CULTURE, ARTS & TOURISM AND WEALTH CREATION

By James Ebo Whyte

Introduction

In the late 90s, I worked with an automobile company that was the local agents for three European car brands. We worked under an European who had oversight, not just for Ghana, but for the whole of Africa and the Middle East. Every year, this man came to Ghana to monitor our operaons and understand our market beerandhowwecouldmaximizeourmarketpotenal. From Ghana, he traveled to South Africa and then back tohisbaseinEurope.

I noced that whenever he came to Ghana, he was eager to leave.If for anyreason he spent morethan two days in Ghana, he became very irritable and impaent. We assumed that it was because he was a very busy man with a heavy schedule and so he could not afford to spend too many days outside his base Then we discovered that when he le Ghana, he would spend not lessthanaweekinSouthAfrica.

Now, the South Africans were not doing much beer than us in terms of sales and so we wondered why this busy man who could not spend more than two days in Ghana would happily spend more than a week in South Africa. On one of the annual conferences in Europe to which all the agents across the world aended, we met our South African counterpart and asked him if he could help us understand why he got to host the man for over a week but we could not hold him for more than two days inGhana.

Themanlaughedandasked,“Howdoyouoccupyhim?”

WesaidwegivehimthebestaccommodaonGhanahas to offer and then we ensured that every informaon he would need was available and we ensured he got to meet the right people in government and in relevant sectors.

“And then aer office hours, what do you do?” the South Africanasked.

“We take him to his hotel so he could have a good night's rest,”wesaid.

The South African said, “That is the problem. You don't engage him in the evenings.” Then he said, “When he comes to South Africa, we make sure that every evening, he experiences and enjoys a different kind of cultural andarscevent.”

We looked at each other's faces. In Ghana, apart from taking him to different drinking spots and restaurants, there was nothing to offer him by way of entertainment andarscexperience.

NOWHERETOGO;NOTHINGTODO

This is the experience of just one company but I am sure that other companies that host foreign guests have the same dilemma. The various internaonal airlines bring in hundreds of foreigners every day. most of these are investors and businesspeople with a clear agenda for their visit. But when the business day is done, the most we have to offer them is a dinner and alcohol and not much else. How much does Ghana lose because we are not able to engage these guests outside the business environmentcanonlybeamaerofspeculaon.

In 2009, I took my play, Unhappy Wives, Confused Husbands, on the road to Kumasi. We had two shows on the day As I stood at the car park welcoming patrons for the second show, a man walked up to me and gave me an envelope containing £200. “Sir, what is the envelope for?”Iaskedhim.

He said, “Uncle Ebo, this is to thank you for bringing your play to Kumasi.” He said, “For those of us who don't drink, there is nowhere for us to go in Kumasi and so thank you for making our evening and please promise to comemoreoen.”

I traveled to Tarkwa and the situaon was the same. I met people who yearned for some arsc event but werestarvedofitbecauseitwasnotavailable.

The tragedy is that Ghana has not woken up to the potenal of the culture, arts and tourism to turn our economicfortunesaround.

Biggerthanagricultureandmining

Elsewhere, governments used the arts and cultural sector to revive their economics, especially aer the debilitang effects of the COVID shutdowns. And the figures speak for themselves These figures were released by the American Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) from The Arts and Cultural Producon Satellite Account.

The cultural industry in Arkansas employs nearly 27,000 individuals and generates $927 million in personal income for Arkansas cizens Cultural and arts enterprises are the state's third largest employer—aer transport and logiscs and perishable and processed foods.

In North Carolina, the wages and income of workers employed by cultural, arts and tourism industries infused$3.9billionintothestate'seconomyin2006. In Massachuses, the cultural, arts and tourism sector contributed$4.23billiontothestate'seconomy.

For2021,theBEAdatashowedthatatthenaonallevel, the arts and cultural sector in the U.S. contributed $1.02trillion to the American economy This amount, according to the BEA data, was greater than the value addedbysuchindustriesasconstrucon,transportaon andwarehousing,mining,andagriculture.

It is important to note that according to the BEA, the cultural, arts and tourism sector contributes more to America's GDP than agriculture and mining, the two sectors that remain the key focus of successive Ghanaian governments. The American data makes a strong case for Ghana to take a serious look at the cultural, arts and tourism sector in Ghana because that sector could be the salvaon of the weak Ghanaian economy

Asanteheneandthecoronation

Ghana has rich and diverse cultural heritage and yet, unlike other countries, we are not making the most of what we have. For instance, although some people complained of the huge sum (£100m) that was being sank into the coronaon of King Charles III in the UK, the ceremony, the highest display of Brish culture, was expected to give the UK economy a massive £8.0billion boost.(CNN).

We may not have anything in Ghana that compares with the Brish monarchy in terms of its reach but we have kings in Ghana whose events, if properly organized and structured could make contribuons to the economy. I watched on YouTube what happened in Kumasi when the Asantehene returned from King Charles' coronaon and Asanteman decided to celebrate Otumfuo for the honor he had brought to Asanteman. Otumfuo was met by a large crowd at the Kumasi airport and then he was taken on a celebratory parade through Kumasi. The crowd that joined in the parade, in cars, on horses, on motorbikesandonfoot,wasmassive.

