It also means that even though Ghana stands to benefit from the study of French, our appreciation of our own cultures and languages would help us to firmly establish our African personality and that our resolve to project the African will be further enhanced.

The Akanism Movement, an organization of Ghanaian citizens in the United

Kingdom, believes that the English language has already tied us to England and other English speaking countries such that we fail to appreciate ourselves as Africans, and fight all attempts to evolve an African model of prosperity.

It would not be wrong to say, that the woes of the continent is as a result of long years of colonization which did not only rob us of our human and natural resources but also our pride as Africans.

This, to a large extent, has confused every effort we make at economic development, because we are always in haste to go for the Bretton Woods Institutions for solutions to our problems instead of finding out the success stories behind the great civilizations that existed along the Nile, the Niger and the Congo rivers, or what gave birth to kingdoms like the Asante, Zulu, Masai, etc.Indeed, it is no news to say civilization began in Africa, because the earliest forms of learning were discovered along the Nile river.

As far back as 1200 BC, Timbuktu in the Ancient Ghana Empire boasted of a university where all kinds of learning took place. And as Mr. Kwasi Tano Obeng puts it, “The Twi language (spoken by a section of Ghanaians) was the mother language of most international languages including English, Latin, Greek and Hebrew.”

Mr. Obeng, who is the President of the Akanism Movement, in an interview with the Ghana News Agency, said the world attained civilization from the culture of speakers of the Twi language, and that the language has been in existence for a million years.

It is therefore obvious that the African is gradually being submerged in a cultural quagmire that hides all possibilities of him ever emerging as a super power in this dispensation. And as Mr. Obeng observes “nothing can help Ghana to improve our current situation except to promote our own culture.” This is because foreign dominance of our institutions, policies, ideologies, perceptions (even about God), etc. makes the African fail to see himself first as African.This definitely does a great harm to our survival as a people.

One would say giving the Ghanaian a second European language would be nice but superficial because the hard truth is that our bid to unite has never prospered because Africans see themselves first as Francophone, Lusophone, Anglophone or even arabized persons.

 And as it fought against Dr. Kwame Nkrumah during the struggle to unite Africa, these divisions of the continent along language lines have helped to keep the continent down for decades. That was why Dr. Nkrumah saw the independence of an African nation as “meaningless unless it was linked to the total liberation of the whole African continent”.

This means that we have to eradicate all forms of limitations to our unity if we want to prosper. That is why the call for Africa to have a common language comes at a great advantage to us. Dr. Obadele Kambo, a lecturer at the Institute of African Studies of the University of Ghana, has challenged the call by the President to make the study of French compulsory in Ghana.

He believes that the government should rather be thinking of Yuroba, Kiswahili or Wolof. Other thinkers on the same issue prefers Ghana going for the Hausa language as the official means of communication.   The Akanism Movement, in adding its voice to the debate, observed that brain drain as a phenomenon, which has robbed Africa of its economic output for years, has prospered largely because we speak the same language with the destination countries.

Mr. Obeng stated that, “Ghana uses her limited resources to train professionals like doctors, engineers, nurses, teachers, etc., and later lose them to countries like UK, America, Canada, Australia, etc., simply because these countries speak and work with English.”And as has been observed, this exodus of the highly trained persons from Ghana stands to increase with the mastery of the French language.

It is time to begin an African renaissance that would take us back to our values in dealing with our problems.   The world watches in awe at the many attempts by independent African states to survive; many wonder whether we would ever get it right. As we strive to create prosperity for our people, we should understand that the more we ignore the values of unity, and continue to be tied to foreign values; the more we relegate issues of Africa to the background and rely only on foreign policies, the more we would stay the same and worsen our plight.

“The world is becoming a global village, and any attempt to learn foreign languages would be welcomed, but we should not do so at the expense of fostering African unity and the promotion of African solutions to African problems,” Mr Obeng said.