Amu Festival of Avatime to attract tourists

Over 8,000 local and foreign tourists are expected at the Amu (Brown Rice) Festival of the chiefs and people of Avatime Traditional Area in the Ho Municipality in November.

The festival, which was last celebrated in 1990, is an expose of the rich culture and traditions of the mountain top community.

“Our rich history of the journey from Mesopotamia in the Middle East through Chad, Nigeria to the Ahantaland in the Western Region will be showcased,” Osie Adza Tekpor VII, the Paramount Chief of Avatime Traditional Area said at a re-launch of the festival at Vane on Thursday.

The chief said the festival would also showcase the tourism and other business potentials of the area.

He urged citizens of the area to come home and re-connect with their kiths and kin and explore investment opportunities in the area.

The celebration on the theme; “Reducing rural poverty through rice farming,” is to help mobilize funds for the development of the traditional area.

Apart from the much touted Mountain Gemi, said to be the second highest mountain in the country, the area has numerous other undeveloped tourist sites.

Osie Adza Tekpor described the local brown rice as “very nutritional… used to nourish pregnant women, nursing mothers and helps in the general recovery from ailments as it nourishes the entire body with rare nutrients.”

“Rice is our meal from cradle to death, providing the needed nutrition for younger members of the family and the older fellows along the generational ladder,” he added.

Osie Adza Tekpor said his people are all rice farmers with individual and community farms and appealed to investors to help the indigenes produce more of the special Avatime rice type for export.

Source: GNA