significant attention for narrowing the performance gap between Chinese developers and leading American AI labs. Moonshot has said the model ranks behind only OpenAI’s GPT-5.6 and Anthropic’s Claude Fable 5 in its own benchmark testing. The accusation echoes a similar claim made in January 2025, when a different White House official accused DeepSeek of copying OpenAI’s models, an allegation DeepSeek denied.

AMD Signs Multi-Billion Dollar Chip Deal With Anthropic

News Ghana
-
0
AMD Signs Multi-Billion Dollar Chip Deal With Anthropic

AMD agreed Wednesday to supply Anthropic with up to 2 gigawatts of its next-generation AI chips and invest as much as $5 billion in the AI company.

Under the agreement, Anthropic will deploy AMD’s Instinct MI450 Series GPUs, specifically the MI455X chip, inside AMD’s Helios rack-scale systems, paired with AMD’s EPYC “Venice” CPUs and Pensando networking. The chip sales alone are expected to generate tens of billions of dollars in revenue for AMD, with the first gigawatt of capacity coming online in the first half of 2027. AMD’s $5 billion equity stake, its first direct investment in Anthropic, will be paid out over time rather than as a single lump sum.

AMD CEO Lisa Su said building AI infrastructure at this scale requires long lead times. “You actually have to plan 12, 18, 24 months in advance,” she said, describing months of engineering coordination between the two companies ahead of the announcement. Anthropic’s chief compute officer, Tom Brown, said “access to compute is central to keeping Claude at the frontier,” pointing to the deal as a way to secure capacity while optimizing it for Anthropic’s workloads.

The partnership goes beyond hardware. The two companies will use Claude to help optimize workloads for AMD’s chips and speed up development of AMD’s ROCm software platform, while AMD will adopt Claude broadly across its own engineering teams. The deployment builds on Anthropic’s existing use of AMD’s prior-generation MI355X chips.

Barclays analyst Tom O’Malley noted that AMD did not need to issue stock warrants to secure Anthropic’s commitment, unlike some other major AI infrastructure agreements struck in the sector recently, suggesting equity sweeteners may be becoming less necessary as demand for computing capacity keeps outstripping supply. He also said per-gigawatt pricing on AI infrastructure deals continues to climb past the roughly $15 billion seen in earlier agreements, which he attributed to demand for more powerful server processors and expanding compute requirements.

The Anthropic agreement brings AMD’s total announced AI compute commitments to roughly 14 gigawatts across three major AI developers, following an earlier deal under which AMD agreed to supply OpenAI with 6 gigawatts of capacity starting in the second half of 2026. The moves are widely seen as part of AMD’s push to challenge Nvidia’s dominant position in AI chips, though Nvidia continues to hold a significant edge through its established software ecosystem and developer base.

For Anthropic, the deal is the latest in a string of large compute agreements signed this year as it works to secure enough capacity to train and run its Claude models. The company has also agreed to use all the compute capacity at Elon Musk’s SpaceX Colossus data centre in Memphis, worth $1.25 billion a month through May 2029, alongside separate agreements with Amazon and with Google and Broadcom, as demand for AI computing continues to outstrip available supply across the industry.

BoG Reiterates Ban On Spraying Cedi Notes

News Ghana
-
0
BoG Reiterates Ban On Spraying Cedi Notes

Bank of Ghana Governor Johnson Asiama used this week’s rate briefing to reinforce a July 14 notice making it a crime to spray cedi notes at weddings and funerals.

Speaking at the bank’s 131st Monetary Policy Committee press briefing, Asiama said the central bank had taken notice of the growing trend of spraying money at social events and would no longer tolerate the practice. “There is something called spraying at weddings or ceremonies; this act is inappropriate,” he said, describing the cedi as a national symbol that deserves respect.

His comments reinforce a formal notice the Bank of Ghana issued on July 14, declaring that spraying, showering or turning cedi notes into “money bouquets” at weddings, funerals, birthdays and other events is a criminal offence, punishable by arrest, prosecution, fines or imprisonment. The notice, signed by the Bank’s Secretary, Aimee Vyda Quashie, cited the Bank of Ghana Act, 2002, and the Currency Act, 1964, as the legal basis for the restrictions.

The same notice lists other prohibited acts: using banknotes or coins as decorations, jewellery or nail art, scattering them on the ground, dancing or stepping on them during events, and tearing, staining or writing on currency.

The crackdown follows a separate warning the central bank issued days earlier cautioning the public against rejecting cedi coins as legal tender, which it said could also carry criminal penalties. Asiama has flagged the spraying issue before, including a similar reminder around Valentine’s Day this year specifically targeting money bouquets.

The governor said the Bank of Ghana would step up public education and work with other institutions to build compliance with the rules, calling the effort necessary to protect the cedi’s integrity and preserve public confidence in the currency.

123...49,600Page 1 of 49,600