Don’t impose #PlayGhana on Ghanaians -Francis Doku

RENOWNED media consultant, Francis Doku, has urged proponents of the #PlayGhana initiative and their key partners to refrain from enforcing it as a regulated policy on Ghanaians.

Instead, he advocates the use of moral persuasion to get a buy-in from Ghanaians.

The #PlayGhana initiative, launched by the Creative Arts Agency (CAA) in conjunction with the Ministry of Tourism, Arts and Culture (MoTAC) and some stakeholders in the creative industry in December last year, aims, among other, to promote Ghanaian music to both local and international audiences in the country.

Mr Doku, speaking as a panellist on the recently held Graphic’s Showbiz’s X Dialogue series on the topic ’Is #Play Ghana Agenda a worthy cause?’, highlighted some potential shortcomings in the PlayGhana initiative.

According to him, the impact of the initiative could only be measured on traditional media platforms and would fail when it came to new media. Thus, there was a need to encourage music consumption intentionally rather than through legislation, he said. (Read also  DJs not key answer to #Play Ghana, let’s go back to producing authentic Ghanaian sounds –DJ Ashmen)

He explained that the success of the #PlayGhana initiative hinged on voluntary participation rather than forced compliance.

“With this particular agenda, we need to be using more of the moral suasion than legislation. For me, I think the difficulty will be how we are going to monitor and implement the playing of more Ghanaian music on the 70 and 30 ratio.

“We are in a very difficult place because music consumption is not only determined by what's being played on radio and TV alone. It is what's on new media as well. There's no proper control over what happens on new media. How do we measure that? We know new media is not DJ-driven, and that even makes it more difficult to police content consumed by the public. We need to encourage consumption and not impose it on the people.

“The initiative is not something we can monitor to properly execute so the best option for me is to encourage and make consumers see the need to play Ghanaian music on the airwaves and at other social events. This is a matter of moral suasion, else it won't go anywhere,” he added.