H.E. JOHN DRAMANI MAHAMA PRESIDENT OF THE REPUBLIC OF

ADDRESS 57TH CELEBRATION THURSDAY, 6TH MARCH 2014 ,

Your Excellency President Alpha Conde Vice President Kwesi Bekoe Amissah-Arthur Rt. Hon Speaker of Parliament Your ladyship the Chief Justice, represented by Justice William Atuguba Former President John Agyekum Kufuor Our school children My brother and sisters

This is a most extraordinary Independence Day celebration.

When it rains we call it showers of blessing. So, I want to believe that these showers that God has brought down today are a signal to us that He is continuing to bless Ghana, and blessing Ghana to move to the next level.

I want to thank the school children, who have been on parade today. I want to thank our gallant troops, who have also been on parade today and are still standing in the rainstorm.

I want to thank the general public, who have all left your houses, out of a sense of selflessness, nationalism and patriotism, to be here to celebrate Ghana’s 57th independence anniversary.

But today’s rainfall also tells us something. We have heard the words, Climate Change, mentioned over and over again. It has not be normal for rainstorm like this to happen at this time of the year – early in March. One would have thought that the harmattan weather would still be in control.

So what it means, as we have always been told is that we must implement climate change adaptability. It means that we must be better able to predict the weather. We did receive a storm warning from the Meteorological Services, but we received it this morning, a bit too late to put off this event. And so it means we must sharpen our abilities to predict how the climate and the weather would behave so that we can adapt to it. 1

Let me thank everybody for your resilience, members of the Diplomatic Corps, our traditional leaders, religious leaders and everybody who has been here with us today.

Today is the anniversary of an event that not only changed our country (Ghana) but also changed the world. It is the anniversary of freedom, the freedom for which our forefathers and foremothers fought, the freedom that we now enjoy, and are so blessed to sometimes even take for granted.

But the freedom that was won on March 6th, 1957 did not belong to us alone. It was a freedom that many throughout the world, especially Black people, celebrated and held as a symbol of hope.

In 1957 the Black people in America were not seen as equal. They could not attend the same schools, receive treatment at the same hospitals or eat at the same tables as their white fellowmen. They could not even vote. When Ghana gained its independence, our freedom became a source of inspiration to them too.

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., the leader of black America’s Civil Rights Movement, travelled to Ghana to witness our Independence Day. When he returned to America, he delivered a speech called “The Birth of a Nation,” in which he said:

“Ghana has something to say to us. It says to us first that the oppressor never voluntarily gives freedom to the oppressed. You have to work for it. And if Nkrumah and the people of the Coast had not stood up persistently, revolting against the system, it would still be a colony under the British Empire. Freedom is never given to anybody.”

But it is not just Black Americans that Ghana’s independence inspired. I once met a woman from Guyana, who told me that all throughout her youth, 6th March, Ghana’s Independence Day, was a national holiday in her country. “Ghana,” she told me, “was synonymous with freedom, black power and African excellence.”

Ghana was the first black African nation to win independence, and so the world’s eyes were on us. But the place where our freedom had the most immediate influence was on this great continent of ours. If Ghanaians could free themselves from colonial rule, then so too could the rest of Africa.

And so, they followed in Ghana’s steps, one new, free African nation after the other. The first to take heed to our call was Guinea, which gained its independence in 1958.

Guinea was a French colony. After Ghana gained its independence, the French colonies in Africa were given a choice; whether they could remain a colony but be given more privileges or they could be granted their full freedom and independence. Under the bold leadership of Ahmed Sékou Touré, who would go on to become the first president, the people of Guinea voted for freedom.

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When the French colonial government left Guinea, they took everything with them, and the things they could not take, they destroyed. Schools, hospitals, and public buildings were shattered to pieces. Cars and books were burned. It was a message to the other Francophone colonies in Africa: this is the price to be paid if you go the way of Ghana.

