Critical Reporting: The Fourth Estate’s most impactful stories in 2024

The year has been an eventful one. The Fourth Estate continued to entrench itself as Ghana’s foremost public interest and accountability journalism platform through revealing how some rich and politically connected Ghanaians grabbed scholarships reserved for brilliant but needy students for their children and associates. It also uncovered how the Education Ministry paid GHS56 million for a failed Free Wi-Fi project and highlighted the politicians behind the invasion of Ghana’s Forest Reserves for mining.

We spotlight our most impactful stories, which have affected lives, bolstered environmental activism, and inspired public officers to take action.

Scholarship Bonanza

In April 2024, The Fourth Estate snatched the attention of Ghanaians and directed it towards how scholarships are administered by the Scholarships Secretariat. In a four-part series, we revealed how the Scholarships Secretariat awarded scholarships intended for brilliant but needy students to the wards, children, relatives, and associates of the politically connected and social elite.

The findings, based on analyses of data reluctantly released by the Secretariat, generated public uproar and disdain. While the Minority Caucus in Parliament called for the head of the Registrar of the Scholarships Secretariat, Kingsley Agyemang, Civil Society Organisations including the Ghana Bar Association entreated the government to review the operations of the Secretariat to ensure scholarships are awarded properly and disbursements are carried out timely. In the run-up to this year’s elections, the two major political parties pledged to ensure transparency in scholarship awards in their manifestoes.

Free Wi-Fi in Senior High Schools

During its 2016 and 2020 election campaigns, the New Patriotic Party proffered many lofty promises. One of them was the provision of free Wi-Fi internet connectivity to all public Senior High Schools in the country.  

However, in the last year of the government’s two-term tenure, The Fourth Estate revealed in Free Wi-Fi: Government pays service provider GHS56m for no internet in schools, that despite the millions sunk into the project, most of the schools lacked active internet connectivity. The story also highlighted how the Public Procurement Authority failed to do due diligence by approving a single-sourced contract for Busy Internet even though the company did not qualify to win a contract in Ghana. Immediately after the story was published, the Education Ministry said in a statement that it was considering terminating parts of the contract with the internet service provider.  

Forest Invasion

Although Ghana’s 20-year Forestry Development Master Plan aims at totally ending mining in forest reserves by 2035, an investigation by The Fourth Estate in September showed that decisions by Ghana’s mining regulators are rather escalating the loss of the country’s forest cover. The exposé revealed the identities of officials of the New Patriotic Party and government appointees granted prospecting and mining licenses in forest reserves. Our investigations revealed how these individuals, in a hawkish manner, angled to obtain these licenses, upon the passage of a new law.

The story gave ammunition to environmental activists. They demanded the withdrawal of all prospecting and mining licences granted in forest reserves under the new law. The advocacy that intensified after this publication culminated in six civil society organizations and an individual suing the state to demand the termination of these prospecting and mining licences and the revocation of the new law.

Pipeline to Prison

In May, The Fourth Estate published a story about how lapses in Ghana’s justice system lead the poor to prison. In Pipeline to prison: How Ghana’s legal system punishes the poor, the story of two individuals who, without much evidence, were charged with murder and possession of narcotics, in different cases, was recounted. Both spent years in prison for crimes they did not commit.

After the story was published, a Founding Partner of Merton and Everett LLP, Oliver Barker-Vormawor, and his associates visited one of the wrongfully accused persons, Kwabena Huletey, and pledged to seek compensation for him.   

For centuries, the local economy of Ada revolved around the area’s huge salt deposits. This often culminated in a wave of violence between indigenes and companies that had been granted concessions to mine the white gold. By 1991, the Rawlings-led military junta set up a committee to proffer a permanent solution—a master plan that recommended the co-existence of artisanal mining and corporate concession owners.

However, The Fourth Estate’s investigation has shown that a recent award of what has become known as West Africa’s largest deposit to Electrochem Ghana Limited, a local company, has triggered another upsurge of violence, death, and accusations of landgrab against the company. The story resulted in a public uproar and a pushback from the company.