Year of Return Significant In Human History – Tourism Minister

The Minister of Tourism, Arts and Culture, Babara Oteng Gyasi, has highlighted the importance of Ghana in the history of mankind, and stressed that the Homecoming initiative is expected to give diasporans from various parts of the world equal opportunity to know their family roots and possibly reconnect with their past.

At a durbar held on Tuesday, August 20 to welcome a number of Diasporans who had come arrived in the country for the event, the minister reiterated that the commemoration is a year’s program because 2019 marked the 400th year of the beginning of the slave trade.

“The year of return is just the foundation, and we are leveraging and building on it going forward. We are going to derive immense benefit from it. 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 , but will come next year” she said.

According to her, people who wanted to join in this year’s activities but couldn’t make it would be made to join next year’s programme. ‘

The ‘Year of Return, Ghana 2019’ is a major landmark spiritual and birth-right journey inviting the Global African family, home and abroad, to mark 400 years of the arrival of the first enslaved Africans in Jamestown, Virginia.

It marked a sordid and sad period in the history of mankind, when people were forcefully taken away into years of deprivation, humiliation and torture.

‘The Year of Return, Ghana 2019’ celebrates the cumulative resilience of all the victims of the Trans-Atlantic slave Trade, who were scattered and displaced in North America, South America, the Caribbean, Europe and Asia.