Remove bottlenecks to make Year of Return great — Panellists

The government has been urged to relook at its visa acquisition regime by adopting E-visa to deal with bottlenecks that frustrate people in the diaspora who wish to travel to the country under the Year of Return Programme.

Key bottlenecks such as high hotel prices and land acquisition have also been identified as hampering the success of the programme.

The “Year of Return” was launched in 2019 to mark the 400th anniversary of the arrival of the first recorded enslaved Africans in the state of Virginia in the US.

At a summit in Accra yesterday, dubbed "Beyond the horizon", to review the last five years of the programme and project into the future, panellists called for deliberate policy backed by funding to make the next phase more successful.

The panellists included Cherk Klutse, Ghana Investment Promotion Centre; Ben Anane Nsiah, Ghana Tourism Authority; Rabbi Kohain, Executive Secretary, Panafest Foundation, and Kwame Ansong, Sun Seekers Tours.

The rest were Annabelle Mckenzie, Director, Beyond the Return; Dr Juliette Tuakli, Board Member, Diaspora African Forum; Hanna Atiase, CEO of E. Wells Realty & Consultancy and Co-founder of the Ghana Association of Real Estate Brokers, and Kevoy Burton, President, Caribbean Association of Ghana.

They said there was no specific funding for diaspora investors.

Mr Nsiah said currently, all those from the diaspora and indigenous Ghanaians were treated the same without any special incentive.

"We need to work hard to sustain the great momentum over the past five years," he said.

Mr Klutse said the Year of Return was crucial in bridging the ancestral gap and helping in cultural recovery.

Beyond that, however, Mr Klutse was of the view that the programme should build the foundation for economic development and not necessarily cultural revitalisation.

The panellists shared their experiences as they reflected on the past and provided practical opinions on how to make the programme better.

Contributing to the discussion, the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the Ghana Tourism Authority, Akwasi Agyeman, and the Deputy Minister of Tourism, Arts and Culture, Mark Okraku-Mantey, said the programme had served its purpose and needed to be sustained by the incoming government.

Mr Okraku-Mantey urged the next government to look at the general framework governing the programme and improve on it.

Mr Agyeman called for a policy guideline to be developed to serve as a guide to successive governments.