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| Documentary to market Ghana premiered in USA |
10/29/2005 |
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Documentary to market Ghana premiered in USA
A documentary entitled, “Ghana – The Presidential Tour”, which seeks to market Ghana abroad and boost tourism in the West African country was on Wednesday premiered at Silver Spring in Maryland, the United States of America.
The one-hour-long documentary, produced jointly by Discovery Global Communications and the Africa Society of the National Summit on Africa, virtually free, will be beamed to 84 million households in the USA on November 8, 2005 and 184 million households in Europe and Asia on December 21, 2005.
According to a Daily Graphic report, “the documentary which casts President J.A. Kufuor and Mr. Jake Obetsebi-Lamptey, the Minister for Tourism and Modernisation of the Capital City, as tour guides, features tourist attractions such as the forts and castles, festivals, kingship, Kakum Walkway and National Park, crocodile ponds at Paga, fishing and cocoa farming in Ghana.
A cross section of the American elite, including Congressmen, the business community, member of the Diplomatic corps, the World Bank president, Paul Wolfowitz and US tour operators as well as sections of the Ghanaian community in Washington and Maryland, attended the launch.
President Kufuor said the documentary would boost efforts by the government to market the tourism potential of the country and, therefore, expressed deep executive of Discovery Global Communications and Africa Society for the initiative.
He said the tourism sector, the third largest foreign exchange earner, was one of the areas which had been targeted by the government to achieve economic growth.
In the scheme of the government’s programme, president Kufuor said, Ghana expected to receive about one million tourists a year to generate revenue of about one billion dollars by 2007.
The president said Ghana had a number of features which should make it a tourist destination for many people.
Besides being the first country south of the Sahara to achieve independence in 1957, he said, it was among the batch of countries to benefit from the Millennium Challenge Account (MCA) and among 18 countries to benefit from total debt forgiveness by the Group of Eight industrialized countries.
Ms. Judith McHale, president and chief executive officer of discovery communications, said the objective of her company was to portray the fact that an African country like Ghana was modernizing yet rooted in its traditions.
She said often the international media focused more on the challenges confronting Africa instead of portraying the positive sides of the continent.
Ms. McHale said a similar film was shot on Uganda two years ago and the economic impact of such a venture was impressive.
American tourists to Uganda, she said, increased by 30 per cent and tourists from the globe increased by 60 per cent. She was hopeful that the documentary on Ghana would bring similar benefits to the country.
President and Chief Executive Officer of the Africa Society of the National Summit on Africa, Leonard Robinson, said certainly a one-hour shot on a country was not enough to portray all its tourism potential but the effort was a good beginning.
Mr. Obetsebi-Lamptey said the documentary was a good attempt to change the negative images which were normally shown about Africa and invited the world part of the efforts to reduce poverty and develop the country.
Source :Daily Graphic
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