The research, conducted by Francis Agyei of the Fred N. Binka School of Public Health at the University of Health and Allied Sciences in Ho, Ghana, synthesizes findings from the Ga Mashie Mental Health Competence Project. The underlying study was methodologically substantial. It combined a community survey of 384 residents with qualitative inquiry involving 77 participants, drawing on individual and key-informant interviews, focus groups, and situated conversations embedded in the daily life of the two historic Accra neighborhoods, collectively known as Ga Mashie. Ethical approval came from the Ethics Committee for Humanities of the University of Ghana, and the published paper is an integrative synthesis of that approved project rather than a collection of new participant data.

The central concept anchoring the work is community mental health competence, an idea that reframes what a community can do for its own psychological wellbeing. Instead of locating all expertise in professionals and clinics, this perspective asks how communities come to understand mental health problems, how they legitimize conversations about distress, and how they mobilize support and collective action. It is a shift from the individual and biomedical models that have dominated many intervention programs toward one that recognizes local knowledge, social networks, group identities, participation, and the material conditions that shape mental health in the first place.

What makes the new paper distinctive is the way it converts this broad vision into a structured, testable architecture. By mapping recurrent empirical mechanisms observed in Ga Mashie onto distinct but interacting levels of community capability, Agyei derives five interconnected competence domains: representational, relational, identity, participatory, and structural competence. Each domain captures a different layer of what makes a community psychologically resourceful, and each interacts with the others in ways the framework makes explicit.

Representational competence concerns how mental health is understood and legitimized within a community. In practice, this means the shared ideas that determine whether distress is spoken about openly, attributed to spiritual causes, framed as illness, or hidden behind stigma. A community whose dominant representations allow people to name their suffering without shame has a fundamentally different starting point for intervention than one where silence prevails. The framework treats these shared understandings as a form of collective capability that can be assessed and strengthened, rather than as a cultural backdrop to be worked around.

Relational competence addresses trust, social capital, and supportive ties, the connective tissue that determines whether someone in crisis actually receives help. Identity competence, meanwhile, examines the enabling and exclusionary effects of group membership. Belonging to a church group, a fishing crew, or a kin network can provide meaning, obligation, and practical support, but the same boundaries can exclude outsiders, migrants, or those whose behavior marks them as different. Participatory competence describes the process by which shared concern and critical consciousness are converted into collective action, the mechanism that turns residents who worry about a problem into residents who organize around it.

The fifth domain, structural competence, extends the framework beyond the community itself. It concerns the capacity to build alliances, secure resources, and act on the wider institutional and socioeconomic determinants of mental health, from housing policy to employment to the design of health services. This is a deliberate corrective to interventions that focus exclusively on intra-community dynamics while leaving the structural drivers of distress untouched. A community can be internally cohesive and still be overwhelmed by forces it cannot control alone; structural competence names the capability to reach outward and negotiate with those forces.

To demonstrate the framework’s practical value, the paper walks through a worked example showing how it can guide intervention design from community diagnosis through co-production, implementation, and policy linkage. Rather than importing a standardized program, practitioners using this roadmap would begin by assessing each competence domain in a specific community, identifying where understanding, trust, identity, participation, or structural connection is strong or weak. Interventions would then be co-produced with residents, implemented with attention to the interactions among domains, and linked to policy processes that address upstream determinants. The sequence is designed to be empirically grounded and culturally responsive rather than prescriptive.

The significance of the work lies partly in its evidence base. Mixed-method research of this kind, combining a survey of nearly four hundred residents with rich qualitative material from dozens of interviews and group discussions, allows the framework to claim empirical grounding rather than purely theoretical derivation. The five domains emerged from recurrent mechanisms observed in real community life, then were integrated with two established scholarly traditions: the social psychology of participation and the community mental health competence literature. That synthesis gives the framework a dual pedigree, connecting the study of why people engage in collective action with the study of how communities support psychological wellbeing.

For global mental health, the implications are considerable. Resource-limited settings cannot wait for specialist services to scale to need, and community-based interventions are widely promoted as the answer. Yet many such programs remain dominated by individual-level models and overlook precisely the social and material realities that the Ga Mashie study places at the center. By offering a structured vocabulary for what communities already do and could do better, the five-domain framework provides researchers and practitioners with a roadmap that respects local knowledge while remaining rigorous enough to guide evaluation. As community mental health moves to the forefront of global policy conversations, work like this suggests that the most sustainable resource for mental wellbeing may already exist within neighborhoods themselves, waiting to be recognized, organized, and connected to the wider structures that shape their lives.

