The Commonwealth To Launch Biography Of President Kufuor.

A biography of President John Agyekum Kufuor will be released in London on March 19, 2003. Titled Between Faith and History-A Biography of J.A. Kufuor, it is written by the Ghanaian journalist and author Mr. Ivor Agyeman-Duah. The 120-page book in hard and paper-bag editions has what is described as a readable Foreword by the pre-eminent African political scientist, The Albert Schweitzer Professor, Ali A. Mazrui.

The book will, according to the publishers enjoy a ‘triangular launch.’ On March 19, 2003, the London-based The Royal Commonwealth Society (RCS) in collaboration with The Center for Intellectual Renewal (a public policy institute founded by Mr. Agyeman-Duah in 1997) will launch the book before an audience of policy-makers on Africa, Members of the London diplomatic corps, MPs and journalists.

Invited speakers are the former Secretary-General of the Commonwealth His Excellency Chief Ameka Anyakou who is also the current President of the RCS, Mr. Omar Kabbaj, President of the Africa Development Bank, Abidjan, and the British Minister, Hon. Paul Boateng and the Ghana High Commissioner in London His Excellency Isaac.

The launch is in a series of some presidential book affairs and talks organized by the RCS and follows Lee Kuan Yew’s best selling autobiography From Third World to First –The Singapore Story that was launched by the RCS. In London, Mr. Agyeman-Duah will also be host of The BBC Africa Service to discuss the book.

From there, it gets to the La Palm Royal Beach Resort in Accra on March 27, 2003.The Guest Speaker will be the former Economic Commission for Africa Secretary and now Executive Director of Africa Center for Development and Strategic Studies in Lagos, Nigeria, Prof. Adebayo Adedeji.

He will speak on ‘Transitions and leadership in Africa in the light of Kufuor’s Biography.’ This will also be before a capacity audience of politicians, policy makers, members of the diplomatic community, business executives and journalists.

The final launch takes place in Washington, DC at the Woodrow Wilson Center for International Scholars, one of the policy institutes in U.S. named for the former Governor of New Jersey and President of Princeton University Mr. Woodrow Wilson who also became the 28th President of the United States.

Mr. Agyeman-Duah will talk to scholars and Africanists about Ghana under the title: The Present is From The Past: Memory and History in Ghana’s Fourth Republic. It will be under the chair of Prof. Gilbert Khadiagala, Director of The Africa Studies Program of The Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies, The Johns Hopkins University and the Africa Consulting Director of The Woodrow Wilson Center.

According to the author, whose Centre for Intellectual Renewal has so far published five books including Archbishop Peter Akwasi Sarpong’s (The Archbishop of the Catholic Diocese of Kumasi) The Martyrs of Uganda, the biography is written ‘as a contribution to our political development in which biographies or memoirs of heroes and villains are left unwritten until they develop into an apocrypha; a situation that creates pitfalls for a progressive cutting of the path.’

The Maiden edition is published by Agoo Media Ghana Limited. The Africa World Press in New Jersey will do a Latin and Central America editions of the book before the year-ends. The author, also a TV producer and part of the team of PBS and BBC epic documentary Into Africa, will turn the book into a major TV documentary in 2005.