Kristy Ram­nar­ine

kristy.ram­nar­ine@cnc3.co.tt

His Roy­al Majesty Otum­fuo Os­ei Tu­tu II, the As­an­te­hene, will join Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley for this year’s Eman­ci­pa­tion Day pa­rade.

The Au­gust 1 event is be­ing host­ed by the Min­istry of Tourism, Cul­ture and the Arts in col­lab­o­ra­tion with the Eman­ci­pa­tion Sup­port Com­mit­tee.

The Prime Min­is­ter in­vit­ed the Monarch of the Ashan­ti King­dom, the As­an­te­hene, to this coun­try dur­ing his March 2020 vis­it to Ghana.

Otum­fuo Os­ei Tu­tu II will at­tend the Trade and In­vest­ment Sym­po­sium host­ed by the Eman­ci­pa­tion Sup­port Com­mit­tee at the Hilton Trinidad and Con­fer­ence Cen­tre on Mon­day.

The next day—Eman­ci­pa­tion Day—he will join Row­ley, min­is­ters and the Eman­ci­pa­tion Sup­port Com­mit­tee for the for­mal start of the Eman­ci­pa­tion Pro­ces­sion at the Trea­sury Build­ing in Port-of-Spain, at 8 am fol­low­ing which he will at­tend the of­fi­cial Eman­ci­pa­tion Pro­gramme at the Queen’s Park Sa­van­nah from 2 pm.

He is ex­pect­ed to de­part on Au­gust 5.

The As­an­te­hene ex­pressed his ea­ger­ness to vis­it T&T, ac­cord­ing to a re­lease from the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter.

“I feel it will be a part of me. My peo­ple are there and my broth­ers and sis­ters are there, there­fore it’s more of an ex­cite­ment to see where they are,” he said.

He said Ghana could ben­e­fit from learn­ing from T&T in the ar­eas of gas de­vel­op­ment and en­gi­neer­ing as we are ahead in those spheres.

Ad­di­tion­al­ly, the Asen­te­hene ex­pressed his an­tic­i­pa­tion of the es­tab­lish­ment of an Ashan­ti vil­lage in T&T and the for­ma­tion of link­ages be­tween the Caribbean and Ghana.

Row­ley, who was the guest of ho­n­our for Ghana’s 63rd In­de­pen­dence cel­e­bra­tions host­ed in the Ashan­ti re­gion, pre­vi­ous­ly in­di­cat­ed that strength­en­ing ties with Ghana could prove to be in the best in­ter­est of T&T, with the po­ten­tial for trade and busi­ness.

Pres­i­dent of Ghana Nana Ad­do Dankwa Aku­fo-Ad­do vis­it­ed this coun­try in 2019 to ad­vance in­ter­est to both coun­tries in the fields of en­er­gy, health, fi­nance, ed­u­ca­tion, tourism and cul­ture, dur­ing meet­ings with for­mer pres­i­dent Paula-Mae Weekes and the Prime Min­is­ter.

In di­rect suc­ces­sion to the 17th- cen­tu­ry founder of the Ashan­ti Em­pire, Otum­fuo Os­ei Tu­tu II is the 16th As­an­te­hene, en­stooled on April 26, 1999.

Ghana’s roy­al ties to T&T can be dat­ed as far back as 1881 with the ar­rival of Prince Kofi Nti, son of King Kofi Cal­cali and West Africa. In 1883, Prince Kofi Nti de­signed a Sig­nal Sta­tion, which was built at Fort St George, Port-of-Spain.