Ghana on Tuesday reopened the Kwame Nkrumah Memorial Park, a major cultural heritage in the capital city of Accra to memorize the country’s first president, in the hope of boosting tourism.
The park, first opened in 1992, has just completed its refurbishment under the Ghanaian government’s five-year project to boost tourism and hospitality as critical drivers of socio-economic development.
Now the renovated park houses a presidential library, receptor facility, mini-amphitheatre, restaurant, Freedom Walk, and a digitalized payment system.
During the reopening ceremony, Ghanaian President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo said the government plans to make the edifice one of the best tourism and heritage attractions in West Africa.
“The burial site of Kwame Nkrumah must be appropriate to his status as the outstanding Pan-Africanist of this generation and for his exceptional contribution to the liberation of Africa from colonialism and imperialism,” the president said.
The president hoped that the park, which attracted some 90,000 visitors annually before the renovation, would be able to attract over one million tourists annually after the renovation.
In his remarks, Pierre Laporte, the World Bank country director for Ghana, Liberia and Sierra Leone, said the World Bank was happy to have supported the renovation and will continue to support Ghana’s tourism sector. “Kwame Nkrumah is to this day considered one of the most important leaders of the 20th century.”
