Bar­ba­dos Prime Min­is­ter Mia Mot­t­ley will de­liv­er the fea­ture ad­dress at the vir­tu­al launch of the Pan African Fes­ti­val T&T, which will be host­ed by the Eman­ci­pa­tion Sup­port Com­mit­tee of T&T on Mon­day (May 25) at 5.30 pm.

Mot­t­ley, who is al­so the CARI­COM chair, is ex­pect­ed to ad­dress is­sues of rel­e­vance to Africa and its Di­as­po­ra in this the sixth year of the UN In­ter­na­tion­al Decade for Peo­ple of African De­scent, in ad­di­tion to is­sues of Caribbean uni­ty in these chal­leng­ing times.

Min­is­ter of Com­mu­ni­ty De­vel­op­ment, Cul­ture and the Arts Dr Nyan Gads­by-Dol­ly and Deputy Chair of the African Union Com­mis­sion His Ex­cel­len­cy Kwe­si Quartey will al­so speak at the event.

Di­rec­tor of Re­gion­al and Pan African Af­fairs of the ES­CTT Khafra Kam­bon will al­so ad­dress this year’s theme - 1970 Re­mem­bered: Re­con­nec­tion and Recom­mit­ment.

At the launch, the ES­CTT will an­nounce its de­ci­sion to trans­form the com­mem­o­ra­tive events lead­ing up to the Au­gust 1 Eman­ci­pa­tion Day cel­e­bra­tion due to the re­stric­tions placed on so­cial gath­er­ings as a re­sult of COVID-19. The ES­CTT will take this year’s ob­ser­vances on­to the vir­tu­al plat­form, start­ing with the launch Mon­day.

“We in­tend to take the pos­i­tive out of this very com­plex and chal­leng­ing sce­nario that is af­fect­ing every­one across the world, es­pe­cial­ly as this year marks the 50th an­niver­sary of the 1970 Black Pow­er Rev­o­lu­tion,” Za­kiya Uzoma-Wada­da, the new­ly- ap­point­ed ES­CTT ex­ec­u­tive chair said of the plan.

“Af­ter much con­sid­er­a­tion and ex­plor­ing what is pos­si­ble, we have de­cid­ed the best way for­ward is to move pro­grammes on­line. Such an ap­proach will al­low not on­ly peo­ple from Trinidad and To­ba­go to par­tic­i­pate and en­joy events but per­sons from the Di­as­po­ra and the African con­ti­nent.”

The event will al­so fea­ture per­for­mances from Broth­er Valenti­no, po­et­ry by Dr Ein­tou Pearl Springer, Muham­mad Muwak­il, Chibale Drum­ming En­sem­ble and pan­nists De­jean and De­ja Cain.

The ES­CTT is host­ing this year’s ac­tiv­i­ties in col­lab­o­ra­tion with The Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies, Open Cam­pus (UWIOC). UWIOC is part­ner­ing with the or­gan­i­sa­tion in its quest to man­age as­pects of its cel­e­bra­tion vir­tu­al­ly and the launch will be trans­mit­ted across the re­gion on UWI TV Glob­al via mul­ti­ple Flow Evo chan­nels.

In T&T, it will be shown on Flow Chan­nel 102 at 5.30 pm and live streamed on uwitv.org, the Open Cam­pus and ES­CTT’s so­cial me­dia plat­form, and www.eman­ci­pa­tiontt.com.

Found­ed in 1992, the Eman­ci­pa­tion Sup­port Com­mit­tee of T&T is an um­brel­la body de­signed to up­lift and strength­en the com­mem­o­ra­tion of Eman­ci­pa­tion.