Fifteen Ghanaian immigrants joined City Council President Charles C. Yancey (Mattapan, North Dorchester) for a flag-raising ceremony to honor Ghana’s 44th year of independence at City Hall Plaza on Friday afternoon.
“Let us celebrate the birth … of a nation from which hundreds of thousands of people were ripped from the [West African] shores more than 400 years ago [and] came to build this nation — its economy as well as its political structure,” Yancey said.
Yancey used the occasion to announce the establishment of a sister-city relationship with the Ghanaian port twin-city of Sekondi Takoradi.
In May 1999, Yancey led a delegation of 60 black mayors and city councilors to tour six cities of Ghana. It was on this trip that Yancey met with Kofi Essieh, the president-elect of the Ghana Association of Greater Boston, and the idea of a sister-city relationship was broached.
Yancey said he hopes the relationship will include joint economic projects as well as cross-cultural education programs. The City Council passed the resolution unanimously in October 1999 and will officially become law once Mayor Thomas Menino signs it.
“I see both of our economies benefiting from this relationship,” Yancey said. “Ghana is in need of a lot of infrastructure improvement and we have a lot of technical skills that we could use.”
Yancey said he believes the people of Boston have much to learn with regard to international culture.
“Boston is in desperate need of some cultural uplifting,” he said. “A lot of people are very ill-informed and ignorant about life in Africa. Most people in this city don’t have the vaguest idea of where Ghana is located. What a waste that is when you consider the role the United States played in its independence.”
He cited historical figures like W.E.B. DuBois and Marcus Garvey as being instrumental in the independence movement for many African countries.
“People of Boston can get to know about people in Sekondi Takoradi,” Yancey said. “We will rely on the people of Ghana to help us out.”
A driving force behind these efforts to strengthen ties between the two cities is the similar set of characteristics, according to Yancey. In addition to being important port cities for their respective nations, the populations are nearly equal — 600,000 in Boston and 500,000 in Sekondi Takoradi.
“We share the Atlantic Ocean,” Yancey said. “Why not use it to communicate with each other?”
Ghana’s independence is significant since it was the first sub-Saharan country to achieve independence from British colonial rule. Given Boston’s history of being at the forefront of the American Revolution, a sister-city relationship was a natural fit, Yancey said.
“Ghana has the challenge of leading Africa out [of imprisonment] to economic liberation,” said Samuel Kissiedu, a Ghanaian journalist and one of 4,000 Ghanaians who have immigrated to Boston. “The other African countries are emulating what Ghana has now.”
Ghana has been cited by the International Monetary Fund as “the first sub-Saharan African country to pursue broad economic and structural reform.” It has a democratic system of government, its official language is English and it has managed to maintain stability despite the presence of four tribes: Akan, Ga, Ewe and Housa.
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