Eastern Region set on devt path with Graphic’s ‘Spotlight’ - Daasebre Prof. Oti Boateng
The Omanhene of the New Juaben Traditional Area, Daasebre Prof. Emeritus Oti Boateng, has described the Graphic Communications Group Ltd’s (GCGL’s) Regional Spotlight as the spark plug required to set the Eastern Region on the path of development.
“Today’s launch of the Regional Spotlight means so much to me as a leading advocate for a new home-grown development order for Ghana and Africa,” he said.
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Daasebre Oti Boateng, who was speaking at the launch of the GCGL’s Eastern Regional Spotlight, a supplement dedicated to developmental stories from only the Eastern Region, said “development is the beauty of leadership and the signpost of our collective commitment and aspiration as a people”.
He described the launch as an occasion to mainstream the Eastern Region into the orbit of national media development surveillance.
“The spotlight is here to provide the missing link between development surveillance and leadership accountability in the region. It is a wake-up call and a litmus test for leadership in the region,” he said.
Root-based development approach
The Omanhene also spoke about his internationally acclaimed Root-based Development model (r-BED), which he said had the potential to significantly reduce corruption and set the nation on the path to development.
He announced that the home-grown Pan-African development model would be launched on November 20, 2019 with the institution of the first Traditional Area Development Day in Traditional Festivals in Africa as part of this year’s Akwantukese Festival.
He explained that the root-based model, an evolving African Development Consensus version, akin to the Washington Consensus and the Mumbai Consensus, had been creatively designed for traditional states of Africa to play a supplementary role to government and the private sector in sustainable community development and parachute lessons for the rest of the world.
“The unique selling point of the Pan-African root-based model is that it introduces a third sector, which is the Citizens Sector, based on citizen-community-traditional authority partnership as a complement to the existing public and private sector players in Africa’s development landscape for the effective mobilisation of citizens’capital towards sustainable community development,” Daasebre Oti Boateng added.
He said it was against that background that the launch of the Regional Spotlight as a development surveillance medium for the region was timely and pragmatically spot-on to promote the adoption, implementation, replication and surveillance of a definite development regime in the region.
Media
The root-based development model embraces the media to promote its implementation through community development surveillance.
In this respect, the media provide critical scrutiny of the activities of all the root-based institutions to inculcate probity and accountability and deepen the active involvement of the media in development intermediation. This further assists in ensuring accountability and transparency, as well as the preservation of community and other root-based institutional resources.
Daasebre Oti Boateng urged the GCGL to utilise its unquestionable media leadership in the country to rally the rest of the media in Ghana to lead the charge for the media adoption of the root-based Economic Development Model as its corporate social responsibility initiative to combat poverty and inequalities through sustainable community development.
Good initiative
The Eastern Regional Minister, Mr Eric Kwakye Darfour, lauded the GCGL in its effort to promote culture and tourism in the regions.
"I am grateful to the board and the management of the GCGL for such an innovation which is slowly but surely bringing the culture and customs of the different regions closer to us. We have all become tourists by distance through the reading of historical tales of places and watching of pictures, artifacts and other tourist sites all in the regional reports," he said.
He described the initiative as a 'paradigm shift' gunning to elevate the interest of tourism and its economic effects on the country as a whole.
"I believe the report on the regions is a paradigm shift which seeks to whip up interest in tourism and the local Ghanaian culture,” he said.
Goal
The Editor of the Daily Graphic, Mr Kobby Asmah, explained that the Regional Spotlight was aimed at promoting the various regions of the country.
"The goal of the Regional Spotlight is to give extensive coverage to each region by showcasing and highlighting it to the entire world, with special emphasis on development issues, including our traditional heritage, hospitality, tourism, sanitation, investment opportunities, health, commerce, agriculture, infrastructure, among others," he said.
The Municipal Chief Executive for New Juaben South, Mr Isaac Appau-Gyasi; the Eastern Regional Manager of GCB Bank, Mr Frederick Andoh-Bissue, and the General Manager of Mac-Dic Royal Plaza Hotel, Mr Thomas Adjei, all commended the GCGL for the initiative.
