Ghana’s President, Nana Akufo-Addo has said that his government is planning to make the ‘Year of Return’ a permanent feature on the Ghanaian calendar.
The President was speaking at the Jubilee House when he met members of the Christian Council of Ghana.
Nana Akufo-Addo said that they would institutionalise the initiative because of the success of the 2019 Year of Return
“The Tourism Minister and her team are sitting down to see if the Year of Return can become a permanent feature of our tourism landscape.”
“The year of return turned out to be a much greater phenomenon than I anticipated. I didn’t realize that when I first raised the issue, it was going to turn out to be this huge,” he added.
The Ghanaian government declared 2019 the Year of Return for the country. This was to mark 400 years since the first enslaved African arrived in Jamestown Virginia in the United States of America.
It was also to encourage the African diaspora to visit the country.
Ghana is said to host about 75% of the slave dungeons built on the west coast of Africa.
According to the Ghana Tourism Authority (GTA), it spent about GHC6 million in promoting the Year of Return campaign.
The GTA also estimated that the Year of Return programming would bring 500,000 diasporans.
But this figure is expected to top one million according to projections from Forbes.
The government has dubbed 2020, “Beyond the Return” in a bid to leverage the gains made in 2019.
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