But our brothers and sisters in Guinea paid that price, the cost of their freedom, to be able to stand in solidarity with Ghana. So it is an honour for me to welcome, my friend and brother, His Excellency Professor Alpha Conde, President of the Republic of Guinea, who has travelled to Ghana today to once again stand in solidarity with us. President Alpha Conde you are warmly welcome. We are very happy to have you here today and Ghana is your home.

“Our independence is meaningless unless it is linked up with the total liberation of the African continent,” President said, shortly after Great Britain’s Union Jack was lowered and the Ghana flag was raised. “Our independence is meaningless unless it is linked up with the total liberation of Africa.”

And, despite the cost, freedom proved to be an extremely contagious condition. In 1960 alone, 17 African countries gained their independence.

My brothers and sisters, what we are celebrating today, and what we celebrate on every anniversary of our independence, is not just the attainment freedom; what we are celebrating is what that freedom meant and still means—to us and to an entire world. The door we opened on 6th March 1957 was not just to our future; it was not just to our freedom.

To countless people across the globe, that door was an opening to the possibility of their own freedom. This is who we are, as Ghanaians. We are able to take what other people consider impossible and make it possible. We are not easily defeated. We are willing to go the full distance in the protection of our country, and in the service of our dreams.

We are a nation of people with the capacity and the courage to achieve whatever it is we dare to desire—whether it is freedom or democracy or development. We are willing to work to make it happen.

What the rest of the world has long admired about us Ghanaians is that we are a welcoming people. They admire the way we so easily form community, and the way we so purposely forge a common sense of unity.

It is this tendency towards unity that brings us together--Ga-Adangbes, Guans, Akans, Ewes, Dagombas,--all of us, together, as Ghanaians.

Mrs. Theodosia Okoh understood this when she designed our flag, using the three colours that are referred to as the Pan-African colours:

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Red, symbolizing the blood shed by those who paid the ultimate price for our freedom. Gold, symbolizing the richness of our resources, namely gold and other mineral resources. Green, symbolizing our lush forests and grasslands.

Upon gaining independence, many African nations adopted these same colours for their new national flags. (Red, Yellow and Green.) It was a show of solidarity. But there is only one nation whose flag bears the iconic, and the original, black star.

It is a lodestar for African freedom. A star that is used to guide a ship on its course. And that black star is ever-present on our flag, to remind us of who we are as Ghanaians and the role that Ghana has played, and continues to play, on the African continent.

My Brothers and Sisters, it is impossible to talk about freedom without also talking about equality. The two go hand-in-hand. The equality for which our forefathers and foremothers fought extended beyond the collective to the individual. It was their vision that every Ghanaian should be able to live in dignity; for every Ghanaian to have access to all the basic tools needed—such as food, shelter, education, and healthcare—to build a decent life for themselves and for their children. This is an ideal that we must, and will, continue working to achieve.

Recently I attended the World Economic Forum in Switzerland, where it was stated by various developmental and social justice organizations that inequality is currently one of the world’s biggest global risks. It is a flashpoint for national and social tension.

Time and time again, we as a people, have risen above those things that attempt to divide us. We must continue to be vigilant in our attempts to address the inequalities that face our society.

The gap between the rich and the poor must be bridged. All children must have access to education, whether they are male or female; whether they live in a village or in a city. Young people must be afforded the skills needed in order to find gainful employment. Proper healthcare must be available to all our people.

These are not just nice statements to stand here and say; these are goals—realistic goals—that we must strive every day to meet. Our people’s lives depend on it. Ghana’s future depends on it. A country without people is nothing more than a piece of land. We cannot afford to leave any of our citizens behind.

The more Ghanaians we allow to be left behind—be they women, men, or children—the more likely it is that in the larger scheme of things, our country Ghana itself will also be left behind.

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As I was preparing to leave for Switzerland to attend the World Economic Forum, I received a call from a friend who asked me to bring something back for him. “What is it?” I asked. “Some chocolate,” he said. Chocolate? I was perplexed and my confusion must have registered through the phone. “The Swiss have the best chocolate in the world,” he said. “Didn’t you know that?” I was rushing so I hurriedly agreed to bring my friend back the chocolate he’d requested. Then while I was on the plane, I had some time to think and properly consider the request.

