The Monarch of the Ashan­ti King­dom, The As­an­te­hene, His Roy­al Majesty Otum­fuo Os­ei Tu­tu II of Ghana is to vis­it T&T from Ju­ly 30 – Au­gust 5 for Eman­ci­pa­tion cel­e­bra­tions.

Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley ex­tend­ed an in­vi­ta­tion to The As­an­te­hene in March 2020 dur­ing his vis­it to Ghana. Then, he was the guest of ho­n­our for Ghana’s 63rd In­de­pen­dence cel­e­bra­tions host­ed in the Ashan­ti Re­gion. The Prime Min­is­ter had pre­vi­ous­ly in­di­cat­ed that strength­en­ing ties with Ghana could prove to be in the best in­ter­est of Trinidad and To­ba­go, with the po­ten­tial for trade and busi­ness.

The Pres­i­dent of Ghana, Nana Ad­do Dankwa Aku­fo-Ad­do, pre­vi­ous­ly vis­it­ed T&T in 2019 to ad­vance in­ter­est to both coun­tries in the fields of en­er­gy, health, fi­nance, ed­u­ca­tion, tourism and cul­ture, dur­ing meet­ings with for­mer Pres­i­dent, Paula-Mae Weekes and the Prime Min­is­ter.

Dur­ing His Majesty’s ac­cep­tance of the Prime Min­is­ter’s in­vi­ta­tion, The As­an­te­hene said, “I feel it will be a part of me. My peo­ple are there and my broth­ers and sis­ters are there, there­fore it’s more of an ex­cite­ment to see where they are.”

The Monarch was keen to note that Ghana can ben­e­fit from learn­ing from this coun­try in the ar­eas of gas de­vel­op­ment and en­gi­neer­ing. Ad­di­tion­al­ly, the Asen­te­hene ex­pressed his an­tic­i­pa­tion of the es­tab­lish­ment of an Ashan­ti vil­lage in T&T and the for­ma­tion of link­ages be­tween the Caribbean and Ghana.

Dur­ing the slave trade, many en­slaved West Africans were brought to the Caribbean. Fol­low­ing the abo­li­tion of slav­ery in 1834, the African Di­as­po­ra es­tab­lished them­selves and their cul­tures, leav­ing a unique mark on the ta­pes­try of the his­to­ry of Trinidad and To­ba­go. In 1985, the his­toric de­ci­sion was made to memo­ri­alise the lib­er­a­tion of en­slaved Africans with a pub­lic hol­i­day.