Innovation necessary to inculcate our traditions into the youth – Esi Sutherland

Writer and Professor at the Institute of African Studies, Esi Sutherland-Addy has said that innovation is the ideal way to instil Ghanaian traditions and values in the younger generation.

Professor Esi Sutherland-Addy is of the view that aside formal education, extracurricular activities are laudable ways of inculcating the Ghanaian culture into the youth.

In a media interaction at the Children’s Fun Folklore Games day on August 21, Prof Sutherland-Addy highlighted activities such as indoor and outdoor games, academic competitions and artistic designs as creative ways of ensuring the sustenance of the country’s indigenous culture.

She commended the National Folklore board, organizers of the event, for painting Adinkra symbols on the faces of some of the children present, a move she believes is an indirect way of familiarizing the children with the symbols.

“We have to be innovative. For instance, we have face painting. It is something that has come to us. What the Folklore board did was that the children have Adinkra symbols being painted on their faces. They could have had something else painted but they had the Adinkra symbols. Thai in itself is already a way of getting the children to have fun and be familiar with something like that,” Professor Sutherland-Addy posited.



The academician charged Ghanaians to harness social media to promote the Ghanaian culture.

“We use the social media for so many things. These cultures grow if you use social media so it is up to us to be innovative about how we use them and they can fit into the modern system very easily,”

She made reference to games like ‘oware’, which has been modernized into an application on smartphones, and ‘kyekyekule’ which has been modernized in the European world.

Professor Sutherland-Addy charged Ghanaians to refrain from always looking up to government’s intervention, and put in efforts to ensure the sustainability of the Ghanaian culture.