PAWA AND BUSIA FOUNDATION TO COLLABORATE ON LITERARY EVENTS

The Pan African Writers Association (PAWA) and the Busia Foundation International (BFI) have agreed to work together on a number of cultural and literary activities within the ambit of the two organizations.

The decision was the outcome of a recent meeting in Accra between the Secretary General of PAWA, Dr Wale Okediran and the CEO of BFI who is also the immediate past Ghana’s Ambassador to Brazil, Prof Abena Busia.

Some of the activities will include, literary seminars and lectures as well as an International Writers Residency that will be based in Ghana.

According to Prof Busia, the Busia Foundation International (BFI) is dedicated to advancing the legacy of Dr. K.A.
Busia, a visionary leader, father and former Prime Minister of the 2nd Republic of Ghana who was a firm believer in Freedom and Democracy and the rights of all peoples, man woman, black or white.

It is for this reason that BFI’s mission is to promote in Ghana and elsewhere, Human Rights, Civic Education and Good Governance.

Abena P. A. Busia is also a retired Professor in the Departments of English and Women’s & Gender Studies at Rutgers University, USA as well as a published poet.

She has published widely, lectured extensively, and taught workshops and master-classes for UNESCO and other bodies on curriculum transformation for gender, race, and African-Diaspora Studies.

The idea for the establishment of the Busia Foundation was conceived of by Mrs. Naa Morkor Abrefa Busia (1924–2010) to honour and perpetuate the memory of her late husband Professor Kofi Abrefa Busia (1913–1978) and remind his communities of his ideas and ideals. Busia had an enthusiastic commitment to democracy as the “moral language” of all humanity and to equality of all persons. It has been observed that Busia’s ideas have survived the radical populism of the 1960s, the militarism of the 1970s and the 1980s and emerged vindicated in the 1990s. It was to honour these ideas and ideals, and the way he tried to put them into practice over his short term of office as Prime Minister of the Second Republic that the Busia Foundation was established. The Busia Foundation was formally launched in July 1998 in commemoration of Busia’s 85th birthday, with Busia Foundation International established three years later. Among the aims and objectives of the Foundations are to preserve and disseminate Busia’s ideas and ideals widely by promoting and fostering his concerns for human rights, and the basic needs of people and civic education through a celebration of their vibrant culture. An anchoring task of this aspiration is to establish and maintain a library and resource center and to publish or assist in the publication of his books, little-known articles and unpublished papers, an aspiration started by the republication of the three books of this set.