Vice President, Dr. Alhaji Mahamudu Bawumia, brought this to the fore at the Bambawiya Islamic Institute’s 21st Qur’anic recitation, and end of the 2017 Tafsir, held at Shishegu in the Sagnarigu district.

According to him, government is leaving no stone unturned in its quest to invest in the education sector.

This forms part of government’s commitment to improve the education sector as plans are also far advanced to restore the Arabic instructors’ allowances, which was scrapped by the previous government.

He reassured Ghanaians that the free Senior High School policy has come to stay, for which reason parents and guardians should take advantage of it to educate their children to be responsible citizens.

Dr. Alhaji Bawumia cited the planting for food and jobs, the Zongo Development Fund among others, as policies being initiated to improve the well-being of the masses.

“We want inclusive development and not individual development so that we can move forward and develop this country,” he stressed.

He admitted that, youth unemployment remained government’s major headache, but quickly reassured that the problem will be solved.

He reiterated President Nana Addo’s passion about northern region’s development, and promised that the deplorable road network and water crises will be solved.

He said government will sustain the planting for food and jobs at all cost, to boost agriculture, which is the economic mainstay of most rural dwellers.

He said the 2018 budget will capture more pro- poor government programmes required for socio-economic growth.

Vice President, Dr. Alhaji Mahamudu Bawumia, pledged 10 laptops for the Bambawiya Islamic Institute.

The Bambawiya Islamic Institute in a citation extolled Dr. Alhaji Mahamudu Bawumia under whose watch as leader of government’s economic management team, the economy has stabilized.

A portion of the citation read as, “Dr. Alhaji Mahamudu Bawumia, you are an inspiration to the youth, an exemplary and a dependable Muslim leader.”

The National Chief Imam, Dr. Sheikh Alhaji Nuhu Sharabutu, prayed for the nation’s peace and unity.

Spiritual leader and Proprietor of the Bambawiya Islamic Institute, Dr. Sheikh Alhaji Mohammed Lukman Bamba commended the vice President for his political campaigns, devoid of hate speech in the run-up to the 2016 general elections.

Sheikh Lukman Bamba further praised government for the Zongo Development Fund initiative.

He prayed for God’s guidance and protection for Nana Addo’s government to deliver on its campaign promises.

As an annual event, it brought together Muslim Clerics from across West Africa, government officials and Muslim ummah.
–

By; Abdul Karim Naatogmah/citifmonline.com/Ghana

The post Gov’t to recruit 3,000 Arabic instructors appeared first on Citi 97.3 FM - Relevant Radio. Always.

This according to President of policy think tank IMANI Ghana, Franklin Cudjoe is because the country lacks the infrastructure to implement the idea in the short and medium term.

“We cannot begin to make it look like obviously a wholesale thing. Why not probably Hausa and even if I suggest Hausa it’s to suggest again that there is even space for it to be taught across board. I think the infrastructure we have now cannot support this in the short to medium term. I don’t think we are ready, we are dealing with too many rudimentary things, and chief of staff is my good friend and I’ll probably be telling him this in his face,” he said on Citi FM’s news analysis programme, The Big Issue on Saturday.

[contextly_sidebar id=”uhdZstktgNDQnKVLV5TgZprwk2KE5LJX”]The Chief of Staff, Julius Debrah that announced that government intends to make Arabic an examinable subject at the Senior High School level in 2017 and the basic level in 2018.

The IMANI boss on The Big Issue urged government not to rush in implementing the idea.

“The whole idea that there may be career paths for technical jobs in the Arab world or career diplomats may be aspirational but really we conducted the JSS here in this country, the JSS are supposed to have workshops, they never did. That is where the wretched of the poor from our educational leader actually end up. So we are not even treating technical education that well. Do we really want to pile up? This is non-quantifiable,” he added.

Arabic already an examinable SHS subject

Meanwhile, a former Director General of the Ghana Education Service (GES), Mr Michael Kenneth Nsowah has said the subject is already examinable.

Speaking on the Citi Breakfast Show on Friday [November 11], Mr Nsowah said, “already included in the SHS curriculum is Arabic and in actual fact students for this year wrote Arabic on the 29th of March… it is already there so the issue that they are going to be introduced to the curriculum; it is already there.”

–

By: Godwin A. Allotey/citifmonline.com/Ghana
Follow @AlloteyGodwin

The post Ghana not ready for ‘wholesale’ Arabic study – IMANI Ghana appeared first on Citi 97.3 FM - Relevant Radio. Always.

The Chief of Staff, Julius Debrah,during an interaction with the Muslim Community at Nsawam Zongo, as part of his campaign tour of the Eastern Region said “President Mahama has agreed that, from 2017, Senior High School students will study Arabic like they do in the English language.”

