Tourism, Arts, and Culture Minister designate, Awal Mohammed has disclosed that, to promote tourism, arts, and culture in Ghana, he will be developing a 20million dollar national studio, that will produce only local content for public consumption.
This follows the Member of Parliament for Ablekuma West constituency, Ursula Owusu, questioning Mr. Mohammed on how he intends to promote the uniqueness of Ghanaian arts and culture as well as, how he will ensure it is passed down to the children unborn.
“When given the opportunity by this house, we are going to set up a national studio that will develop many movie series. It’s going to be a 20miliion dollar national studio… because the country as you said is full of foreign content…prime time in media houses will have 70% of its content to be local. This will be between 7 and 10 pm. The studio is going to help the music industry and movie industry.”
Honorable Awal Mohammed
Listing out other benefits of the national studio, Mr.Mohammed emphasized that it will also make Ghana “attractive”, and also make Ghana “the music and film hub in West Africa”. He further posited that: “It’s not only going to guarantee jobs and resources, but, it will build our culture and it’ll make sure our children grow up with the culture that we inherited, from our great grandparents”.
In light of patronizing made-in Ghana products, Honorable Awal Mohammed said that he and his team will collaborate with hotels, to draw up menus based on local Ghanaian dishes. He further mentioned that he will ensure that not only the older citizens come to appreciate Ghanaian culture, as he plans on instituting a reading competition in the local language for children with the help of Ministry Education.
“In most of our hotels as you said is a lot of foreign foods. So, when given the nod we will make sure we help them develop the recipe menu that will be from Ghanaian foods, so they can use it. We will also have more engagement with the private sector and make a lot of promotions to ensure that Ghanaians eat Ghana, wear Ghana, and feel Ghana. It’s going to be a collaboration between the Ministry and various stakeholders to let them appreciate what we have in Ghana.
“We will also go down to the schools. We want to begin tourism, arts, and culture education through the Ministry of education. One of the things we want to do is to promote the reading of news in our local language. Most of our children can’t speak the local languages. We want to institute a reading competition for children between the ages of 10-18 across the country, and they will be awarded. Our culture is us; it is our language, what we eat and what we wear”.
Honorable Awal Mohammed
When asked how he was going to work to preserve the tourist sites and to step up the education and awareness creation about those sites, which are in relevance to the history of Ghana, he said: “We intend to increase tourism visitation from 1.1 million visitors which has been the highest to an average of 1.5 to 2 million visitations every year. The GTA (Ghana Tourism Authority), has already started working on tourist facilities…the GTA has started a program of rehabilitating all those facilities to bring them to speed. Ghana has some of the best tourist facilities in the world. We need to package them and bring them up to speed then we use the media, both local and international media to sell those facilities”.
