Africans must improve cultural heritage to facilitate development – Mrs Deh-Kumah

Mrs Bernice Ann Deh-Kumah, Acting Director of the W.E.B Du-Bois Memorial Centre for Pan-African Culture, has charged Africans to add value to their cultural heritage for the advancement of Africa.

She said Africans must take up the fight to blend technology and socio-economic activities to propel the development drive of the Continent.

Mrs Deh-Kumah was speaking in an interview with the Ghana News Agency in Accra at the second edition of African Fashion Night in Accra, organized by Ghana Textiles Printing (GTP) Limited.

The Acting Director said: “The Asian tigers- the Chinese, Japanese, Taiwanese and the Singaporean always return to their motherland to build upon their economies with whatever technological skills they have acquired from the West.”

Mrs Deh-Kumah said the land tenure system in Africa, which often attract multi sales of lands to land developers was another problem hindering the development of the Continent.

She said as an intellectual institute established in 1985, the Du-Bois Memorial Centre  did not only showcase the legacy of Dr Du-Bois, a Pan Africanist but other astute African leaders, who contributed to the liberation of Africans.

It has materials on West African tourist sites as well as a research facility, a museum with valuable collections of Du-Bois personal effects and more than 1,000 volumes of reading materials on Pan-Africanism.

Mrs Deh-Kumah said the week-long second edition of “African Fashion Night” was part of the programme for the African Unity month and would be climax on June 4, with a fashion show.

The theme for this year’s African Fashion Show Night is “Culture through Fashion by Way of Showcasing the Uniqueness of African Wear and its Contribution to the African Culture.”

Source: GNA