Culture holds the answers to Upper West Region's developmental problems – Pan African scholar

A Pan-African scholar, Mr Lwanga Songsore has said the challenges that confront the development of the Upper West Region could be solved by its culture.

He said this during the maiden edition of the Entrepreneurship and Culture Seminar held by the Upper West Centre for National Culture under the theme, "Reliving the Upper West Region's Place in the World: New Opportunities and Ways Forward" in Wa over the weekend.

Mr Songsore, who led the seminar, said culture should be seen as a panacea to the problems of society and not merely as a set of beliefs, customs, and traditions.

He said the seminar attempted "to redirect people's minds to think about culture belong the fact that it is just about traditions, customs, dance, festivals, clothing and so on and so forth but to think about culture as Steve Biko said, 'the composite answer to the varied problems of life."

"And then, I was coming from this perspective to say that even though the Upper West Region is considered one of the underdeveloped regions in the world but our culture definitely has most of the vital answers that we need to basically progress to become a wealthy and rich region."

Mr Songsore said this was only possible if the youth of the region were equipped with the right information to understand the culture.

He cited the growing tourist attraction for post-translantic slave trade history where descendants of enslaved Africans in the Americas and elsewhere return to reconnect with their roots but only end up in Southern Ghana because there is limited information about the true origin of the slaves, Northern Ghana.

"All of that tourist traffic ends in the southern because that is what people know, but many people don't know that before they [the slaves] get to Elmina and Cape Coast, they had to come from somewhere which is deeper in Ghana, northern Ghana including Upper West," he explained.

He said if the young people knew this, they would be able to leverage digital marketing innovations to redirect traffic to the Upper West Region where the real roots of the 'slave trade' originated.

He said that would boost tourism and lead to the expansion of transportation and hospitality industries in the region which would bring economic liberation and further showcase the region's rich culture to tourists.

Mr Songsore, however, lamented the intergenerational gap that exists in transmitting the culture from the older to the younger generation.

"There is no continuity across generations because we have so many people who have access to different opportunities who are outside the region but come from the region, but they never introduced their children to the region and let the children understand that they have an allegiance to support this region," he explained.

He called for the closure of the generational gap saying that the role of the elderly was key to engendering a sense cultural continuity through teaching and information sharing.

The entrepreneurship and culture seminar was supported by Necessary Aid Alliance, GhanaThink Foundation, and Inspired Legacy.