Swedru, March 14, GNA - Professor George Hagan, Chairman of the National Commission on Culture (NCC), has stated that examining the millennium development goals from a cultural perspective was fundamental and strategic in achieving success by the target date of 2015. He stressed that this would help Ghana define its aims and objectives, determine new programmes of action and identify new modes of collaboration between community actors, aid agencies and institutional partners.

Speaking at a two-day national consultative meeting on Culture and the Millennium Development Goals (MDG) in Swedru on Wednesday, Prof. Hagan said it would further assist the ordinary citizen to get involved in the realization of the goals.

He noted that it was appropriate and necessary to seek new perspectives to help accelerate the progress of activities towards attaining the goals.

"Regrettably, though it is widely recognized that most of the issues that the goals highlighted are indeed related to cultural beliefs, attitudes and practices, no direct, consistent and logical approaches have been adopted to examine the cultural factors with a view to addressing them or using them to effect the needed changes and advancements," he said.

The meeting was therefore to discuss and define the cultural framework within which the MDG could be achieved, critically examine the cultural elements that could impede or facilitate the attainment of the goals and to prepare a working document for a national workshop. Prof. Hagan mentioned the development of a cultural mode as an important vehicle to convey the goals of the MDG, saying two major workshops had already been organized on culture and education, as well as culture and management which reports were being studied for further action.

He said it had become clear that the success and sustenance of any development agenda depended upon the evolution of a creative and logical cultural framework.

"Our development paradigm should provide for and emphasize the basic freedoms and fundamental human rights which are essential to creativity and artistic self-expression." He called on government, civil society and traditional authorities to collectively strive and contribute to wealth and employment generation through the sustained production of cultural goods and services.

Mr Isaac Owusu-Mensah, Senior Programme Manager of the Konrad Adenauer Foundation (KAF), a German political foundation, said Ghana would not achieve the MDGs if cultural elements were not considered. He noted that since cultural conditions exerted strong influences on human behaviour, which consequently affected economic choices and business decision as well as political and social behaviour, it was important that key sectors of the country met to diagnose and prescribe the cultural implications of the MDGs.

Mr Owusu-Mensah said his organization had for the past 41 years been working towards the promotion of broad-based participation of the citizenry in decision-making in the country through decentralization programmes, as well as promotion of indigenous traditional institutions. He explained that the Foundation believed in harnessing indigenous knowledge to confront challenges of development and affirmed the fact that though culture had ingrained positive elements that could be tapped to meet the MDGs, it could impede the achievements of these targets. He urged all Ghanaians to participate fully in national development process saying, "the role of the government is at most, to provide the requisite infrastructure and the environment to the attainment of the MDGs, but the real strive toward the accomplishment of the development targets depends on Ghanaians."