Accra April 22, 1998 The Ghana Government is collaborating with UNESCO to seek funding to put up a slave museum in Ghana as part of the Slave Route Project. The museum will seek to “rehabilitate, restore and promote the heritage handed by the Slave Trade for the purposes of cultural tourism”, Minister of Tourism Mike Gizo said Wednesday at a news conference. He said in addition to the museum, there are plans to organise a slave festival to declare Ghana the hub of the Slave Route Project. This project was adopted jointly by the World Tourism Organisation and UNESCO in 1991 and is targeted at the “40 million strong middle-income African- Americans”. Mr Gizo said the Ghana government has started discussions with the Directorate of the African Burial Grounds in New York on the possibility of bringing to Ghana for burial the remains of Africans buried there. It is estimated that 20,000 Africans were buried at the grounds. It has also been revealed that that 427 bodies have been exhumed for archeological and anthropological studies by African-American scholars at Harvard University. The findings after the studies showed that most of the bodies were from the then Gold Coast, now Ghana, and that Ghana has resolved to pursue the matter until a settlement is reached for the return of the remains to their ancestral home for burial to be accompanied by full traditional rites. “The final act will be the erection of a memorial on the burial grounds in Ghana and this will signal an advent of a massive pilgrimage to the homeland, Ghana”. As part of the project, the Cape Coast and Elmina Castles, and Fort St Jago have been declared “World Heritage Sites” by UNESCO. Most of the slaves who were shipped to the New World passed through these two castles. Another event to be institutionalised in the country is the celebration of “Emancipation Day” which is celebrated in the Caribbean yearly to commemorate the abolition of slavery in the British Empire in 1834.
