LECIA launches LEJIA

Accra, Dec. 20, GNA - Nana Addo Danquah Akufo-Addo, Minister of Foreign Affairs, Monday urged institutions of higher learning in the country to create avenues of genuine and spirited debate and discussion on national issues to ensure that realistic and holistic policies were formulated for national development.

He said the promotion of critical faculty was vital to the development of free and open society needed for the success of the nation's development.

Nana Akufo-Addo made the call when he launched the maiden edition of the Legon Journal of International Affairs (LEJIA), a publication of the Legon Centre for International Affairs (LECIA).

The 207-page journal is the result of three years of research by a team of local and international scholars and diplomats, and it puts the foreign policies of Ghana and other nations under the searchlight, with the view creating the forum for debate on issues of foreign policy, global governance and international security.

The content page of the book reads among others, ECOWAS Security Protocols and Conflict Management in West Africa, A Critical Appraisal of Nigeria's Foreign Policy Under Military Rule (1966 - 1999), The Fourth Republican Constitution of Ghana ands Sustainable Development and Environmental Policy Making for Good Governance and Reconstruction in Ghana; The case of the mining sector (1981 - 2000).

Nana Akufo-Addo said the 2004 general election, which was by common consent regarded as the best conducted so far in the fourth Republic, was a clear manifestation of the determination of Ghanaians to build a new Ghana on the values of democratic accountability, respect for human rights and the rule of law.

"In that new Ghana, the vigorous exercise of the critical faculty will be a central feature of successful public policy," he said. He commended the editorial board of the journal, which included renown scholars and diplomats such as Ambassador Annan Cato, Secretary of Ghana's Cabinet, Professor Gilbert Bluwey, LECIA, the Editor-in-Chief and Professor Kofi Kumado, Director of LECIA, who was the General Editor.

Several copies of the journal were sold at 100,000 cedis each. Prof. Kumado said the journal would be available on subscription for a period of the next two years before the second volume would be published. Members of the Diplomatic Corps, past and present Ghanaian Ambassadors, members of Parliament and the academia, attended the ceremony.