Intensify tourism promotion in the country

One area that can be promoted by the country to generate more revenue is tourism, because it has great potentials that must be exploited to the full.

When it comes to tourist sites, they exist in two main forms. These are, first, naturally endowed sites and secondly, man-made sites.

The naturally endowed sites include beautiful rivers, unique mountains, animals like monkeys and birds that are not common to find in the world. Other naturally endowed sites may also contain uniquely attractive fountains of water and many other scenes that beat the imaginations of people. Such naturally endowed sites can be found in all the 16 regions of the country and this calls for a special purpose investment to preserve and upgrade them together with certain facilities like roads and accommodation as well as restaurants that will make the place attractive to everybody.

We need to develop a special project for this purpose and if it will mean going for international assistance, we will have to do it and earn more money for the country. What is the point in keeping national habitats such as special birds and animals in the country without making them known to would-be visitors whose desire would be to visit and explore such places to satisfy their curiosity, mental interest and also welfare as a people in the country?

We need a special project, as has been pointed out, to bring this about. Such a project can be possible, so we need to work towards it within specified and achievable timelines.

When we come to man-made tourist sites, we also have many of them in various parts of the country, especially along the coast of Ghana. We have heard of forts and castles built by colonial masters who visited the coastal regions of Ghana and built forts and castles for their own security purposes and also use such buildings to keep and transport slaves from the Gold Coast to other parts of the world.

A good example here is the Fort Orange located near Sekondi in the Western Region. This fort was properly built and designed by the colonial people who used it for trade in human beings and other goods. This together with other site serve as images of the slave master and the slave trade but they can be reversed and modified to serve a good purpose for the people of Ghana today.

Other forts and castles exist in the country today and all of them will have to be utilised to generate wealth for the country, having existed for over 400 and 500 years. Examples are Elmina Castle, Cape Coast Castle and the Christianburg Castle which became known as the Osu Castle and was used as seat of government by various governments until recently.

The use of castles for tourist sites will mean developing them and roads to attract tourists. One good thing that can come out of this is that apart from income generation, they will help in the education of people in the local level as well as foreigners who will come to visit such places. An interesting point to note about the communities in which these forts and castles are located is that most of the people do not know much about the forts and castles and the purposes they were used for.

A gradual development and preservation of such areas is, therefore, very necessary for the education of the local people of the communities as well as foreigners who visit those places.

As has been pointed out already, such areas stand the chance of boosting up the local economy to promote domestic trade and business transactions all over such areas.

Thus, when it comes to man-made sites such as forts and castles or naturally endowed tourist sites such as beautiful sites, animals and birds, what we need to do is to put in as much investment as possible to be able to preserve them and make them attractive for sale to people whether Ghanaians or foreigners. This is how both domestic and international tourism can be promoted in this country.

However, to be able to succeed in this dream, the investment cannot be avoided in terms of roads, bridges, healthcare, housing, flyovers where necessary, etc. This is how Ghana can be made to move forward in anticipation of our national aspirations.