Subject of Research: Community mental health competence and participatory intervention frameworks in resource-limited settings

Article Title: Strengthening community mental health competence in resource limited settings through a participatory multilevel framework

Article References: Agyei, F. (2026). Strengthening community mental health competence in resource limited settings through a participatory multilevel framework. Discover Mental Health. https://doi.org/10.1007/s44192-026-00625-y

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1007/s44192-026-00625-y

Keywords: community mental health, mental health competence, participation, social capital, social identity, structural competence, Ghana, Accra, community psychology, global mental health, mixed methods, intervention design

The research team, led by Kasim Abdulai of the University of Cape Coast’s Translational Nutrition Research Group, surveyed 392 adults living with type 2 diabetes at the 37 Military Hospital in Accra between May and October 2024. Participants were recruited through systematic random sampling, and the study’s methodology followed the STROBE reporting guidelines for observational research. Nutritional knowledge was measured with the 24-item Diabetes Knowledge Questionnaire, a validated instrument covering the essentials of carbohydrate management, meal timing, and food choices for people living with diabetes. Dietary behavior, in turn, was assessed with the Summary of Diabetes Self-Care Activities scale, a widely used tool that asks patients how many days per week they actually performed specific self-care behaviors, including following their recommended diet.

The headline numbers reveal a striking asymmetry between minds and mouths. Fully 74.4 percent of participants demonstrated what the researchers classified as good knowledge of diabetes nutrition, scoring at or above 70 percent on the knowledge questionnaire. Yet only 68.4 percent achieved good dietary practice, defined as adhering to the recommended diet at least four days per week, a threshold the authors deliberately calibrated to reflect the realities of resource-constrained food environments rather than idealized clinical standards. That yields a population-level knowledge-practice gap of six percentage points. More revealing still is what the team calls the individual-level Failure to Translate rate: among the 292 patients who possessed good knowledge, 64, or 21.9 percent, nonetheless ate poorly. Roughly one in five informed patients could not convert understanding into action.

To understand why, the researchers organized the barriers patients reported using the Socio-Ecological Model, a framework that maps health behavior across nested levels, from individual psychology up through household, community, and structural forces. The results paint a picture of obstruction at every layer. At the broadest level, 84.6 percent of participants said the foods their diets required were simply unavailable in local markets. At the level of taste and culture, 65.9 percent found the prescribed clinical diet unpalatable, a barrier that speaks to a deep mismatch between standard dietary advice and traditional Ghanaian cuisine. Financial constraints affected 60.1 percent of respondents, while within the health system itself, 54.8 percent cited long outpatient waiting times and 50.5 percent reported inconsistent access to dietitians.

The statistical core of the study is a multivariable logistic regression that isolates the independent predictors of good dietary practice while adjusting for confounding factors. Good nutritional knowledge emerged as a genuine asset: patients with strong knowledge had 2.80 times higher odds of adhering to their diet than those without it, with a 95 percent confidence interval of 1.61 to 4.16. But knowledge, the analysis showed, operates within a web of constraints that can neutralize it. Patients whose daily household income fell below 100 Ghanaian cedis, roughly 6.70 US dollars at the time of the study, had only 0.54 times the odds of adherence, a statistically significant reduction with a confidence interval of 0.31 to 0.94. The absence of family support cut the odds nearly in half again, at 0.48, with a confidence interval of 0.26 to 0.89 and a p-value of 0.019.

The model behind these estimates passed a battery of diagnostic tests that lend the findings credibility. The Hosmer-Lemeshow goodness-of-fit test returned a p-value of 0.554, indicating no significant departure between observed and predicted outcomes. The mean variance inflation factor of 1.24 signaled minimal multicollinearity among predictors, meaning each variable contributes distinct information. And the area under the receiver operating characteristic curve reached 0.76, a level of discriminative capacity the authors characterize as strong for a behavioral model. In plain terms, the model distinguishes adherent from non-adherent patients considerably better than chance, and its conclusions rest on solid statistical footing.

