Cape Coast, May 20, GNA – The Obokese Foundation, in partnership with African Male Education Network and Development (AMEND) and the University of Cape Coast (UCC), has launched this year’s Diaspora Education Summit in Cape Coast.
The summit will start from Thursday, September 19 to Saturday, September 24 at UCC and will assemble about 15 historically black colleges and universities across Europe to partake in it.
Major highlights of the summit will include engagement with students on the African renaissance, capacity building, visits to the Assin-Manso slave river and Cape Coast and Elmina Castles and chieftaincy awards.
Among others, the summit will assemble students, academia, traditional leaders and the Diaspora for a transformative cultural immersion and developmental collaborations.
It is geared towards a better understanding and appreciation of individual and collective responsibilities, duties and obligations for the African renaissance.
It is also, to build on the spirits of the 2019 ‘Year of Return’ and ‘Beyond the Return’ project through capacity building to solve national problems and chart a common goal towards a ‘Ghana Beyond Aid.’
Launching the summit, Professor Rosemond Boohene, the Pro-Vice-Chancellor of UCC commended the Obokese Foundation for the initiative to empower Ghanaians and Africans in the Diaspora to return home to contribute their quota to national development.
She declared UCC’s commitment and support for the programmes as part of its strategy to pursue excellence through the creation of standards in teaching, intellectual inquiry, engagement, and professional practice to spearhead national development.
Underscoring the rationale behind the African Diaspora Education Summit, Nana Obokese Ampah I, Apagyahen of Asebu Traditional Area said the move sought to drive development in Ghana through the higher institution of learning.
It would bring together Pan-African groups of scholars from Africa and the Diaspora to teach the next generation of students.
Additionally, the foundation seeks to support an educational transformation designed to develop students who have internalized the traditional character traits of ‘aso-did(responsibility).
They must also possess exceptional skills, talents, and abilities, together with deep African consciousness to further the national spirit embodied in the concept of Ubuntu.
“We are actually making a different history, a history that brings us together after some 400 years ago when our people were sent away and cut off from their roots…”.
“For students, we are working to produce consciously liberated Africans capable of reversing the paradigm. The time has come for us to bring them home,” he added.
GNA