Veteran actress, Akofa Edjeani Asiedu, has called on the government to pay attention to arts and culture “because they are the nerve centre of the country’s economy.”
The actress observed that Ghana’s movie industry was dying because structures were not in place to aid its growth.
Speaking in an interview on Accra-based Hitz FM in Accra on the programme—Daybreak Hitz with KMJ—the actress urged the government to pay attention to arts and culture.
According to her, “the arts and culture industry was dying now because we are not doing the right things. There are no structures, thankfully we have the bill passed as an act but it is not even being implemented, it is just as if we don’t have the policy, so we need to put the right pressure on the people.”
Akofa Edjeani Asiedu, who has been appointed National Coordinator for the Pan African Federation of Film Makers Forum, thinks “the ministers and government need to understand why we need culture and arts; why it has to take priority and why it is so prominent because it is the nerve centre of our economy [because] it is the foundation that you build your country on.”
“…if you have a bad foundation, you are going to collapse and that is what is happening, so if they understand, then we don’t have to force them,” she affirmed.
Reacting to actress Yvonne Nelson’s campaign to solicit signatures from industry persons to petition the government to help revive the movie industry, Akofa asserted that signing petitions and demonstrations will not save the dying movie industry.
“Yvonne means well, it’s the frustration that we are all going through. I don’t see how just signing signatures is going to help anything because the president can have all that and still put it under the stack of papers that he has but when they understand why this industry needs to be put at its right place, you won’t need all these signatures.”
Yvonne Nelson started a campaign with the sole aim of saving the movie industry after her recent spat on social media attacking her colleagues for being obsessed with only slaying it on the red carpet while the movie industry was dying.
“…what we need to do is to engage the authorities, sit one-on-one with them and have a stakeholders meeting and if they don’t understand why we let them understand, we need to dialogue,” Akofa Edjeani Asiedu concluded.
Story: Entertainment Desk
