Mr Mustapha Hamid(fourth from right),Ms Dela Sowah(third right),Mr Socrate Sarfo(third from left) and other guests after the launch of wear Ghana month.Photo.Ebo Gorman(1)
"Wear Ghana Month," a national campaign to promote the country's cloth cultural heritage and boost the local textile and fashion industries has been launched in Accra, under the theme, "Wear Ghana to promote the fashion industry."
To be celebrated every March, Ghana's independence month, the campaign is in honour of Dr Kwame Nkrumah, the first President of Ghana who was passionate about the Ghanaian cultural heritage.
Spearheaded by the National Commission on Culture (NCC), the Ghana Broadcasting Corporation (GBC) and Street Fashion Train, the month-long activity include a seminar for industry players, fashion show and exhibitions.
Other activities are a social media challenge, where the public are expected to flaunt their made in Ghana attires for prizes and an awards ceremony to recognise various personalities for their contribution to the industry's growth.
At the launch last Friday, Dela Sowah, Member of Parliament (MP) for Kpando in the Volta Region and former Deputy Minister of Gender, Children and Social Protection and her colleague MP, Ato Panford of Shama in the Western Region were announced as the ambassadors for this year's edition.
Minister of Information, Dr Mustapha Abdul-Hamid speaking at the event, recognised efforts by successive governments to push the cloth culture into the formal settings via other campaigns.
Criticising how suits and other foreign attires were seen to be superior to the local fabrics in corporate circles, he stressed the need for positive attitude towards made in Ghana products to accelerate the country's development.
"Our culture is a tool for development, never look down on culture", he said, adding that he was expecting to see lawyers and judges adopt Ghanaian fabrics instead of wigs and gowns, in the near future.
Janet Edna Nyame, Executive Director of NCC, in a speech read on her behalf said the campaign aimed to reorient Ghanaians to choose local fabrics over foreign ones and advocated a policy that would make local fabrics the dress code for all corporate activities.
This, she said, was because the working class was creating the market for the foreign textile companies while local companies collapsed, a situation that needed urgent redress
To attract patronage, Socrates Safo, Director of Creative Arts in charge of Programmes and Projects at NCC, advised fashion designers to take branding of their produce seriously as this was what attracted people to foreign designers.
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