The trip by President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo to Belgrade, Serbia to attend the 60th anniversary ceremony of the founding of the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) is one of the trending stories in the Ghanaian press on Monday.
The Ghanaian Times reports that President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, left the country yesterday to attend the 60th anniversary ceremony of the founding of the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM), which is being held in Belgrade, Serbia.
The NAM is a forum of 120 developing states that are not formally aligned with any major power bloc. After the United Nations, it is the largest grouping of states worldwide.
Ghana’s first President, Dr Kwame Nkrumah, was one of the five historic founding fathers of the Movement, together with Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru of India, President Ahmed Sukarno of Indonesia, President Gamel Abdel Nasser of Egypt, and President Josip Broz Tito of the then Yugoslavia, who launched the Movement in Belgrade.
The Government of Serbia is organising a commemorative event in Belgrade on October 11 and 12 to mark the 60th anniversary of the first NAM Conference in Belgrade.
Whilst attending the conference, President Akufo-Addo will deliver a statement on the floor reaffirming Ghana’s commitment to the principles of the movement. The President will hold bilateral talks with his Serbian counterpart, AleksandarVučić, aimed at strengthening the ties of co-operation between the two countries. He is also expected to meet the Prime Minister of Algeria and the Foreign Minister of Saudi Arabia, on the sidelines of the Conference, to discuss matters of mutual interest.
The President was accompanied by the Minister for Foreign Affairs, Ms Shirley Ayorkor Botchwey; the daughter of Ghana’s first President, MsSamia Nkrumah, the former Member of Parliament for Jomoro and former Chairperson of the Convention People’s Party; and officials of the Presidency and Foreign Ministry.
The President will return to Ghana on Tuesday, October 12, 2021, and in his absence, the Vice President, Dr Mahamudu Bawumia, shall, in accordance with Article 60(8) of the Constitution, act in his stead.
The newspaper says that German Heart Center, Berlin, co-foundered by Ghanaian world renowned Senior Consultant Cardiothoracic and Vascular Surgeon, Professor Charles Yankah, has been ranked among the top 10 world best hospitals in cardiac surgery.
This is contained in a global survey of medical professionals published in the October 8, 2021 edition of the Newsweek, the American weekly news magazine, that ranked 150 world acclaimed heart centres.
The Centre, Deutsches Herzzentrum Berlin, was founded in 1986 as a supra-regional high-tech heart center to serve all Germans and the global community in general.
The centre is globally acclaimed for performing, among others, artificial heart programmes, especially for children, heart transplant and non-invasive telemetric rejection monitoring, heart valve replacement without opening the chest, key-hole heart surgery, performing 5,000 heart operations annually, of which 3,500 are open heart procedures.
“The ranking as a top ten global centre of excellence is a great achievement and a reward for the dedicated heart teams and leadership of the Berlin Heart Centre for their hard work to offer the best treatment and care for their national and international patients and to sharing their clinical experiences with Africa and around the world,” Prof Yankah told the Ghanaian Times by phone on Friday.
“It is great reward for the hard work we have been doing over the years,” Prof. Yankah said, adding “I am retired, but active in providing on-site training programmes in Ghana and online education (23 webinar2020/21) for physicians around the world, especially to Africans who wish to become cardiologists and heart surgeons,” the Cape Coast-born world renowned heart surgeon said.
“Cardiovascular diseases are prominent, especially in Africa, I hope to train more doctors to face the challenges we are anticipating in future; we have to train new generation of cardiologists to prepare for the future,” he added.
The Ghanaian Times also reports that a Senior Lecturer at the University of Ghana Business School, Dr Kobby Mensah, has urged the government to strengthen the implementation of the National Public Sector Reform Strategy (NPSRS) at the various Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs).
He said despite the introduction of the NPSRS in 2018, to among other things, guarantee the delivery of high quality services in the public sector, public sector performance in Ghana still remains largely unsatisfactory.
Dr Mensah said this last week Friday in Accra, at the launch of the Customer Experience Professionals (CXP)-Ghana Association. The CXP which was founded in 2020 is a non-profit organisation dedicated to the advancement and cultivation of CXP in Ghana.
Dr Mensah said, the NPSRS was a good strategy to drive service orientation in the public sector, but the strategy had over the years not really impacted in the delivery performance in the public sector, due to the inadequate efforts by the government to enforce the strategy.
“Today, the world economy has taken a departure from the 1980s and 1990s manufacturing plants to a digitally dominant, service oriented one where consumers are paying increasing attention to experience in goods, services and ideas markets. This means the application of traditional concepts, which were developed around the manufacturing regime, to guide the continuous improvement of modern enterprises is almost unsustainable. Hence, the emergence and the call for new frameworks consistent with modern consumer demands in service.
“It is therefore necessary for stakeholders in business to continuously review and engage new management models that could foster sustainable business environment,” Dr Mensah said.
The newspaper says that the Black Stars of Ghana revived their FIFA 2022 World Cup in Qatar chances when they thrashed the Warriors of Zimbabwe in a qualifier at the Cape Coast Sports Stadium on Saturday.
Ajax Amsterdam playmaker Kudus Mohammed and Arsenal’s midfield enforcer Thomas Partey reinforced their influence on the team’s performance with both scoring in the 3-1 win over Zimbabwe in the qualifier.
The Group G affair, which was put beyond the visitors after captain Andre Ayew scored Ghana’s third goal with a knock-down header, still has Ghana trailing leaders South Africa after the Bafana Bafana earned a vital 3-1 win away in Addis Ababa against Ethiopia.
The win, extended South Africa’s lead to seven points, a point better than Ghana with six points and lie second with three rounds of matches to end the qualifiers.
Ethiopia and Zimbabwe follow in third and fourth places with three and one points, respectively.
Just as goals from Partey and Kudus set Ghana on course for the African Cup of Nations (AFCON) qualification in December 2019 against South Africa with a 2-0 win, the duo repeated the dosage and matched it with displays that established their readiness to accept the mantle as leading figures of the team.
Partey post-match remarked that he was ready to sacrifice whenever he appeared for the Stars when he was asked a question about his preferred role.
“I don’t mind defending or attacking every time I play for Ghana. I don’t mind sacrificing and playing in any position.”
It was also a joyous moment for returnee coach, Serbian Milovan Rajevac who marked his first official game in charge with a win and a decent performance.
An elated Rajevac described the win as an ‘excellent result’, applauding the performance of his team. He acknowledged that the Stars rode some lucky moments at certain points in the game but ultimately the hard work of the team shone through.
GIK/APA