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Very often, male beings are known to be the subjugators of women in different fields; they are pointed to be those who subordinate and manipulate women by hampering their visibility. This paper, however, finds paradoxically that women are at the basis of their own problems. It shows that they are those encouraging the male being’s domination over themselves through their intra-gender subjugation. Therefore, the paper has made use of Amma Darko’s Beyond the Horizon and Emecheta’s Second-Class Citizen to expose, through the interaction of characters, the cultural and the females’ intra-gender subjugation.

As a feminist writer for social justice, Amma Darko exposes various instances of religious exploitation in Ghanaian society in the novel Not without Flowers. This study adds to the corpus of literature that critiques the androcentric organisation of patriarchal African societies, in which patriarchal and religious ideologies are used to institutionalise gender inequality. My argument in this paper is that the fear and anxiety surrounding mental illness, HIV and Aids, or other illnesses provide a fertile ground for religious exploitation and oppression of vulnerable women, as represented in Darko’s novel. My study offers an analysis of how Darko uses her literary work to challenge deeply engrained and culturally sanctioned patriarchal and religious hierarchies of gender-based dominance and cultural valorisation. The main objectives of this article are to explore the religious exploitation and/or stigmatisation of vulnerable women, the human rights violations that occur in religious institutions, as well as how mental illness is considered to be caused by a spiritual force or demonic possession in the selected text.

In an interview from 2016, the Ghanaian novelist Amma Darko reflects on the nature and promise of archives in urban Africa. Through dialogue about the nature and purpose of her fictional NGO MUTE, she comments on what is deemed worthy of preservation and archiving, and what evades the net, and how colonial politics continues to frame these phenomena. The interview takes a fortuitous turn through Toni Morrison's Beloved, and Darko speculates on the idea of rememory as a rubric through which we can understand the layers of socioarchaeology in African cities.

A spherical wave propagates through the strong underwater turbulence media is modeled as gamma–gamma random variable in the underwater wireless optical communication (UWOC) systems. To mitigate turbulence-induced fading, spatial diversity over UWOC links is proposed. Furthermore, the exact bit error rate (BER) expressions for both single-input single-output (SISO) and single-input multiple-output (SIMO) UWOC systems with optimal combining based on on–off keying (OOK) modulation are analytically derived. Then the system performance is simulated with various variations of the underwater turbulence, i.e. the rate of dissipation of kinetic energy per unit mass of fluid, the ratio of temperature to salinity contributions to the refractive index spectrum, and the UWOC system link length. The results show that the analytical expressions for describing the system performance are valid and spatial diversity can considerably improve the system performance.

Since the 1990s, rainfall has been reported to increase over the Gulf of Guinea. In light of the devastating floods that have occurred since then over the coastal areas of this region, this study aims to better characterize the recent trends in precipitation there. We used the Climate Hazards Group InfraRed Precipitation with Station (CHIRPS) product, a new observational rainfall dataset that covers the period 1981−2014 at high resolution and daily time steps. During the first rainy season (April−June), we find that the lack of significant trend observed in mean precipitation hides a trend towards less frequent but more intense rainfall along the coast of the Gulf of Guinea, which is expected to increase the likelihood of flooding and droughts, and fits with the recent increase in devastating floods. Over the north however (between 7° and 12.5° N), rainfall has become more frequent and less intense, which is expected to decrease the likelihood of flooding and droughts. During the second rainy season (September − November), we find that the clear increase in mean precipitation observed between 5° and 12.5°N results from an increase in precipitation intensity and frequency, while over southern Cameroon, the decrease in mean precipitation hides a trend towards less frequent but more intense rainfall. In both seasons, the average duration of wet spells has greatly decreased along the coast, in favor of more numerous and more intense isolated wet days.

