Big Africa Show In Accra

Following on the heels of the massive Live 8 Concerts held in Europe last July, Africa’s own concert comes off at the Accra Independence Square on September 4.
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The free-for-all concert is expected to feature African music heavyweights such as Salif Keita from Mali, Mahotella Queens from South Africa, Seun Anikulapo Kuti and Daddy Showkey from Nigeria, Ghana’s Mac Tontoh, C.K. Mann and Amandzeba.

Host country Ghana will have the largest number of performers. Hiplifers Reggie Rockstone, Obuor, Dezmon 2Tu, K. K. Fosu, Kontihene, FBS, Nkasei, Batman, VIP, Kokoveli, Madfish, Castro, Slim Busterr and many others are billed to perform on a huge stage at the Square.

From the gospel circuit will come the likes of Lady Prempeh, Christiana Love, Ama Boahemaa, Kwaku Gyasi, Seth Frimpong and Phillipa Baafi.

According to the concert managers, Creative Storm, who are organising the show on behalf of the Global Call to Action Against Poverty (GCAP) in partnership with the Ghana TUC, the event is designed to be an eight-hour festival of music, dance, poetry, food and general fun.

All the fun, however, will be for a good cause. The Africa Standing Tall Against Poverty (STAP) Concert, as it is called, is being staged one week before the UN Millennium Summit in New York. The concert is expected to project with one powerful collective voice, Africa’s call for the eradication of poverty.

The GCAP’s campaign is one of the activities that are focused around three diplomatic events at which “key decisions will be taken which will affect everyone in the world.”
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These events, according to GCAP are the G8 meeting that came off in Gleneagles last July, the UN Millennium Development Goals meeting in New York on September 15 and the WTO meeting in Hong Kong in December.

GCAP says that “the campaign is so important this year because this is the year when the UN takes stock of progress on the UN Millennium Development Goals and this is the year that pressure needs to be put on world leaders to take those decisions that will put them on track.”