Dr Iddi Ziblim
Deputy Minister-designate for Tourism, Culture and Arts, Dr Iddi Ziblim, has suggested the need for Ghana to adopt a conscious, concerted and interventionist mechanism to protect and promote Ghanaian culture and arts against the effects of foreign culture and content, especially within the arts and media space.
Dr Ziblim explained that globalisation and international trade partnership agreements have a way of encouraging cultural penetration but even in that situation, Ghana ought to find creative and innovative ways of striking a balance aimed at protecting its culture and media content.
The minister-designate was speaking last Saturday on Starr FM’s Morning Zoo, and he made the comments in response to a question on why several Ghanaian television stations show foreign music videos for free but charge money before they show music videos from Ghanaian musicians.
This was what exactly what Dr Ziblim said, “The protectionist issue is one area I intend to look at and help my minister work on if I am given the nod.
“One of the things that globalisation has brought to bear on us is cultural imperialism and cultural penetration. These days, you see a lot of westernised culture taking over our own African culture which hitherto was supreme. African culture has always stood out to be supreme over Western culture. Western culture borrows a lot from African culture, so it should not be that they are now coming to take over.
He added, “But that is where we are now because of globalisation which we all know is built on liberalisation. So you have no choice but to reduce the elements of protectionism and open up your market, your culture and airwaves and everything and this is what we are challenged with today.
“But it takes policy direction to halt some of the overarching reach of globalisation. Globalisation reach should not be allowed to run amok and there are examples where the Western and developed world have been able to do that and put protectionist policies in place. Though they would preach to you not to practise protectionism, they are doing it.
“I can’t remember the exact year but there was a time when there was a turf war between Canada and the United States as far as the movie industry was concerned. Here, was Canada living side by side with ‘big brother’ United States and there was Hollywood all over Canada. At a point, Canada took a policy decision that they were going to restrict the influx of Hollywood movies into Canada because they wanted to protect their movie industry. I think we can learn from that and do that here.
“There is a way we can put regulation in place and, at least, allow for certain thing to happen to protect and promote our own Ghanaian culture on our media space. We cannot take it away completely but we can regulate it to favour our country,” Dr Ziblim stated.
By Halifax Ansah-Addo