[contextly_sidebar id=”CT40XcumwiilzBGjDbMhnMyQegfvOCfj”]But speaking on Eyewitness News, Spokesperson for the Flagbearer of the NPP, Mustapha Hamid who lauded the initiative, however wondered how the NDC would implement this policy since it was not their original idea but that of the NPP’s.

“It is the usual panic reaction of copying everything the NPP says or puts in its manifesto and because it is not their original idea, they do not know the dynamics that are involved, they have not thought about it , they speak about it in ways that are unfathomable. We have it in our manifesto so it is very clear that it was after our manifesto came that they thought about it”

Mr. Hamid also raised doubts about the possibility of the programme fully taking force in 2017, saying “ from next year, they are going to begin the teaching of Arabic in JHS and SHS but I don’t know how they are going to do that next year because you need to do the training of teachers, you need to do the recruitment of teachers and since it is not their idea, I do not know how they are going to do that. “

Some stakeholders in the educational sector have since the announcement raised questions as to why government is taking such a move when there are other languages such as Chinese and French that they can make examinable in schools.

But Mr. Hamid defended the decision, saying “there are more speakers of Arabic in Ghana than there are speakers of French”

“If French is examinable I don’t see why Arabic should not be examinable. Arabic is also the language of Islam and because it is the language of Islam, thousands of Muslim children study Arabic willy nilly. It also a subject at the University of Ghana and those who study the language are required to study the subject so if it is an optional subject it helps .”

–
By: Marian Ansah/citifmonline.com/Ghana
Follow @EfeAnsah

The post NDC copied our Arabic language idea – NPP appeared first on Citi 97.3 FM - Relevant Radio. Always.

This was announced by the Chief of Staff, Julius Debrah, when he interacted with the Muslim Community at Nsawam Zongo, as part of his campaign tour of the Eastern Region.

“President Mahama has agreed that, from 2017, Senior High School students will study Arabic like they do in the English language and we will introduce it at the basic level in 2018 and make it examinable.”

[contextly_sidebar id=”4e2VlyCilJ9iPL13je1d8Ihfp80Zcx3M”]Julius Debrah added that, the Wenchi Teacher Training College has started a programme to train some teachers in the country for that purpose.

“The good news is that, for the first time, we have a Teacher Training College at Wenchi that will train our Arabic teachers to be posted to other schools after completion.”

He also announced several policies to be introduced by President Mahama if given another term in office to enrich the lives of Ghanaians.

“This is not all, under the Islamic education unit, we will have Islamic Junior High Schools and Islamic Junior Technical institutions so that graduates from these schools can be employed in other Arabic countries with the certificates they would acquire. Who will you trust to deliver? Is it the one who is offering you fish, or the one showing you how to fish?”

The Chief of Staff, Julius Debrah, also reiterated calls for the Muslim community in particular, to vote massively for the National Democratic Congress (NDC) and its candidates.

Gov’t to strictly enforce teaching in local languages

The announcement comes on the back of moves by the Education Ministry to begin the strict enforcement of the use of local languages as the sole medium of instruction in basic schools in Ghana.

The Education Minister, Professor Naana Opoku Agyeman in June 2016 , indicated that, only pupils from kindergarten one to primary three, will be taught mainly with the local languages.

98% of class 2 pupils can’t read English

A research conducted in Ghana in 2014, revealed that 98 percent of primary two pupils in basic schools can neither read nor understand English or any Ghanaian language properly.

This was contained in the “Early Grade Reading Assessment” report commissioned by the Ghana Education Service (GES) for primary two pupils.

–

By: Godwin A. Allotey/citifmonline.com/Ghana
Follow @AlloteyGodwin

The post NDC to make Arabic examinable subject in schools appeared first on Citi 97.3 FM - Relevant Radio. Always.

Flooding cages of normal mosquitoes with the new strain caused a shortage of females and a population crash.

The system works by shredding the X chromosome during sperm production, leaving very few X-carrying sperm to produce female embryos.

In the wild it could slash numbers of malaria-spreading mosquitoes, reports the journal Nature Communications.

Although probably several years away from field trials, other researchers say this marks an important step forward in the effort to produce a genetic control strategy.

Malaria is transmitted exclusively by mosquitoes. Despite reductions brought about by measures such as nets or spraying homes with insecticides, it continues to kill hundreds of thousands of people annually, mostly in sub-Saharan Africa.

The idea of using a “sex-distorting” genetic defect to control pest populations was proposed over 60 years ago, but this is the first time it has been practically demonstrated.

The researchers, led by Prof Andrea Crisanti and Dr Nikolai Windbichler of Imperial College London, transferred a gene from a slime mould into the African malaria mosquito Anopheles gambiae. This gene produces an enzyme called an “endonuclease” which chops up DNA when it recognises a particular sequence.

