Ghana has Joined the Rest of the La Fracophonie Community To mark the 53rd Anniversary
GHANA would join the rest of the La Fracophonie community in other parts of the world to mark La Fracophonie week in Accra as the country positions itself for full membership of the International Organisation of La Fracophonie (OIF).
The week long activities to commence on March 18, 2023 would include a float through some principal streets of Accra, a football gala at the El Wak stadium, aflag raising ceremony at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Regional Integration to be graced by ambassadors of the OIF member states and other dignitaries.
The OIF, founded on March 20 1970, at Niamey in the Republic of Niger, is an international organisation representing countries and regions where French is a lingua franca with a significant proportion of the population being francophones.
With its headquarters in Paris, it has Hamani Diori, Léopold Sédar Senghor and Habib Bourguiba who at the time were the Presidents of Niger, Senegal and Tunisia respectively, as its founding fathers.
Ghana, as an associate member of the OIF has taken steps to raise public awareness through the media about joining an organisation that works to promote universal values such as democracy, the defense of human rights and for multilateral cooperation.
President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, as Minister of Foreign Affairs in 2006 led Ghana to attend a summit of the OIF in Beirut, at which Ghana was granted associate member status.
And since his assumption of office in 2017 the President, through the Focal Person of La Francophonie at the presidency, has been working hard on taking Ghana’s associate membership of the 88-member country organisation a notch higher by ensuring that the country obtains full membership at the earliest possible time.
President Akufo-Addo was quoted as saying that “indeed, it goes without saying that during all these years Ghana has taken actions which in my opinion should naturally lead to obtaining full membership”.
A former President of Senegal, Mr Abdou Diouf, who was Secretary General of the OIF from 2003 to 2014 and following the recommendations from the summit of heads of state and government in Quebec, proposed to Ghana to sign a Linguistic Pact with the OIF in order to better anchor the multilateral cooperation among the living forces of the country.
Surrounded by French-speaking countries – Togo, Burkina Faso and Cote d’Ivoire and due to its geographical position, Ghana remains a focal point in the sub-region to attract investment into the region coupled with a long-standing commitment to strengthening its efforts towards bilateral and multilateral integration with respect to membership in international and sub-regional organisations.
“At this stage, after 16 years of experience as an associate member, all these acts, all this growth on the part of the Ghanaian population, all this motivation can only be translated into a firm and clear will: the will to evolve within the Organisation, to change from associate member status to that of full member,” President Akufo-Addo stated.
Source: Sebastian Syme
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