Ah, I wondered, why should I travel all the way to Switzerland to bring this man chocolate when there is chocolate in Ghana? And furthermore, why should the Swiss have a reputation of being the best chocolate makers in the world? They don’t produce cocoa. They don’t produce sugar.

More than half the cocoa beans used to make Swiss chocolate come from Ghana. And yet, the Swiss chocolate industry is one of the most reputable and successful in the world.

By the time the flight had arrived in Switzerland, I knew that I, John Dramani Mahama the President of Ghana, one of the world’s top producers of cocoa, would not be spending a single pesewa on chocolate in that country.

On my return, I sent my flustered friend a box of Golden Tree chocolates, proudly made in Ghana, the best chocolate in the world.

My Brothers and Sisters, Ghanaians are some of the most enterprising people in the world. We are smart. We are creative. We are crafty. We have a good business sense. And when put to the test, we are, indeed, hardworking.

There is no reason why a significant number of the items that we import to use on a daily basis cannot be made right here in Ghana. Just as we purchase products that are proudly Italian, proudly Chinese, proudly Turkish, or proudly South African, there is no reason we cannot manufacture goods that are proudly Ghanaian.

If we are to be truly independent, we cannot allow our destiny to be determined by corporations, industries, or individuals who exist beyond our national borders. And that is precisely what we are doing when the majority of what we consume comes from outside. It is precisely what we are doing when all that we export are raw materials extracted from the earth.

The days when our wealth, our very worth, was based only on our natural and mineral resources must be a thing of the past. Yes, God has blessed Ghana richly with gold and bauxite and timbre and, now, oil.

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But, as I have said many times before and will continue to maintain, Ghana’s greatest resource is our people. God has blessed us even more richly with talent, innovation, and industriousness. Let us use these God-given gifts to transform this great nation of ours.

Many of our previous heads of state saw this potential that exists, this potential that will help us hasten the development of our nation, if only we would begin to place value on ourselves, and on what we produce.

And so on this occasion I salute all my predecessors who have worked hard to bring us to this stage. The time has come for us to move Ghana to the next level and we must work together to be able to achieve this.

My Brothers and Sisters, as Dr. Kwame Nkrumah famously said, “We face neither East nor West; we face forward.”

So, in furtherance of these ideas and policies by presidents past whose motivation it was to move our nation forward, I am calling for every day to be a “Made in Ghana” Day.

We should all continue with the practice of putting on national wear, introduced by President Kufuor’s government. But I’m asking us to go one step further: with every piece of clothing we wear, with every item of food we buy to prepare our meals, with every single thing we use, let us ask ourselves, “Was it made in Ghana?” And even more important, it is to ask ourselves, “Could it have been made in Ghana?”

If you ask yourself, “Could it have been made in Ghana?” and the answer is “Yes,” then for the love of this country, our country, start thinking of ways that we can transform our society and our economy by making it happen.

On behalf of the people of Ghana, I wish to thank His Excellency Professor Alpha Conde for making the journey to celebrate the anniversary of our independence with us. I wish to also acknowledge the presence here of the children of the first President of Guinea, Sekou Toure who have accompanied President Conde to Ghana. I say you are warmly welcome. And also the people of Guinea for making your own journey to freedom and standing side by side with your brothers and sisters from Ghana.

I would like to thank the good people of this country for always appealing to what is good and right in order to improve on what can be made or done better. Ghana belongs to you, each and every one of you.

It is because of your love of Ghana, because of your dedication to this country, our country, that 57 years after it was first raised into the night sky, our lodestar, the black star of freedom, continues to shine as a guiding light for Africa and, indeed, the world.

May God bless you.

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And may God continue to shed His grace on our great nation, Ghana. God bless our homeland Ghana.

Thank you ladies and gentlemen. END

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