Ghanaian youth in Cape Town challenged

....to embrace a call to public service
Audience at the 56th Ghana Independence celebration in Cape Town were on Saturday the 9th of March, 2013 challenged to take up positions in the public service of Ghana. The attendees mostly students were encouraged to take look at the bigger picture of service to their home countries rather than a parochial goal of a comfortable private career. The event organized by the Ghana Society of the University of Cape Town was part of a weeklong celebration aimed at commemorating the independence of Ghana and bringing Ghanaian studying in South Africa together.

The occasion attracted both Ghanaian and non-Ghanaian students from the University of Cape Town, the Cape Peninsula University of Technology, Stellenbosch University and University of Western Cape. The speaker, Mr Eric Opoku Mensah, a third year PhD Candidate in Political Communication and a Lecturer at the University of Cape Coast made a passionate appeal to the youth to return to Ghana their motherland after acquiring their respective degrees to help build the nation. He discouraged the audience from using challenges in Ghana as excuse for not returning but encouraged them to re-examine the sacrifices made by the architects of Ghana’s liberation struggle who could have lived lavish lives in private careers but responded to the higher calling of a free country for all, despite having a full appreciation of the risk accompanying such choices. The founders of the West African Student Union (formed on 7 August 1925 by students studying in the United Kingdom), Joseph Kwame Kyeretwi Boakye Danquah (Founder of the UGCC) and Osagyefo Dr. Kwame Nrumah were cited as examples of people who heeded to this higher calling. The speaker ended by emphasizing the fact that a nation can only be built if its citizens are willing to do so.