The queson is, how much advantage did Asanteman or Ghana take of the occasion to impact the economy of Kumasi? If even T-shirts of the picture Otumfuo took with King Charles at the Buckingham Palace were printed for sale, I am sure they would have sold out. As it was,therewasalotofcelebraonandeuphoriabutvery lile business, beside the business that those who sold sachet water along the route might have made selling to thoseintheparade.

WASTINGPRECIOUSOPPORTUNITIES?

It is obvious that as a naon, we have not averted our minds to the economic potenal of our culture, arts and tourism. We have fesvals like Homowo, Aboagyir, Bakatue and others that could boost the economy but unfortunately,wehavenotmadethemostofthem.

In addion to these tradional fesvals, there are new fesvals like Charle Wote Fesval, Carnival on Osu Oxford Street etc. These, both the tradional and the new fesvals, have huge potenal for impacng our economy but unfortunately we do not seem to catch the visionasanaon.

As a naon we can no longer say we are not aware of the economic significance of such events because we have examples to make us even more determined to make the most of our cultural and arsc offerings. Take Ghana's Year of Return in 2019 as an example. The event marked 400 years since the first enslaved Africans reached America. The government invited all people of African descent to return to the connent – specifically Ghana – to rethink their identy and reclaim their roots. According to the then Minister of Tourism, Barbara Oteng-Gyasi, the event which aracted celebries like Steve Harvey to Ghana, generated a total of $1.9billion to Ghana's economy Some of the acvies that contributed to this figure included air travel, hotel accommodaon, transport fares, as well as other key entertainmentevents.

In 2021, I traveled to Abefi to speak at the Presbyterian University It was the first me I was traveling on the Kwahu mountains since the late 80s. When we came to Kwahu-Nkwaa, I was blown away by the Rock City hotel. Nothing had prepared me for that kind of facility tuckedawayintheKwahumountains.

On my way back from my engagement at the university, I gotthedrivertostopatthehotelsoIcouldtakethesight in beer. I wondered then, why the owner of the facility had not put it up in Accra, where I thought he would havehadmorebusiness.

Fortunately for me, a few months later, UNDP invited me to speak at their staff retreat at that hotel. I took advantage of the trip to engage the manager of the facility and I was pleasantly surprised that because of the annual Kwahu Easter program, the facility was bookedyearsinadvance.

The good news is that it is not only the Rock City that benefits from the annual Kwahu Easter The fesval has been one of the biggest events in Ghana and although figures are not available, it is reasonable to assume that theeconomyofKwahuisenhancedbyit.

The point I am making is that the potenal of our cultural, arts and tourism sector is huge but there is work to be done and government must lead this effort orthepotenalwillnotbefullyrealized.

Intrinsicvalue

Sofar,Ihavetriedtomakeacasefortheeconomicvalue and significance of the culture, arts and tourism sector but the sector has more to offer than just direct economiccontribuon.

I am talking of the intrinsic values that the sector offers which are: to entertain, to delight, to challenge, to give meaning, to interpret, to raise awareness, and to smulate.

These non-market values are difficult to measure in monetary terms but they are just as important as the direct economic values. While jobs can be created by many economic acvies, we need to ask the queson, what other sector can generate these same intrinsic values?

When Gallup and the Knight Foundaon set out to answer the queson “What aaches people to their communies?” in a three-year study, researchers found that the key reasons cited by residents for loving their cieswere:

·entertainment and social offerings, ·how welcoming thecityis,itsaesthecs—

Inotherwords,theartsandculture.

Mayors in the USA are embracing a new concept for designing their cies. The concept is called “creave placemaking.” In a white paper on creave placemaking for the Mayors' Instute on City Design, the Urbanplanning researcher Ann Markusen defined this conceptthus:

“In creave placemaking, partners from public, private, nonprofit and community sectors strategically shape the physical and social character of a neighborhood, town,cityorregionaroundartsandculturalacvies.” In creave place-making, the arts are used to develop an area where people want to live, work and congregate.

The possible economic impact of creave placemaking was explained by Jamie Benne, director of public affairs for the American Naonal Endowment for the Arts. He said, “A theater has 1,000 people show up at eight o'clock and leave at eleven o'clock. A museum might have 1,000 visitors spread out over the course of an eight-hour day A rehearsal studio might have 30 people coming and going every hour over 12 hours. You put the three different organizaons in proximity to one another and, all of a sudden, you have a full day of posive foot traffic on a street — feet that belong to people who need to eat meals, buy newspapers, go shopping and take public transportaon You have everymayor'sdream.”

The key is to treat the arts as an essenal part of the city's identy. Successful creave placemaking builds the economy at the local level, enhances surrounding non-arts businesses and provides job opportunies and ways for individuals to parcipate in acvies associated with the arts and cultural events. The results bring people together, spark community pride and createamorevibrant“place.”

This is the direcon some developed naons are going in building and designing their cies with a view to making them economically strong and Ghana cannot affordtoignorethewisdomandvalueofthismovement towards making the arts and culture central to social andeconomicdevelopment.

Cultural capital, which is defined as the sum total of a country's wealth or stock of art, heritage and other kind of cultural expression, like other kinds of capital, needs to be invested in – otherwise it will depreciate and be devaluedoverme.

Conclusion

So far in Ghana, we have treated the arts and culture sector in the same way we used to raise domesc poultry in the past. We leave the players in the sector to struggle on their own and hope that something good will come out. I argue that the potenal of the arts and culture sector and industries is too important and so needed by Ghana that we cannot connue to pay lipservicetoit.