ALTHOUGH the extended family system has lost its strength in the Ghanaian society, there are many occasions and festivals that sought to reinforce this great value of the African society.
During festivals, many activities are held to reunite families by sharing food together, tracing old bonds at ancestral homes, making new friends and the revival of cultural values.
Therefore, the celebration of this year’s Asogli yam festival on the theme: “Uniting for development”, was a unique one aimed at espousing the culture and traditions of the people to the outside world hence, the launch of a tourist and business guide at Ho to underscore the celebration.
The celebration of yam festivals by the Ewe tribe was inherited from their ancestral home, Notsie in the Republic of Togo.
The festival is considered as periods of honour to the gods of the land for their guidance during the entire period from planting through harvesting.
The significance of the yam festival to the Asogli people is to foster unity through forgiveness and reconciliation, annual stocktaking event for all occupational endeavours, especially farming, mobilisation of both human and material resources for Asogli State for job creation and to serve as an annual re-affirmation by all chiefs and their subjects in the Asogli State to the Agbogbome stool.
The effect of the Asogli yam festival on national development cannot be underestimated because the patronage and sponsorship entailed in the celebration was always overwhelming.
The festival could be rated as the leading festival of contemporary times in the Volta Region that was why people attached pomp and pageantry to the event.
The input of telecommunication industries such as Vodafone during the festival was marvellous because the company created jobs for young boys and girls in the area during the period of celebration.
A market was created for many products such as food, water, fuel, hotel accommodation, entertainment and transportation.
Visits by many tourists to the Adaklu mountain was also a side attraction of the festival.
According to history, the Asogli people like most Ewe speaking people, traced their origin to a place called Abyssinian which is now known as Ethiopia.
They migrated with other Ewes from Abyssinia to Oyo in Yoruba land in Western Nigeria, from where they moved to Ketu in Dahomey now Benin, before settling at Notsie in present day Republic of Togo in the 12th Century.
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