What makes this study compelling is not merely its numbers but the story they tell about the anatomy of behavior change. For decades, diabetes education programs in low- and middle-income countries have operated on an implicit assumption borrowed from older health psychology: that information is the primary driver of action. The Accra data dismantle that assumption with unusual precision. Knowledge does matter, nearly tripling the odds of adherence, but its effect is systematically attenuated by forces no individual patient can control. A woman who understands perfectly which carbohydrates spike her glucose cannot follow that advice if the appropriate foods never reach her neighborhood market. A man who can recite the dietary guidelines from memory cannot shop for them on less than seven dollars a day while feeding an entire household.

The family support finding deserves particular attention, because it locates diabetes care where it is actually lived: at the dinner table. In Ghanaian households, as in much of the world, meals are communal affairs, and the person with diabetes rarely controls what is cooked or served. When family members understand and accommodate the dietary regimen, the patient’s odds of adherence nearly double. When they do not, the patient faces a daily negotiation between medical advice and household solidarity, a contest that the statistics suggest the medical advice frequently loses. This reframes dietary adherence not as an individual virtue but as a household achievement, with direct implications for how counseling should be designed and delivered.

The unpalatability barrier is equally instructive and, in some respects, the most fixable. Clinical diets are often designed around generic nutritional targets with little regard for culinary tradition, and the finding that two-thirds of patients found their prescribed diets unappetizing points to a design failure rather than a patient failure. The authors argue for culinarily competent, culturally tailored dietary counseling, an approach that would work with Ghanaian foodways rather than against them, adapting staple dishes and cooking methods to meet glycemic goals while preserving the flavors and textures that make a diet sustainable over years rather than weeks.

The policy implications reach well beyond Accra. The study’s central conclusion, that theoretical knowledge is necessary but insufficient when structural and socioeconomic barriers remain unaddressed, challenges health systems everywhere to shift resources from generic patient education toward targeted nutritional safety nets. That could mean subsidizing diabetes-appropriate foods, strengthening supply chains so recommended items actually appear in local markets, and integrating dietitians more reliably into outpatient care to reduce the waiting times and inconsistent access patients reported. As type 2 diabetes continues its relentless expansion across Africa and other rapidly urbanizing regions, the Accra findings offer both a warning and a roadmap: the battle against diabetes will not be won in lecture halls, but in markets, kitchens, and household budgets, where knowledge finally meets the means to use it.

Subject of Research: Multi-level barriers to dietary adherence among adults with type 2 diabetes in Accra, Ghana

Article Title: Bridging the know-do gap in diabetes care: multi-level barriers to dietary adherence among adults with type 2 diabetes in Accra, Ghana—a cross-sectional study

Article References: Abdulai, K., Addae-Mensah, I., Aidoo, A. K., Kafui, E. A., Seidu, A. M., Jibril, A. T., & Adane, F. (2026). Bridging the know-do gap in diabetes care: multi-level barriers to dietary adherence among adults with type 2 diabetes in Accra, Ghana—a cross-sectional study. BMC Public Health. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12889-026-29500-9

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1186/s12889-026-29500-9

Keywords: type 2 diabetes, dietary adherence, knowledge-practice gap, Ghana, nutrition, Socio-Ecological Model, food insecurity, family support, public health, diabetes education, Accra, cross-sectional study

The research team, led by Charles Kwofie of the University of Energy and Natural Resources with colleagues from the University of Ghana and the University of Professional Studies, used a technique known as a discrete choice experiment to probe the preferences of 150 informal sector workers in the Accra Metropolis. Rather than simply asking people whether they would like a pension, the method presents respondents with pairs of hypothetical schemes that differ across several attributes and asks them to choose between each pair. Because every choice involves a trade-off, the researchers can recover the hidden weight that each worker places on individual scheme features, from the size of the contribution to the identity of the fund manager.

The intellectual foundations of the approach stretch back decades. Kevin Lancaster’s characteristics theory of value holds that consumers derive utility not from goods as whole bundles but from the attributes those goods possess, while Daniel McFadden’s random utility theory provides the statistical machinery for modelling choices made under uncertainty. In this framework, the utility a respondent assigns to any pension scheme is decomposed into an observable component driven by the attributes and an unobservable random component. The probability of choosing one scheme over another can then be estimated, in this case with a conditional logit model applied to an impressive 8,400 choice observations generated by 150 respondents each completing 28 binary choice sets.

