Dr. Papa Kwesi Nduom, MP arrived in San Francisco on Friday, August 17th to participate in the biennial Fund Raising dinner organized by the Ebusua Club of the San Francisco Bay Area in California, USA.

The dinner was to celebrate the 10th Anniversary of the Club and the 50th Anniversary of Ghana’s Independence.

The Jubilee Dinner was attended by about 500 people from all walks of life from the San Francisco Bay area – business people, religious leaders, politicians etc. Ghanaians came from all over the West Coast of the USA to participate in the evening of music – jazz, Ghanaian traditional and highlife, speeches and awards.

The speakers at the dinner were the Reverend Amos Brown and Dr. Nduom. Reverend Brown spoke about the need for Africans and Ghanaians in particular to stand up and protest against the Chinese and others who invest in Sudan and turn a blind eye to the atrocities being perpetrated against Africans in the Darfur region. He was unhappy about the fact that not many Africans participated in a protest against the Sudanese government over crimes being committed against the African population in Darfur.

Dr. Nduom congratulated members of the Club for ten years of family, friends and community and their commitment to raising funds to combat malaria, to support Rotary International and to Multiple Myeloma Research.

According to Dr. Nduom, the CPP and the other parties in opposition have acted responsibly to ensure that government is reminded of the national interest on a continuous basis. To him, a lot more needs to be done, but we must commend the efforts of those including Mr. Rawlings and Mr. Kufuor who have had the courage to go through the competitive political process to lead our nation. “It is through this competition that Ghana will find the leaders who will finally make our country great, strong and its people proud and prosperous.” Dr. Nduom said. He called on all Ghanaians living abroad to work to encourage those at home to stay the course of constitution-based multi-party democracy and work to strengthen governance and our public institutions. He asked them to support the democratic process at home with their ideas, words of encouragement and money.

To Dr. Nduom, “We have achieved a lot since independence. Ghana today, is a peaceful, stable country with great potential for its people to become prosperous. But Ghana today is not the country many of us want to have – we have not met our own expectations of a free, prosperous country.”

Dr. Nduom asked Ghanaians abroad to help politicians in Ghana “…to understand that one of their important tasks is to help their own people to establish businesses throughout the country to create jobs for the many unemployed youth.” He asked them to advice those they support in Ghana about the value of family planning. He added that “We have children having many children they cannot support. Our many unemployed young men in our towns and villages are having unsafe, unprotected sex. They are making babies and leaving them uncared for. Worse still, they are putting themselves and our young women at risk of contracting the deadly HIV and AIDS virus. Simply tell them to wait, get married and plan a small family they can support.”