Genetic markers, like the red fluorescent protein seen here in the eyes of a modified mosquito, were used to confirm the expression of new genes

Prof Crisanti said his team exploited a “fortuitous coincidence”: the target sequence of that endonuclease is found specifically – and abundantly – on the mosquito’s X chromosome. “In Anopheles gambiae, all 350 copies are together, side-by-side on the X chromosome,” he told BBC News.

When sperm are produced normally, in mosquitoes or in humans, 50% contain an X chromosome and 50% a Y chromosome. When they fuse with an egg these produce female and male embryos, respectively.

In the new mosquitoes, the X-attacking endonuclease is turned on specifically during sperm formation. As a result, the males produce almost no X-containing sperm – or female offspring. More than 95% of their progeny are male.

Breaking the cycle

Importantly this change is heritable, so that male mosquitoes pass it on to about half their male progeny. This means if the artificial strain is released into a population – in the lab or in the wild – the trait can spread until most males are only producing male offspring, perhaps eradicating the population altogether.

“It can be a self-sustaining effect,” said Dr Windbichler.

Indeed, in five test cages that started with 50 males and 50 females, when the team introduced 150 of their new sex-distorter males, the number of females plummeted within four generations. After another couple of generations, in four out of five cages, the population died out entirely.

Both these effects are beneficial, Prof Crisanti explained, because only female mosquitoes bite humans and spread malaria. So a drop in female numbers might slow its spread, while a population crash could “break the cycle” of malaria transmission.

Dr Luke Alphey founded the company Oxitec to develop genetic control strategies for harmful insects and has pioneered the use of GM mosquitoes to help control dengue fever. He told the BBC the new research was exciting, but suggested that if used in the wild, this particular sex-distorter strain might not spread indefinitely and would need to be “topped up”.

For a really successful, spreading system to eradicate malaria mosquitoes, “You’d have to get such a system expressed on the Y chromosome,” Dr Alphey said.

The new study’s authors agree this would be much more powerful. “You’d need to release fewer individuals, because all males will inherit the gene from their fathers and pass it on to all their sons – so the effect would not be diluted,” said Dr Windbichler.

“Theoretically, if you have it on the Y,” Prof Crisanti added, “one single individual could knock out an entire population.”

In fact, Dr Windbichler and Prof Crisanti showed in another recent paper that this type of gene insertion on the mosquito Y chromosome is perfectly achievable.

“They haven’t yet put it all together,” Dr Alphey commented, “but all the pieces are in place.”

Dr Alphey also commented that the power of that proposed technique would pose additional questions for researchers and regulators. “In principle, what you get is extinction,” he said.

“Humans have undoubtedly driven a very large number of species to extinction – but we’ve only deliberately done it with two: smallpox and rinderpest. Would we want to do that with Anopheles gambiae?”

Dr Alphey’s answer to his own question appears to be “maybe”.

“If this species were to suffer a population crash, it’s hard to see how significant negative side-effects might arise,” he explained. “The mosquitoes are not keystone species in their ecosystems. And this technique only affects one species, Anopheles gambiae, among more than 3,000 known species of mosquitoes.”

“If we rely instead on pesticide control we would likely kill non-malarial mosquitoes and many other insects besides. The genetic approach is much more precise.”

Crisanti and Windbichler think that extinction is unlikely, even with the proposed Y chromosome-driven system, but agree that caution is warranted. “There are a lot of tests to run through,” Dr Windbichler said.

“We are still a couple of years from this being applied in the field. It’s very promising but there’s still a long way to go.”

Dr Michael Bonsall, a reader in zoology at the University of Oxford, said the new research was “super cool” and demonstrated “just how important these sorts of GM technologies are at reducing insect vector population sizes.”

“This has important implications for limiting the spread of malaria,” Dr Bonsall said, though he also noted that it was “a long way from being deployed.”

To begin testing the safety and efficacy of the sex-distorter strains on a bigger scale, Prof Crisanti’s team has built a large facility in Italy. “We have big, contained cages in which we can reproduce a tropical environment – and we can test several hypotheses on a very large scale.”

Meanwhile, he and his colleagues are pleased to have developed such a promising genetic weapon against malaria using the elusive sex-distortion mechanism, proposed many years ago.

“One of the first people to suggest it was the famous British biologist Bill Hamilton, while he was actually here at Imperial as a lecturer for a while,” commented Dr Windbichler. “So it was theorised 60 years ago, but never put in practice.”

The Life Scientific, broadcast at 9am on Tuesday 10th June, featured malaria researcher Professor Janet Hemingway.

Source: BBC

The post GM lab mosquitoes may aid malaria fight appeared first on Citi 97.3 FM - Relevant Radio. Always.