The four attributes at the heart of the experiment were chosen through a rigorous three-stage process. A review of the informal pension and choice experiment literature identified candidate features known to drive demand, namely cost, benefit structure, payment flexibility and the identity of the scheme administrator. These were refined through consultation with two actuarial and pension specialists and a review of the design of the Social Security and National Insurance Trust’s third-tier Personal Pension Scheme, established under the National Pensions Act of 2008. Finally, a pilot with fifteen respondents from the target population confirmed that the wording was understood and the levels were realistic before the main survey began.

The headline findings are striking. Informal sector workers strongly prefer pension schemes managed by private trustees over those managed by government entities, with the aversion to government management amounting to roughly 53 percent of the utility swing associated with contribution affordability. They also want flexibility in how often they pay, reflecting the irregular and seasonal nature of informal incomes, and they favour affordable contributions over expensive ones. Perhaps most tellingly, the workers chose defined benefit plans over defined contribution plans, signalling that they value certainty about what they will eventually receive more than the prospect of higher but uncertain returns. The full preferred bundle corresponds to an estimated willingness to pay of about 31.43 Ghanaian cedis per member per month, or roughly 37.7 million cedis annually for every 100,000 enrolees.

The statistical evidence behind these conclusions is robust. The conditional logit model produced a chi-square statistic of 972.15 with a p-value at or below 0.001, and all four attributes were statistically significant. The sample size comfortably exceeded the minimum threshold of 55 respondents derived from standard stated-preference formulas, and the two-alternative design required at least 100 decision-makers in total, a bar the study cleared with room to spare. Ethical approval was obtained from the Committee for Human Research and Ethics of the University of Energy and Natural Resources, and all participants gave informed consent before data collection.

When the researchers disaggregated the results by gender, they found that men and women share the same ordering of preferences but differ in intensity. Female respondents, who made up 20 percent of the sample, were less sensitive to an expensive contribution amount than their male counterparts, with coefficients of negative 0.52 versus negative 1.02, suggesting that women are willing to commit a greater share of their income to a scheme they trust. Women also showed a stronger aversion to government fund managers and a stronger preference for defined benefits, indicating greater risk aversion and a higher value placed on benefit certainty. The authors caution, however, that the female estimates rest on only 30 respondents and should be read as indicative rather than conclusive, since women are widely reported to account for a large share of informal sector employment in Ghana.

Education told an equally revealing story. Respondents with no formal education, who constituted 51 percent of the sample, were the most sensitive to contribution costs, with a coefficient approaching negative 1.28, while sensitivity declined steadily among those with senior high school and tertiary education. A plausible explanation is that workers with lower educational attainment typically earn lower and less predictable incomes, so any given contribution represents a larger slice of their earnings. The least educated group also showed the strongest aversion to government-managed funds, at roughly negative 0.66 compared with about negative 0.29 among the tertiary educated, hinting that greater financial literacy softens distrust of public institutions. Even the most educated respondents, however, still preferred defined benefits, underscoring how central certainty is across the entire spectrum.

The practical implications for Ghana’s pension architecture are considerable. The third-tier scheme created under Act 766 already relies on licensed private trustees and pension fund managers, a structure that aligns closely with what informal workers say they want. The findings also support product designs built around mobile-money platforms that enable micro-contributions, several of which are being piloted across other African countries, since flexible payment schedules match the volatile cash flows of petty traders and artisans far better than rigid monthly instalments. A hybrid product combining affordable contributions with higher returns delivered with certainty emerges from the analysis as the ideal target, one that would also be financially sustainable for providers.

The study arrives at a politically charged moment. After the December 2024 general elections, Ghana’s governing party has intensively championed pension contributions among informal sector workers, and a proposed pension product for cocoa farmers, announced in the 2018 budget, has completed preparatory work but has yet to be implemented. By quantifying the specific attributes that drive willingness to contribute, the research offers SSNIT, the National Pensions Regulatory Authority, private trustees and fund managers actionable guidance on the scheme features most likely to attract enrolment. The authors also frame an agenda for future work, asking how preferences vary by income and location, whether specifying contributions directly in cedis would change the valuations, how funding and longevity risks can be reconciled with the demand for defined benefits, and whether behavioural factors such as trust, financial literacy and mobile-money convenience can be integrated into stated-preference models. For a sector where the majority of the workforce operates outside formal social protection, the answers could shape the retirement security of millions.

