A renowned archivist and researcher, Daniel Awuley Tetteh, has identified five historical sites in Accra for the government to develop into tourism sites to enable the country to rake in the needed tourism revenue for national development.
These include the James Fort formerly the James Fort Prisons; the Accra Light House; the Accra Royal School; the James Town Alata Mantse Palace (Official residence of the Gold Coast Governor James Stuart) and Ussher Fort, all located in the Former British and Dutch Accra.
According to him, when developed into tourist sites because of their colonial historical facts, it would attract foreign tourists and rake in millions of dollars for the economy.
Speaking in an interview with the Ghanaian Times in Accra yesterday, Mr Tetteh said Ghana being one of the centres which served as exit point for the Transatlantic Slave Trade, tourists were interested to come and see some of these historical sites.
Mr Tetteh who was speaking against the back of the billions of dollars the country stands to gain from tourism more that what it was currently earning from gold, cocoa, diamond and timber.
He said there was hundreds of volumes of documents available on the 500 -year-old slave trade which saw millions of Africans shipped to the Americas, Europe, Asia and the Caribbean.
These could be produced into books, block buster animated films, movies and cartoons could rake in much needed revenue for the country’s development without the need to exploit our natural resources.
He said there were a number of countries which depended solely on tourism as the largest foreign income earner, adding that Ghana could do same.
Mr Tetteh said a genealogical research centre was being establish at Blema Ayawaso, the ancient capital of the Ga State .
The centre, he noted would have a genealogical database of original African families and “genetic banks” into which people of African descents could tap to trace their ancestry to Africa.
According to him, land for the research centre project had been donated by the chiefs and people of Blema Ayawaso, saying construction work would soon take off.
As President of the Genealogical Society of Ghana (GSG) , Mr Tetteh said a book titled: “Global sources for genealogical research in Africa” had been written awaiting publication.
He, therefore, stressed the need for support to make the project a reality.
BY NORMAN COOPER
