The Speaker of Parliament Rt. Hon. Alban S. K. Bagbin has charged African countries to focus on developing an identity that is linked with its heritage.
According to him, the continent is losing out among the comity of nations mainly because it hasn’t been able to clearly define its priorities and pursue an agenda that is unique to its heritage.
The Speaker was addressing a delegation from the Pan African Writers Association (PAWA) in Parliament on Thursday.
The delegation, led by the association’s Secretary General, Dr Wale Okediran paid a courtesy call on the Speaker to solicit for his support in engaging the relevant government institutions to immediately implement the relevant provisions of an agreement that was signed between the government and the association in 1992.
The agreement, according to Dr Okediran stipulated among other things, that the government would provide some facilities to PAWA to enable it run effectively.
He said since the agreement was signed, no major move had been made to implement some portions of the agreement by the government.
The Speaker assured the PAWA of Parliament’s support and charged them to developed programmes tailored at re-orienting the youth and leaders to place premium on their cultural identity.
He recalled that the foundational theme at the inaugural congress of PAWA in 1989, which was “African Unity, A liberation of the mind” was still very relevant in today’s Africa as was before.
“The biggest challenge in Africa today is the mind, we must be able to liberate this mind by using instruments like PAWA which is made up of 52 associations encompassing the whole continent”, he added.
Dr Okeridan commended Ghana for hosting the secretariat of the association since it was founded in 1989 and paid tribute to the memory of its founding Secretary General Prof. Atukwei Okai of blessed memory.
He also urged members of parliament to make an effort to write down their memoirs to serve as a guideline for the generations that will come after them.