Subject of Research: Willingness to pay for pension contributions among informal sector workers in Ghana using a discrete choice experiment

Article Title: Using discrete choice experiment to investigate willingness to pay for pension contributions in the informal sector of Ghana

Article References: Kwofie, C., Nortey, E. N. N., Tetteh, B. N. A., & Kumi, W. (2026). Using discrete choice experiment to investigate willingness to pay for pension contributions in the informal sector of Ghana. Discover Global Society, 4(1), Article 229. https://doi.org/10.1007/s44282-026-00574-5

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1007/s44282-026-00574-5

Keywords: pension, informal sector, Ghana, discrete choice experiment, willingness to pay, conditional logit, SSNIT, defined benefit, fund managers, social protection, random utility theory, Accra

The study is grounded in a well-documented global problem. Municipal solid waste generation has been rising across the developing world as urban populations swell, and the infrastructure required to collect, transport, and dispose of that waste has not kept pace. In many cities, poor spatial planning has left authorities scrambling to find suitable locations for waste facilities, and the sites they choose are often close to human settlements. That proximity transforms an engineering problem into a social one: residents living near dumpsites bear the brunt of foul odours, disease vectors, contaminated runoff, and declining property values, while the agencies responsible for the sites frequently lack the resources to mitigate those harms. The result, the study finds, is a recurring pattern of contestation that undermines both sanitation outcomes and public trust.

To understand how these conflicts unfold on the ground, Boampong adopted a phenomenological research design, an approach that seeks to capture the lived experiences of people directly involved in a phenomenon. The fieldwork combined in-depth interviews with forty-five key informants, including government officials, waste managers, traditional leaders, and landowners, with three focus group discussions involving thirty residents from communities affected by a dumpsite in Accra. Participants were selected purposively, meaning they were chosen because of their direct knowledge of and involvement in the issues under investigation. The interviews followed a semi-structured guide, allowing respondents to raise concerns the researcher had not anticipated while still ensuring that core themes were covered consistently across sessions.

The methodological rigor of the study reflects established qualitative research standards. All interview sessions were audio-recorded and transcribed verbatim, and the transcripts were analyzed using the six-step thematic content analysis framework developed by psychologists Virginia Braun and Victoria Clarke. This approach moves systematically from familiarization with the data, through initial coding and the generation, review, and definition of themes, to final reporting. Ethical considerations were addressed in conformity with the Declaration of Helsinki, and the study protocol and data collection instruments were submitted to the Ethics Review Board of the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology for approval before fieldwork began. Written informed consent was obtained from all participants prior to the qualitative interviews, and the author declares no competing interests and received no external funding for the work.

The central finding of the research is that contestations over dumpsites in Accra operate along several axes simultaneously. The most visible axis pits waste management companies against community members, who complain of nuisances such as foul odour and disease emanating from the disposal sites. But the study reveals a second, less visible axis: conflicts between district assemblies themselves over jurisdiction and over the revenue generated by dumpsite operations. Because dumpsites sit at the boundaries of administrative territories and generate fees and levies, they can become objects of fiscal competition between local authorities, complicating oversight and accountability. This multi-directional character of the conflict, the study suggests, has been largely overlooked in earlier framings that treated dumpsite disputes as a simple community-versus-company binary.

Beneath these competing interests lie structural drivers that the study identifies as exacerbating the conflicts. The first is the mode of land acquisition used for dumpsite siting. When state actors acquire land for waste disposal without adequate consultation or transparent procedures, the resulting sense of dispossession among landowners and residents fuels resistance that can persist for years. The second driver is a lack of resources: waste managers in Accra operate with limited budgets, aging equipment, and insufficient personnel, which makes it difficult to operate disposal sites according to accepted standards for lining, covering, and leachate control. The third is weak enforcement of sanitation bye-laws, which allows violations to accumulate and signals to both operators and residents that the rules governing waste facilities are negotiable.

The implications of these findings extend well beyond the neighborhoods surrounding Accra’s dumpsites. Sanitation failures impose measurable costs on public health, with poorly managed waste contributing to the spread of diarrheal diseases, respiratory irritation, and vector-borne illnesses. They also impose economic costs, depressing land values and discouraging investment in affected areas. And they impose political costs, eroding the legitimacy of local governments that are seen as unable to protect residents from the externalities of essential infrastructure. In Accra, as in many rapidly growing cities, the dumpsite has become a physical embodiment of the gap between urban growth and institutional capacity, a place where planning failures, fiscal pressures, and community grievances converge.

