2018 Pan African University Debate Champion, Erasmus Segbefia from the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology emerged as winner of the 2019 edition of the Accra Open Debate Championship which came to an end on Tuesday, June 11.
He won with a former student of the University of Ghana, Derrick Ackah.
The Championship, which is in its 5th year this year, was held at the University of Ghana Campus. It is one of the very few open debate tournament in West Africa that brings together many young people to engage in competitive British parliamentary style debate.
The 2019 edition saw over 70 participants from 3 West African countries participate in the tournament.
This year’s edition was very competitive and fun as participants had the opportunity to learn, compete and create networks.
Head of Speech Forces, organizers of the competition, Eric Asamoah in an interview with Radio Univers indicated that It was a very good tournament.
“It was one of the most competitive tournaments I have seen. It was not the biggest, but it was very competitive, the teams that came, the speakers, they were all very very good. So you could see from the final results that nobody really took some long lead…well everybody was very close to each other,” he stated.
“And aside that, we had lots of fun, most people enjoyed it, made new friends, new networks and that’s basically all. The teams that shown were very good and at least it shows that we have been moving…. it’s not just about the tournament but about the debate development in itself. so comparing from where we were, the first edition till now you could see that there is a lot of progress in the debating space,” he said
Speech Forces are optimistic that the future of the tournament remains bright as turnout for open tournaments such as the Accra Open Debate Championship keeps improving.
Here are the list winners
2019 Best Judge – Jeremiah Sekyi
2nd Best Judge – Jennifer Sarkodie
3rd Best Judge – Samuel Kojo Pinkrah
Best New Judge – Kingsley Asare
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