Prof. Esi Sutherland Addy
This year’s edition of the Pan-African Historical Theatre Festival (PANAFEST) and Emancipation Day celebration is scheduled to take place on Wednesday, July 25 to Friday, August 2, 2019.
It is under the theme: ‘Re-Uniting The African Family Beyond 400 Years; Reaching Across Continents Into The Future’, and is aimed at attracting thousands across the globe to partake in the historical festival.
Over the years, PANAFEST and Emancipation Day celebrations have served as powerful tools to get Africans in the diaspora to retrace their steps to Africa, either to visit, settle or invest.
Some of the activities lined up for the celebration include wreath laying, pilgrimage to the slave sites, cultural exhibition and trade expo durbar of chiefs and queen mothers, an expo, among others.
The Central Regional Minister, Mr. Kwamena Duncan, who spoke at a stakeholders’ meeting held in Cape Coast, sensitised Ghanaians to own the festival to make it a memorable one.
He said the event is dedicated to African music, dance, arts and culture, and seeks to enhance the ideals of Pan-Africanism as key to attracting and retaining investments from the diaspora to accelerate rapid socio-economic development.
The minister charged the Ghana Tourism Authority (GTA) to hasten advertisement initiatives to ginger the much needed local support.
Prof. Esi Sutherland Addy, chairperson of the PANAFEST Foundation, on her part, reignited the essence of PANAFEST, saying it was mooted by the late Efua Sutherland in the mid 1980s as a cultural vehicle to bring Africans on the continent and in the diaspora together around the issues raised by slavery which remain suppressed.
She indicated that slave trade still exists in contemporary times in various parts of the world, an indication that Africans ought to fight to help end the practice in any form.
The Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the GTA, Mr. Akwasi Agyeman, outlined plans to intensify publicity and activities earmarked for this year’s three main programmes of PANAFEST, Emancipation Day and the ‘Year of Return’.