Emancipation celebration to be extended to Upper West

Gwollu (UW/R), Sept. 30, GNA -- Mr Jake Obetsebi-Lamptey, Minister of Tourism and Diasporan Relations has said that the celebration of emancipation next year will be extended to the Upper West region. He said celebration in the region will form part of the Joseph Project, which seeks to encourage Africans living in the Diaspora to visit Ghana, the gateway to West Africa, at least once a year and subsequently as investors.
Mr Obetsebi-Lamptey told the GNA that his Ministry was developing a pilgrimage route to show where slaves were originally taken from throughout the country.
He noted that many slaves where taken from the Upper West through the Northern region to the south and that there was the need to trace the routes and help those in the Diaspora to know where their origin. =93Gwollu is one of such places and the defence wall shows the evidence,=94 he said, when he visited the Gwollu defence wall, built to protect the citizens from slave raiders during the slave trade era. The Minister mentioned one Kantom in the United States Virgins Island, who has been able to trace his route to Tumu in Upper West, adding that coincidentally, the current chief of Tumu is also called Kantom, hence creating a linkage between the Kantom family in the US Virgin Islands and that of Tumu in Ghana.
Mr Obetsebi-Lamptey said Africans must develop their continent by uniting and educating one another to enable those in the Diaspora to know that Africa was not synonymous with evil.