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Entertainment of Saturday, 27 March 2021

Source: GNA

Beyond the Return: GTA welcomes Queen Afua for wellness tour

The Ghana Tourism Authority (GTA) has welcomed Queen Afua, a holistic health practitioner and wellness coach, based in the USA, to Ghana to begin a wellness tour and reconnect with her motherland.

The health practitioner and her team are here to also provide holistic wellness training for women on how to improve their wellbeing and empower their families and friends to live without disease.

Mr Akwesi Agyemang, the Chief Executive Officer of GTA, who received the team in Accra on behalf of the Tourism Minister, said it was a great pleasure for Ghana to host them even within the COVID-19 period.

He said once they had stepped foot in Ghana, they had literally visited the whole of Africa, as Ghana was the gateway to Africa.

He said 2019 provided the opportunity for the country to interact with brothers and sisters from the Diaspora through the “Beyond the Return” initiative.

Mr Agyemang said Ghana was looking forward to even better engagements in 2020 but unfortunately the COVID-19 outbreak prevented the realisation of that dream.

However, since the Beyond the Return initiative was a ten-year project for a decade of African renaissance, the visit by Queen Afua and her entourage would revive the message that Ghana was, indeed, shining again and Africa was ready to welcome her own.

“Nevertheless, the outbreak of COVID-19 in 2020 gave us the opportunity to reassess the whole initiative, where we are going, and how to strategise with the feedback received to achieve better results,” he said.

“As we are welcoming you here today, you are going to be the catalyst for our restart of Beyond the Return,” Mr Agyeman said.

He said the pillars chosen for the initiative were built out of conversations in 2019 with the Diaspora Affairs Unit of the Office of the President, dubbed: “The full circle festival” and that gave the impetus to the Year of Return.

Mr Yoofi Grant, the Chief Executive Officer of the Ghana Investment Promotion Centre, said he was excited about the commitment of the team to bringing investment to Ghana through the Beyond the Return, which symbolised reunification; be it financial, physical, spiritual or emotional.

He said by 2050 Africa would be the largest continent in terms of people, with one-quarter of the world’s population.

“Sixty per cent of that population will be around the age of 35, so it is not just a market waiting to happen but it is also a challenge because it now has to prepare the youth of today for that tomorrow,” Mr Grant said.

He, therefore, lauded the team for bringing the wellness centre to Ghana as it would facilitate collaborations, the mergers, the relationships and associations that would make the youth realise they had a role to play in the development of the Continent.

Mr Grant said by 2050 Africa would have at least 60 per cent of the world’s renewable lands to feed the world, with the biggest pool of labour and the fastest-growing economies.

He noted that out of the current 10 fastest growing economies of the world, seven of them were from Africa, yet very often Africans were made to feel they were at the bottom.

“But the President’s message of the Ghana Beyond Aid was very instructive and inspirational in letting us know that Africans have the power to do things for themselves,” Mr Grant said.

Queen Afua, on her part, said she had been on that path for 40 years by providing women across the world with wellness skills and knowledge that nature had the answers to all healing, which they had to tap into to keep well.

She said her team had a lot to share with Ghana and Africa in general because the world was looking up to Africa to deliver.

She expressed appreciation to the GTA for the warm reception adding; “It is time to connect and get to know who we are in our homes and families, learn and reconnect to remember that we are the healers of our home and community.”

Queen Afua said the visit was her second after 25 years and she was planning to bring healers from the diaspora for a nine-day healing retreat in August, where holistic healing, music and the arts would be put together to send a powerful message that Ghana was the place to go for wellness.

“I’m also going to teach women my gifts to be able to empower their families and friends with the knowledge on how to live without disease,” she said.

“Nature is here for us, the plants, the food, the ocean, the clean air, are all here so if we make them our way of life, we will not be sick, we will be healthy and vibrant.”

Queen Afua said the Beyond the Return initiative had opened the way to restart the process and reconnect with her ancestors.

She said she was hopeful that Ghanaians would love her wellness training and participate fully in it.