Centre for Communication and Culture Launched

By James Harry Obeng

A Centre for Communication and Culture (CCC) was inaugurated in Accra last Friday, to promote cultural development through advocacy and training for creators and critics of culture.

The centre, a brainchild of Enimil Ashon, an astute arts critic and media consultant, aims to influence the quality of cultural reporting in the media, enhance the capacity of cultural press corps to report on cultural matters and to interrogate policy, and also make information about African culture and arts more accessible.

It also hopes to raise the level of awareness of cultural issues and problems, such as gender inequalities and language, as well as encourage the promotion of the positive aspects of traditional and contemporary life.

In attendance at the inauguration, which was preceded with a workshop on “The Portrayal of Women In Films, Songs and Advertisements,” were high profile dignitaries in the fore front of communications and culture, such as Nana Kobina Nketsia, the Omanhen of Essikado Traditional Area and Mr. Kojo Yankah, the President of the African University College of Communications (AUCC).

The rest were Efua Lardi Sutherland, Prof E. Ofori Akyea, from the AUCC, Ms. Sarah Akrofi- Quarcoo, a lecturer at the School of Communications Studies of the University of Ghana (UG), Prof Akosua Adomaa Ampofo, the Director of the Institute of African Studies of the UG, and Capt. (rtd) Nkrabeah Effah-Dartey, a renowned legal practioner.

The Executive Director of the CCC, Enimil Ashon, said the centre envisages a society where creators and critics of culture are equipped with the knowledge and skills needed to communicate culture as a key feature of socio-economic development”.

He said the centre had been born because its founders, who have worked all their lives as communicators and critics in the cultural sector, held the conviction that there was a future for any African country that decided, not in words but deeds, that globalization or not, the basis for meaningful development would be its culture.

“As communicators, we have interrogated the culture paradigm and been convinced that the only reason for our dislocated attempts at economic, social and political development is that we have paid lip-service to our culture ,” he quipped, adding the centre “ is convinced that a strong and vibrant cultural press corps made up of the journalist who are not just committed , but are passionately committed to the cultural paradigm, is what Ghana needs to convince governments to opt for the culture  paradigm of development”.

Fro his part Mr. Kojo Yankah, who inaugurated the centre, attributed the retardation of the country’s development to the fact that all “cultural values we are ever piloting are not ours, but others”.

He, therefore, called on the country to move decisively towards the adoption of the cultural paradigm of development before it’s too late”.

The centre, as part of its immediate preoccupation, plans a campaign to restore the names of towns and villages (as well as human beings) to their original spelling and pronunciations. For example, ‘Kyebi’ not ‘Kibi’, ‘Ekitakyi’ not ‘Elmina’ ‘Kwesi Ata Bosomefi’ not Quincy Arthur Bosomfield,’ among others, which have all come about through the Anglicization or ignorant mispronunciation by the colonial masters’.

It also plans a database of ‘Africans worth noting,’ a compilation of Biographies of notable Africans, their contribution to knowledge, morality and achievements in traditional or state(national) governance, philosophical wisdom, economics and business, sports, arts and culture, among other areas.  

*Source:

             The Ghanaian Times                 Page:31           Wednesday, May 11, 2011