Ghanaian Student Remarked @ Confab.

George Vincent Amagnoh, a Ghanaian doctoral candidate at the College of Education- Ohio University, has added his voice to the ensuing debate on the role of PANAFEST in facilitating and bringing about the ingathering of the African people throughout the world and to restore what slavery and colonialism had taken away. According to him, “It is upon the bases of this notion that I see PANAFEST playing that Pan-Africanist role and working towards righting a wrong, seeking for unity and progress, as well as cultivating a sense of place in the perceptive minds of all Africans abroad for eventual home-coming”. He made this remark in a research paper titled, “PANAFEST: Discovering the Missing Link to a True Pan-Africanist Role”, which he presented at The African Arts Conference held on the Athens campus of Ohio University from April 18th -21st, 2007.

In the presentation he retraced the history of PANAFEST, its aims and objectives. He also outlined the current dynamics of the festival as a galvanizing force for Africans. He took pains to define some of the current strengths and weaknesses and the implications of inherent deficiencies for reconciliation, unity and the accelerated development of a consciousness towards a new Africa. He proposed plausible ways forward toward a more proactive, engaging and emancipating African festival that will be seen as a true forerunner for the re-emergence of a new African civilization in the twenty-first century. PANAFEST since its inception has made significant attempts at illuminating the dignity and pride of Africa, often with a myriad of cultural, historical and educational programs that showcased and established Africa as a continent with a strong and resolute attitude, George Amagnoh noted in his presentation. He however lamented that fifteen years after its inception, “ PANAFEST and the PANAFEST Foundation do not seem to be taking the needed steps and leadership to infuse into its programs strategies that will eventually bring about a new, evolutionary and emergent Africa as envisaged by its proponents. To tackle this he suggested some measures which must be adopted. Among these are the redefining of the objectives of PANAFEST, integration of festival participants in home stay program and a reconnection of African families in the diasporas back to the motherland. He believes that by engaging the festival in a more proactive way to give the festival an all-inclusive Pan African approach that to him will ensure the readiness for a new emergent Africa civilization as envisioned by the proponents of PANAFEST. In redefining the objectives of PANAFEST, Amagnoh stated that it is not a festival that affects a small ethnic clan somewhere in the tropical rain forests of Ghana. He stressed that it is a festival that embraced the entire global African community, as well as persons that fight a common course with the African. He said, “PANAFEST as of now is centered in Ghana, which renders it a ‘national festival’ with a connotation of a monopoly”. He among others proposed that the festival be organized once every four years, as against the current two-cycle that has the tendency of putting some financial stress on the PANAFEST Foundation. He also suggested the adoption of a co-host strategy, or rotational hosting every four years from country to country within the sub-region. On funding of the festival, he called for the adoption of business positions in the pursuit of Pan- African role. As he put it “Our cash outsourcing nets must be cast far and wide in Africa, the Americas, the Caribbean and the East as well as the Far East”. To him that is the only alternative to nonexistent government funding Other suggestions by Amagnoh for making PANAFEST very vibrant included the abolition of the current situation in which festival participants are housed entirely in hotels without a parallel home-stay program. He said, “It prevents the breaking of the existing ‘ice’ between Africans and the Africans of the Diasporas as a result of mistrust and hurt”. He has therefore called on the organizers of the festival as a matter of urgency to make arrangements for home-stays with local families to ensure the full integration of the diasporic families into the communities during festivals. This approach to him,” It will enable them to experience and share in, at first hand, the way of life of the people they were separated from so many years ago. Amagnoh finally submitted that the PANAFEST Foundation should petition African chiefs, who are the custodians of lands to demarcate some acres of stool lands to be designated and made available and at no cost (free of charge) to the diasporic family that wants to return and be part of Africa’s reemergence and reconstruction effort. He is of the view that the chiefs have a bigger stake in reconnecting dislocated Africans he concluded.

Source:- George Kwaku Doe Athens, OH. Ohio University. (georgedoek@yahoo.com)