The Swiss Ambassador in Ghana, Mr Gerhard Brugger, has paid a courtesy call on the Moderator of the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church of Ghana, Right Reverend Professor Emmanuel Martey.

The purpose of the visit was to discuss 200 years of the Basel Mission next year.

Briefing the Ambassador about the preparations made so far for the celebration, the Clerk of the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church of Ghana, Reverend Dr Samuel Ayete-Nyampong, said the Church inaugurated the celebration in Augustr during the 14th General Assembly at Abetifi.

He said activities had been lined up for the celebration next year and these include public lecture and essay competition for school children.

Earlier, the Moderator commended Switzerland for its contributions to socio-economic development of Ghana.

He also mentioned the role the Basel Missionaries played in establishing the Presbyterian Church of Ghana in the 18th Century which he described as the oldest and continuously existing church in Ghana.

The Swiss Ambassador said the embassy would collaborate with the Church to make the celebration very successful.

The Mission was founded as the German Missionary Society in 1815 and later changed its name to the Basel Evangelical Missionary Society, and finally the Basel Mission.

The society built a school to train Dutch and British missionaries in 1816 who were sent to Africa and other parts of the world to do missionary work.

On 18 December 1828, the Basel Mission Society sent its first missionaries, Johannes Phillip Henke, Gottlieb Holzwarth, Carl Friedrich Salbach and Johannes Gottlieb Schmid, to take up work in the Danish protectorate at Christiansburg, Gold Coast.

On 21 March 1832, a second group of missionaries including Andreas Riis, Peter Peterson Jäger, and Christian Heinze, the first mission doctor, arrived in the Gold Coast only to discover that Henke had died four months earlier.

The Basel Mission training institution partnered for some time with the Anglican Church Mission Society.