The study’s recommendations follow directly from its diagnosis. Boampong calls for the implementation of strategies to ensure strict compliance with dumpsite guidelines in relation to the siting of disposal sites, encompassing the modes of land acquisition, the proximity of facilities to human settlements, and waste minimization. On land acquisition, the implication is that transparent, consultative processes are not merely procedural niceties but preconditions for the social license that waste facilities require. On proximity, the recommendation points toward stronger spatial planning controls that keep disposal sites at appropriate distances from homes, schools, and water sources. On waste minimization, the study proposes the establishment of a recycling and compost facility that would considerably reduce the demand for urban land for waste disposal, shrinking the volume of material that must be buried and, with it, the scale of the conflicts that burial generates.

The recycling and composting recommendation deserves particular attention because it reframes the sanitation crisis as a resource-flow problem rather than a purely siting problem. Organic matter typically constitutes the largest fraction of municipal solid waste in West African cities, and diverting that fraction into compost for agriculture would simultaneously extend the lifespan of existing disposal sites, reduce the odour and leachate problems that drive community protests, and create a marketable product. Recycling streams for plastics, metals, and paper would further reduce the burden on land while creating employment. The study’s argument is that every tonne of waste diverted is a tonne that does not need to be fought over, making waste minimization a conflict-prevention strategy as much as an environmental one.

For researchers and policymakers watching urban Africa, the Accra study offers a template for understanding sanitation disputes as governance disputes. The finding that district assemblies contest jurisdiction and revenue over dumpsites suggests that technical fixes, such as better liners or more trucks, will not resolve conflicts rooted in institutional fragmentation and fiscal incentives. Similarly, the finding that land acquisition practices fuel durable grievances suggests that community engagement must begin long before the first truck arrives at a proposed site. As cities across the developing world grapple with rising waste volumes and shrinking disposal capacity, the Accra experience demonstrates that the hardest problems are not buried in the ground but embedded in the relationships between the state, the market, and the communities that live with the consequences of urban sanitation decisions every day.

Subject of Research: Urban sanitation conflicts over dumpsite siting and waste management governance in Accra, Ghana

Article Title: Urban sanitation crisis and contestations over dumpsites in Accra, Ghana

Article References: Boampong, M. S. (2026). Urban sanitation crisis and contestations over dumpsites in Accra, Ghana. Discover Sustainability. https://doi.org/10.1007/s43621-026-04636-1

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1007/s43621-026-04636-1

Keywords: urban sanitation, municipal solid waste, dumpsites, Accra, Ghana, waste management, land acquisition, environmental conflict, district assemblies, recycling, composting, spatial planning

The research, conducted by Elizabeth Kafui Senya of Accra Technical University and Anthony Bordoh of the University of Education, Winneba, focuses on the Accra Metropolitan Area, the commercial heart of Ghana and the hub of its tourism economy. Published in SN Social Sciences, the study surveyed 90 senior managers drawn from hotels, restaurants, shopping malls, car rental services and allied venues across the Greater Accra Region. Using a multi-stage sampling procedure, the researchers first selected nine Municipal and Metropolitan District Assemblies and then reached the managers who had lived through the pandemic’s worst disruptions at first hand.

The findings document a cascade of operational failures that unfolded in a predictable but devastating sequence. Mobility restrictions imposed by the government, including the Executive Instrument E.I. 63 that limited movement and gatherings, triggered an acute contraction in demand. With travellers staying home and international visitors absent, revenues collapsed. Firms responded by retrenching workers, deepening the economic pain in a sector that is one of Ghana’s most important employers. Supply chains fractured at the same time, as suppliers of food, beverages and hospitality consumables faced their own lockdown constraints. The cancellation of international conferences removed another critical revenue stream, one that fills hotel rooms and restaurant tables in Accra throughout the year, particularly during the peak season.

These results align with a broader international literature on the pandemic’s impact on hospitality. Studies from India, Spain and global assessments of tourism during COVID-19 all recorded demand shocks, workforce losses and supply disruption. But the Ghanaian study adds an important dimension: the perspective of firms operating in an emerging economy where government support was limited and where many businesses had no financial reserves to fall back on. The authors argue that structural vulnerabilities in developing economies made the pandemic disproportionately damaging, and that understanding how firms in such contexts coped is essential for building crisis-ready industries worldwide.

