Photostory #437A: Western Canadians and West Africans in Joint Project: Sowing Seeds of Knowledge and Friendship

Photographers
John Ough
Maker
National Film Board of Canada
Release Date
February 28, 1967
Collection
CMCP fonds
Credit Line
Canadian Museum of Contemporary Photography fonds, National Gallery of Canada Library and Archives
Main Text
One of the most up-to-date demonstrations of practical international friendship between nations is the Canadian-inspired Accra Technical Training Centre in Ghana, West Africa. This colorful, vigorous, young country, intent on modernizing its way of life to enable the more rapid and complete development of its national potential, is blessed with the most vital natural resource any nation can possess - an abundance of young citizens eager to learn the skills and sciences of the modern world. Important among facilities which will assist in transforming these keen, bright-eyed youths into the capable craftsmen required by today's jet-age technological market-place, will be the new Accra training centre. Largely the creation of the Canadian province of Saskatchewan (all the instructors on loan to the centre come from Canada's famed central prairie wheatland), the school teaches such essential trades as automotive and electrical engineering, refrigeration, carpentry, plumbing, radio and television and all the associated technical theory. Future plans are for Ghanaian instructors to gradually replace those from Canada and for this purpose 20 Ghanaians have already attended vocational teaching courses in Saskatchewan. The Accra Technical Training Centre, plus other big joint Canada-Ghana projects, will help development of two of the world's most potentially exciting nations. In the cool, shaded classrooms and spacious workshops of the Accra training centre the exchange of technical education will mature into an ocean-spanning bridge of friendly understanding.