The Minister of Tourism, Arts and Culture Babara Oteng Gyasi has expressed optimism that the interests and investment “The Year of Return” has generated will spill over into the year 2020.

“The year of return is just the foundation and we are leveraging and building on it going forward and we are going to derive immense benefit from it,” she noted.

At a durbar held on Tuesday, August 20 to welcome a number of Diasporans who had come to Ghana for the event, the minister reiterated that the commemoration is a year’s program because 2019 marks the 400th year of the beginning of the slave trade so we set out a yearlong program of activities.

“But we are leveraging it as a foundation going forward for the years to come.

So you might notice that there are people who may have heard what is going on in Ghana and were not able to visit this year and thus will come next year,” she said.

She noted that there are people who want to have activities but they couldn’t fit it in this year so we are looking at programming them for next year.

Activities like the Ghana carnival in November and the Sankofa music festival are expected to be part of the major events that climax the program.

The Year of Return Ghana 2019 is a marketing campaign targeting Africans in the diaspora to mark 400 years since the first slaves arrived in Jamestown, Virginia.

Source:ghanaweb.com