With barely two weeks to the opening of the 2017 edition of the Pan African Historical Theatre Festival, (PANAFEST), GCB Limited has joined the crop of corporate institutions determined to ensure that the 25 year old Pan-African cultural forum regains its glamour with a donation of Ghc 75,000.00.

Mr. Anselm Ray Sowah, Managing Director of GCB Limited, Ghana’s premiere indigenous bank, today paid in a cheque for Ghc 75,000.00 to the PANAFEST Foundation to help kick-start activities marking the 2017 edition of the Pan-African festival.

Professor Esi Sutherland-Addy, Chairperson of the foundation received the cheque at a brief presentation ceremony at the headquarters of the bank in Accra.

PANAFEST, a biennial arts and culture festival has been celebrated in Ghana since 1992 as a platform for reviewing the historical experiences of African societies and addressing the inherent obstacles to progress and development. The festival applies African arts and culture to highlight and deal with the ‘traumatic interruptions’ which occurred in the natural evolution of African societies that have resulted in the sharp erosion of self-confidence and the freedom of self-determination among most Africans.

The much anticipated 2017 edition of PANAFEST will open on 25th of July under the theme, “The Power of the Pan-African Culture” and will run for nine days, featuring flagship activities like the reverential night and vigil, the grand durbar of Ghanaian Chiefs and people, exhibitions of African visual arts, inventions and cultural heritage, a Colloquium and the ever-popular international musical concerts.

As the MD of GCB handed over the sponsorship cheque to Professor Sutherland-Addy, he made the point that it was hardly accidental that Ghana’s first indigenous bank has so much interest in the success and future of PANAFEST.

‘As an indigenous Ghanaian Bank with a heritage tied to the independence of Ghana, we GCB are happy to be associated with PANAFEST, which seeks to celebrate the strength and resilience of our culture as Africans and the achievements of Africans on the continent and in the diaspora,’ said Mr. Ray Sowah.

GCB was established in 1953 as the Bank of the Gold Coast, to prepare the country for independence and address the banking needs of indigenous businesses, traders and farmers who, at the time, could not enjoy the support of existing expatriate banks.

‘GCB is therefore best-positioned to partake in this festival which is celebrated in the spirit of Pan-Africanism and the African renaissance. GCB is indeed excited to be part of the silver jubilee of PANAFEST,’ Mr. Sowah said.

Professor Sutherland-Addy herself referred to a seamless convergence of purpose between the bank and the PANAFEST Foundation, explaining that the two entities are both mandated to promote the creative and entrepreneurial potential of Ghanaians and, by extension, of all Africans.

She urged Ghanaians to begin to appreciate the value of PANAFEST as a potentially powerful self-marketing tool for their country and start putting in some effort to make it flourish as a major global festival for all Africans on the continent and in the diaspora.

‘Although the festival is held under the auspices of the government and other state agencies like the Ghana Tourism Authority, there is now the need to step up the impetus to enrich the scope of this unique festival,’ she said.

Professor Sutherland-Addy drew attention to the large population of Africans spread all around the world and stressed that it is important that Africans themselves came together to reflect on how and why ‘our brothers and sisters’ got to be where they are now.

‘Something must have gone wrong in the past and it will be helpful if Africans, as a people, can come together, once in a while to confront those realities and find solutions to them,’ she said, adding that culture has become the latest and most effective frontier for achieving mind liberalization and effecting lasting remedies to the unfortunate mental distortions of the past.