Akufo-Addo To Du Bois Foundation: Agreement To Redevelop Centre Will Be Firmed Up3 min read

President Akufo-Addo has assured a delegation from the W.E.B Du Bois Foundation that his administration will ensure that an agreement expected to pave way for the redevelopment of the Du Bois centre at Cantonment, Accra will be firmed up.

The President gave the assurance when the Executive Director of W.E.B. Du Bois Foundation Japhet Ayiku led a delegation to pay a courtesy call on him at the Jubilee House today, Monday, 28 August 2023.

Mr Japhet Aryiku in his remarks, noted that the Du Bois Foundation and her partners have a plan to develop the centre into a first-class museum complex, however, there have been some challenges with getting the deal signed for the redevelopment to commence.

“We have people lined up to help us develop this place [the Du Bois centre] but they are saying that they are not going to give us money to develop the place if we don’t have a document saying we have the right to develop the place [W.E.B Du Bois centre]” Japhet Aryiku said.

Assurance

President Akufo-Addo, in his response to the submissions of the executive director of the Du Bois Foundation, noted that the late W.E.B. Du Bois is a universal figure on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean, and Ghana is privileged to be the only African country to be a part of his enviable life and rich history.

“It is obvious that Ghana has a unique role to play in promoting him [W.E.B Du Bois], his ideas, promoting his history, [and] promoting his connection,” President Akufo-Addo said.

“He is buried here. His remains are here, and he chose to die here. These are irreversible facts that tie us to him and his legacy forever and ever. So, there is every reason for us to be able to work together to achieve your goal,” President Akufo-Addo further remarked.

W.E.B. Du Bois

“William Edward Burghardt Du Bois stands at the summit of African and African American history and culture. He was born in Massachusetts in 1868,d the year the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution
was ratified, conferring citizenship on the African Americans.

“He died in Ghana on the eve of the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom in 1963, when the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., shared his dream for social justice at the height of the modern civil rights movement.

“A searing critic of racial oppression, a political activist and institution builder, an author and editor, a historian, philosopher, pioneering sociologist, teacher, and fervent Pan-Africanist, Du Bois early on articulated a vision for free and independent African nations.

“Undoubtedly the most important modern African American intellectual, Du Bois virtually invented modern African American letters and gave form to the consciousness animating the work of practically all other modern African American intellectuals to follow.

“But more than that, he reshaped how the complex experience of America and African America could be understood. He left Americans—black and white—a legacy of intellectual tools, a language with which they might analyze their present and imagine a future.

“In May of 1961 Kwame Nkrumah, then President of Ghana, whom Du Bois had met and known since 1945, invited Du Bois to move to Ghana to undertake direction of the preparation of an ‘Encyclopedia Africana’, an interdisciplinary global publication to document the experience and historical contributions of African peoples in the world.

“From late 1961, Bois lived a full life in Accra, the Ghanaian capital, working on the Encyclopedia. He died on August 27, 1963, the day before his American compatriots assembled for the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. He was interred in a state funeral outside Christiansborg Castle in Osu, formerly a holding pen for the slave cargoes bound for the Americas.

“In 1984, Du Bois’s remains were removed from the Christiansborg Castle in Osu to its present site at No. 22, 1st Circular Road, near the American Embassy in Accra. The following year, the W. E. B. Du Bois Memorial Centre for Pan African Culture was opened, with Du Bois’s library, a museum, and the mausoleum where he and his late wife, Shirley Graham Du Bois, are buried”.

From Wilberforce Asare