Regional climate model (RCM) is a valuable scientific tool to address the mechanisms of regional atmospheric systems such as the West African monsoon (WAM). This study aims to improve our understanding of the impact of some physical schemes of RCM on the WAM representation. The weather research and forecasting model has been used by performing six simulations of the 2006 summer WAM season. These simulations use all combinations of three convective parameterization schemes (CPSs) and two planetary boundary layer schemes (PBLSs). By comparing the simulations to a large set of observations and analysis products, we have evaluated the ability of these RCM parameterizations to reproduce different aspects of the regional atmospheric circulation of the WAM. This study focuses in particular on the WAM onset and the rainfall variability simulated over this domain. According to the different parameterizations tested, the PBLSs seem to have the strongest effect on temperature, humidity vertical distribution and rainfall amount. On the other hand, dynamics and precipitation variability are strongly influenced by CPSs. In particular, the Mellor-Yamada-Janjic PBLS attributes more realistic values of humidity and temperature. Combined with the Kain-Fritsch CPS, the WAM onset is well represented. The different schemes combination tested also reveal the role of different regional climate features on WAM dynamics, namely the low level circulation, the land-atmosphere interactions and the meridional temperature gradient between the Guinean coast and the Sahel.

African women have had a long history of diasporic, exilic, and transnational filmmaking dating back to the earliest African cinematic activities, and for many years there has been an interconnected heritage of African and African diaspora womens perspectives in film criticism and inquiry. I locate my journey as an academic within this tradition. A Ghanaian-born researcher of women in film, I studied in Ghana before relocating to several diasporic spaces for graduate and doctoral studies and research and returning to teach. I obtained my bachelors degree at the University of Ghana. I completed my masters degree in Denmark and doctorate degree at the Swinburne University of Technology, in Australia. Hence, I recognize the need to capitalize on my own Ghanaian diaspora knowledge to offer visibility, document the cinematic experiences of women, and bring Ghanaian perspectives and insights on the work of women filmmakers both in Ghana and locations in the Ghanaian diaspora. What does it mean as a Ghanaian to study and research from within and outside, about Ghanaian/ diaspora women filmmakers? How have my ideas and work been shaped by the academic institutions and program I pursued? How have Ghanaian women engaged in diasporic and transnational filmmaking practices? What have been my experiences in African diaspora communities of my host countries? How has it been for me to teach African diaspora womens film in a Ghanaian context? In this piece, I address these questions with the aim of drawing from my own \"journey\" to contribute to the ongoing conversation on the evolution of African womens transnational film practices and critical inquiry.

In the present work, atmospheric mineral dust from a MACC-II short reanalysis run for 2 years (2007–2008) has been evaluated over northern Africa and the Middle East using satellite aerosol products (from MISR, MODIS and OMI satellite sensors), ground-based AERONET data, in situ PM10 concentrations from AMMA, and extinction vertical profiles from two ground-based lidars and CALIOP satellite-based lidar. The MACC-II aerosol optical depth (AOD) spatial and temporal (seasonal and interannual) variability shows good agreement with those provided by satellite sensors. The capability of the model to reproduce the AOD, Ångström exponent (AE) and dust optical depth (DOD) from daily to seasonal time-scale is quantified over 26 AERONET stations located in eight geographically distinct regions by using statistical parameters. Overall DOD seasonal variation is fairly well simulated by MACC-II in all regions, although the correlation is significantly higher in dust transport regions than in dust source regions. The ability of MACC-II in reproducing dust vertical profiles has been assessed by comparing seasonal averaged extinction vertical profiles simulated by MACC-II under dust conditions with corresponding extinction profiles obtained with lidar instruments at M'Bour and Santa Cruz de Tenerife, and with CALIOP. We find a good agreement in dust layers structures and averaged extinction vertical profiles between MACC-II, the lidars and CALIOP above the marine boundary layer from 1 to 6 km. Surface dust daily mean concentrations from MACC-II reanalysis has been evaluated with daily averaged PM10 at three monitoring stations of the Sahelian Dust Transect. MACC-II correctly reproduces daily to interannual surface dust concentration variability, although it underestimates daily and monthly means all year long, especially in winter and early spring (dry season). MACC-II reproduces well the dust variability recorded along the station transect which reflects the variability in dust emission by different Saharan sources, but fails in reproducing the sporadic and very strong dust events associated to mesoscale convective systems during the wet season.