We need to be interested in archiving our history - Mantse Aryeequaye

Founder of the ChaleWote Street Art Festival, Mantse Aryeequaye has stressed the need for an archiving culture in the country.

Speaking in an interview on Hitz FM, the entrepreneur mentioned that many young ones tend to believe that recent events are the first time happening in the country’s history even though such events had happened earlier. He added that the country’s cultural history is slowly fading away due to the poor documentation of events in the country’s history.

“We need to take our history important, we need to pay attention to our own history, in the 60s and 70s, people were actively producing art, but there is no institutional memory, even when things are documented we don't go back to it. There isn't an awareness of the past, the past is like consistently erased. So people have nothing to point to or have no reference. Sometimes something happens in Ghana and they will say first time in Ghana. I was like this happened like 30 years ago,” he said.

Mantse Aryeequaye cited the case of the BBC and its costs for accessing archival footage and stressed that such is needed in Ghana.

“We need that kind of archiving, if you need video or audio footage from 1950s and 1970s Ghana, you have to go to the BBC, and it costs like 5000 Pounds a minute, and you don’t own it, they’re licensing it to you,” he added.

Ghana’s leading digital news platform, GhanaWeb, in conjunction with the Korle-Bu Teaching Hospital, is embarking on an aggressive campaign which is geared towards ensuring that parliament passes comprehensive legislation to guide organ harvesting, organ donation, and organ transplantation in the country.

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