Akwasi Agyemang, CEO of Ghana Tourism Authority
Ghana will be hosting the 2019 edition of ‘The Year of Return’, a meeting of Africans living in diaspora – an event aimed at attracting its biggest haul of diaspora Africans.
‘The Year of Return’, which was launched by President Akufo-Addo in September this year at America’s National Press Club in Washington DC, is designed to mark the 400 year anniversary of the first enslaved Africans reaching the shores of America.
The event is an initiative of the Ministry of Tourism, Arts & Culture and is expected to increase in-bound tourism from US from 243,000 tourists to about 350,000 within the year.
The month-long annual programme which is being spearheaded by the Ghana Tourism Authority (GTA) has also targeted other source markets in the diaspora, the Caribbean, Central and South America.
In America, the 400 year anniversary of slavery has been given official recognition by the US Congress which has passed a Legislative Instrument called HR 1242 in recognition of the enormous contribution of African people to the making of the United States.
In an interview in Accra, Rabbi Kohain, a member of the project’s international steering committee, praised Ghana for the ‘Year of Return’ initiative, saying, “For Ghana to put forward this gesture to headline this 400th year of commemoration is a great opportunity for us to begin the process of looking at this situation of the slave trade and colonialism and the disruption of African history over the last half of millennium within very critical length.
“Ghana has made a bold move. It has done the right thing and I think the President, Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, has done a great job in supporting it and by putting his administration behind it,” he added.
Rabbi Kohain urged members of the African family to patronise the programme to make it worth the commemoration.
Asked how, in his opinion, Ghana qualifies in the eyes of the world to speak for Africa or to act for Africa, he traced Ghana’s long history of championing the Pan-Africanist cause under Osagyefo Dr Kwame Nkrumah, and efforts by subsequent governments to engage with the diaspora, including 25 years of PANAFEST and 20 years of Emancipation Day.
BY Nii Adjei Mensahfio