Methodologically, the study is notable for the rigour of its measurement. The researchers employed a quantitative cross-sectional survey design consistent with the positivist research paradigm, distributing structured questionnaires to the participating managers. To test whether their survey instruments reliably captured the concepts they intended to measure, they turned to Confirmatory Factor Analysis embedded within Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modelling, a statistical framework widely used in business research for handling complex relationships between latent constructs. The psychometric results were exceptionally strong. Cronbach’s alpha, a measure of internal consistency, ranged from 0.979 to 0.987 across the study’s three constructs, far above the conventional threshold of 0.70. Composite reliability values ranged from 0.981 to 0.990, and the average variance extracted, which indicates how much of the variance in the indicators is captured by the underlying construct, fell between 0.795 and 0.898, well above the 0.50 benchmark typically required for convergent validity. All factor loadings exceeded 0.70, meaning every survey item contributed meaningfully to its construct.

For readers unfamiliar with these statistics, the numbers matter because they tell us the findings rest on solid measurement rather than noisy data. When Cronbach’s alpha approaches 0.99, respondents answered related questions in a highly consistent way, suggesting the survey tapped a coherent underlying reality. High average variance extracted means the constructs are distinct and well defined. In practical terms, the study’s conclusions about disruption and resilience are not artefacts of a poorly designed questionnaire; they reflect carefully validated evidence from the field.

So what actually helped firms survive? The managers surveyed identified a clear hierarchy of resilience levers. At the top of the list were prophylactic health programmes, preventive measures designed to protect staff and customers from infection and to keep operations running safely. Closely linked to this was a call for equitable health infrastructure, reflecting the recognition that business resilience in a pandemic is inseparable from public health capacity. Firms that could trust the surrounding health system, and that invested in their own protective protocols, were better positioned to reassure customers and maintain operations under restrictions.

Insurance uptake emerged as another critical strategy. In an economy where many small and medium-sized hospitality businesses operate without formal risk coverage, the pandemic exposed the cost of that gap. Managers who had insurance, or who recognised its value during the crisis, identified it as a key buffer against revenue collapse. The study suggests that expanding insurance penetration in the sector should be a policy priority, not only for individual firms but for the industry’s collective resilience.

Diversification of delivery services and digitalisation rounded out the resilience agenda. With dine-in traffic restricted, restaurants and hotels that could pivot to delivery, takeaway and online ordering maintained at least a trickle of revenue. Digital tools, from online booking platforms to mobile payment systems and social media marketing, allowed firms to reach customers without physical contact and to adapt their offerings as conditions changed. The pandemic, in effect, accelerated a digital transition that many Ghanaian hospitality firms had postponed, and the managers surveyed now regard digital capability as a core survival asset rather than an optional extra.

The study’s contribution goes beyond documenting damage. By providing empirical, firm-level evidence from an understudied Sub-Saharan emerging economy, it fills a gap in the crisis management and organisational resilience literature, which has historically been dominated by research from Europe, North America and Asia. The authors argue that resilience in hospitality is not a one-size-fits-all formula: strategies that work in well-resourced markets may be unavailable or insufficient in contexts with weaker institutions and thinner financial safety nets. Their findings point toward a resilience agenda tailored to developing economies, one that combines firm-level actions such as digitalisation, diversification and insurance with system-level investments in health infrastructure and public health preparedness. As the world braces for future pandemics and climate-related disruptions, the experience of Accra’s hotels, restaurants and malls offers a sobering lesson: the businesses most vulnerable to global shocks are often those with the fewest buffers, and strengthening their resilience requires action at every level, from the individual firm to the national health system.

Subject of Research: Firm-level operational disruptions and resilience strategies in Ghana's hospitality industry during the COVID-19 pandemic

Article Title: Operational disruptions and resilience strategies in Ghana’s hospitality industry during the COVID-19 pandemic: firm-level evidence from the Accra Metropolitan Area

Article References: Senya, E. K., & Bordoh, A. (2026). Operational disruptions and resilience strategies in Ghana’s hospitality industry during the COVID-19 pandemic: firm-level evidence from the Accra Metropolitan Area. SN Social Sciences, 6(10), Article 452. https://doi.org/10.1007/s43545-026-01744-7

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1007/s43545-026-01744-7

Keywords: COVID-19, hospitality industry, organisational resilience, Ghana, Accra, PLS-SEM, confirmatory factor analysis, pandemic recovery, Sub-Saharan Africa, supply chain disruption, digitalisation, insurance uptake