If you watched a Ghanaian or a Nigerian movie, all you get is that you are either a witch or a wizard or everyone around you is. And if you escaped this bracket, it could be you are suffering from someone’s bewitching antics.

Is our story, and identity, one of witchcraft and voodoo as persistently portrayed in Ghanaian and African movies?

It is such a refreshing exercise studying the visions of the likes of Osagyefo Dr. Kwame Nkrumah, (as per their pronouncements) how they make so much sense in deciding what needs to be done and how.

(Dear reader, just spend 3:07 minutes to listen to Nkrumah in the attached audio before continuing with this piece.)

You heard him, right, urging all to join in the crusade to create an African personality and identity, and to prove that given the chance, the Blackman will show that he is somebody capable of managing his own affairs.

At the dawn of Independence and many years thereafter, the thrust of many complaints against the colonialists and how they operated their multinational media powerhouses (the BBCs and CNNs not excluded) was how they only sought for and reported ‘bloody wars’, ‘conflicts’, ‘hunger’, ‘famine’ and hopelessness out of the continent.

Such ‘disparaging reportage’ largely informed the establishment of the likes of the Ghana News Agency and other media outlets to disseminate “truthful unbiased news” as “part of a comprehensive communication policy that sought to harness the information arm of the state to build a viable, united and cohesive nation-state”.

We have had the chance since those days, to tell our own story. But how have we fared in seeking to tell our own story better? Indeed have we?

Or the rest of us seeking to implement the visions of the FOUNDERS are too removed from their wisdom.


Author: Isaac Yeboah