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Social
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Culture: a missing link in Ghana’s development
Masahudu Ankiilu Kunateh, Ghanadot
Accra, March 13, Ghanadot - Culture in Ghana has for
over decades been ignored as a viable enterprise has
the potential of making significant impact on
national development.
It is only seen as an arena for people who are not
so serious in life and only interested in acting,
dancing, drumming and singing.
Frankly, the business or economic aspect of culture
is always relegated to the background. The link
between culture and economic performance has not
been looked at in this country.
No wonder back at school, all that we teach and
learn about culture is “the way a group of people
live with respect to the kind of food they eat,
their dressings and the way they dance and how they
sing.” Much emphasis is placed on the social aspect
of culture neglecting the economic aspect of all
that.
Ghana’s tourism sector can be boosted enough when
culture is considered as an integral part of
tourism.
Currently, the tourism sector is the fastest growing
sector and a major contributor to the country’s
economy. The growing pace of Ghana’s tourism
industry gained some recognition as it was ranked
10th in terms of tourist arrivals in Africa and
considered a serious emerging market with high
potentials on the continent.
Participants at Tourism Africa in 2006, in the Swiss
capital, Genauded acknowledged the potential of the
industry, saying it generated 833 million dollars in
2005. This shot up exponentially in 2008 to
2.5billion dollars.
For now, it was being anticipated per Ghana Tourism
Strategic Document that the sector could have
generated about 300, 000 jobs in 2007 increasing the
level of employment by 135%.
Should culture be made an integral part of the
tourism sector in terms of budgetary allocation, one
can just imagine the huge impact that could make on
national development. An amount of GH¢52,423.00 was
allocated to the Ministry of Tourism to carry out
its activities in 2007 as against about GH¢70,000.00
in 2008.
One may ask what provision was made for culture. Or
has it become synonymous to tourism? Although the
Kufuor led government introduced the Ministry of
Chieftaincy and Cultural Affairs to imbue sound
moral cultural values to the youth it paid little
attention to the economic aspect of culture.
Ghana has a lot to offer in terms of cultural wealth
and diversity. With the growth of the tourism
industry, the cultural sector has the potential to
play an increasing economic role.
The Ghana Cultural Policy outlines in detail how
culture could be integrated into the nation’s human
development and national integration. It has three
broad objectives which are:
Documentation and promotion of Ghana’s traditional
cultural values; Growth and development of the
country’s cultural institutions and making them
relevant to human development, democratic governance
and national integration; Enhancement of Ghanaian
cultural life and development of cultural programmes
to contribute to the nation’s human resource
development and material progress through heritage
preservation and promotion and the use of
traditional arts and crafts to create wealth and
alleviate poverty.
These well documented cultural policies will come to
naught if there are no financial supports or
budgetary allocations to push the agenda through.
Fortunately for Ghana, the Economic Commission (EC)
knowing the value of the rich culture the country
has and the huge potentials came to the aid of the
National Commission Culture (NCC) in 2007.
The EC through the European Development Fund (EDF)
gave a grant of some GH¢24 million to Ghana to
support culture and arts. The NCC now has the means
and the opportunity to implement a large scale
programme to enhance the capacity of arts and
cultural practitioners across Ghana. The
contribution from the EC was 2 million euros over a
period of three and half years. All these projects
activities will be implemented by the NCC.
With this programme, the EC intended to support the
National Cultural Strategy of Ghana by funding
activities in the areas included human resource
development, research and support to non state
actors from the cultural sector.
Civil society organizations are the main target
group of this programme because of their undeniable
commitment to the development of democracy and the
furtherance of fundamental values, such as national
unity within the context of large ethnical
diversity.
The programme in totality aims at the creation of a
pool of information and an inventory of cultural
initiatives, the development of capacities and
skills of individual artists, practitioners and
existing local cultural institutions. If this
programme is well executed it will benefit many
people in the country.
Ghanadot |
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