A Ghanaian Journalist based in the United Kingdom, Stephanie Takyi is calling for increased governmental investment towards the building of a modern showbiz infrastructure to help generate local revenues and employment avenues for national development. She believes a financially-viable Tourism Ministry with a workable national talent-development program would enhance performance and thereby develop the ingenuity and creativity of Ghanaians who have interest in the creative art industry.
Players in Ghana’s showbiz industry including musicians, film actors and producers continue to lament at the perennial financial difficulties they are bedeviled with and the seeming non-availability of adequate theatres and studios to enhance their talent development and performance. They also complain about frustrations they go through when marketing their works on the local and international levels.
Speaking in an interview, Stephanie Takyi also called for the introduction of showbiz oriented curricula in Ghanaian educational institutions that will prepare the youth who take up showbiz as a profession for them to fare well. “Government must ensure that the next generation of actors, actresses, fashion designers and journalists, among others has creative hubs where they can develop and promote their talents professionally”
The former BBC showbiz journalist urged parents and society not to discourage their children when they spot talents in them and support them to pursue the correct education for the building of a greater and prosperous future in the creative art industry. She stressed the need for talents need to be identified, nurtured, managed and marketed to make them partake of staple national events and come out with fame in order to compete on the international showbiz industry. “Ghana must have its own version of the Oscars, Bollywood and the like, she advised.
