Peki Tsame, July 21, GNA - Mr Kofi Dzamesi, Volta Regional Minister, on Friday launched the Joseph Project at a durbar of chiefs and people of Peki Traditional Area at Peki Tsame.

The Joseph Project is an invitation to blacks in the Diaspora to return and reconnect with their ancestors and their relations. The durbar at Peki is conceived as a traditional re-enactment of the rites of welcome atonement, restoration and re-uniting the divided African family separated over historical time and space by the Slave Trade.

Mr Dzamesi said memories of the slave trade could not be erased and that it was ripe for Africans to put together their strengths, knowledge and all positive things to lay a foundation for the reconciliation of its people.

Mr Dzamesi said the Government intended to use 2007, the Jubilee year that coincides with the 200th anniversary of the abolition of the Trans Atlantic Slave Trade, to celebrate African Excellence and inaugurate the Joseph Project. He expressed concern over certain cultural and customary practices that brought to focus the atrocities perpetrated by the slave trade. Mr Dzamesi said the trokosi system, child trafficking and other forms against women and children had a long way to go to get out such inhuman practices.

"We will have no justification to condemn the perpetrators of the slave trade if we continue to deny our own people their rights to freedom and human dignity ", he said. Mr Dzamesi appealed to traditional rulers, opinion leaders and entire citizenry of Ghana to abolish practices and conducts that would condemn the people of Africa in general and Ghanaians in particular to a state of primitiveness.

He expressed the hope that armed robbery and other forms of indiscipline would not militate against the Joseph project. Deiga Kwadwo Dei X1, paramount Chief of Peki Traditional Area, said the traditional area had also decided to use the Joseph Project to showcase the salient values of their disappearing Yam Festival. He said the festival was aimed at restoring their cultural heritage and identity, re-uniting the kith and kin and to celebrate their productive prowess and economy of Peki and its agricultural population. Deiga Kwadwo Dei said Peki had enormous potential for the promotion of various aspects of heritage tourism that bore great affinity to the objectives of the Joseph Project.

He said Peki was the ancient 300-kilometre slave route linking the north and east Volta Region to the coast from Vakpo, and Wusuta during the 19th and 20th centuries and that the route led to Keta, Akuse, Ningo, Prampram and Accra.