Ghana made a farce of its Independence Day celebrations after government officials confused Kenya’s President Uhuru Kenyatta to be their own head of state in the official programme.

The brochure for the event had other embarrassing errors, including spelling mistakes and wrong facts about Ghana’s economic status and location on the world map.

Images of the brochure distributed to guests during the 59th Independence Day celebrations in the capital city, Accra, have gone viral and exposed the Ghanaian government to ridicule.



In the brochure, President Kenyatta is referred to as the “President of the Republic of Ghana.”

A journalist based in Ghana attached to Euronews shared a photo of President Uhuru Kenyatta and his Ghanaian counterpart John Dramani Mahama sharing alight moment during the ceremony while looking at the error-filled brochure.

@julietbawuah tweeted; “When #Kenya Prez, Uhuru #Kenyatta saw he was President of #Ghana in the official #Ghanaat59 program.hehe.”

Other errors noted in the brochure included wrong facts about the country’s economic status.

“Ghana is now recognized as having attained low-income status in the world,” the brochure stated in part. The west African country is actually considered a middle-income economy.

The brochure also stated that; “Ghana is strategically positioned on the equator making her the centre of the of the globe. And like the sun, she radiates light to all parts of the world!”



Ghana is nowhere near the equator. The authors of the brochure probably meant the Greenwich Prime Meridian that passes near its eastern border with Togo.

The meridian is a geographic co-ordinate that divides the world into two and is used to determine time zones.

A letter from Ghana’s Information Services Department (ISD) has since apologised for the numerous errors in the brochure for an event considered one of the country’s most significant celebrations in the calendar.

But even the apology bore a wrong date, written on January 12, 2016 instead of March 7, 2016.

It stated that “The Department, which authored the content of the brochure, accepts responsibility and wishes to unreservedly apologise for the development.”