15/09/2022
Dr. Alex Atta Yaw Kyerematen (Father of Alan John Kyerematen, Minister of Trade and Industry, Ghana) was born on the 29th April, 1916. Is the Founder/Curator and First Director of the Ghana National Cultural Centre (now Centre for National Culture) and the Kumasi Zoo.
It is said that whilst studying anthropology in the United Kingdom in the 1940s, he realized after an encounter with a British professor how ignorant he was about his own Asante traditions. Embarrassed, Dr. Kyerematen decided that after his studies, he would do something more concrete to promote Asante culture.
After his certain high profile education, he returned to Asante where he found a beautiful collaborator – the Asantehene, Otumfuo Sir Osei Agyeman Prempeh II. In a passionate appeal in a meeting of the Asanteman Council, arranged by the Otumfuo, Sr. Kyerematen collected that month’s allowances of all the chiefs to start the Centre.
Stage by stage, it finally got completed with the aid of some Israelis and individuals including the late Quarshie Idun. The Centre became unique in Ghana. The pride of Asante Culture eventually found its sanctuary. Short of money, Dr. Kyerematen had to borrow or forcibly take the kente cloth of his wife Victoria, as one of the exhibition pieced at the museum. The Centre grew out of Asante nationalism and the moral trust invested in the originator. It soon had two big theatre houses, the Chapel of Charity, the Prempeh II Museum, the Ashanti library, a canteen, Textile and Weaving Factory, a big Zoo, a model eighteenth century Asante architectural building.
But ever nationalistic, Dr. Kwame Nkrumah, passing through Kumasi to Tamale became fascinated with Dr. Kyerematen and his Centre, he asked Dr. Kyerematen to expand his idea to embrace the whole country. Hence, the Asante Cultural Centre now became Ghana National Cultural Centre in 1963.
By the time Dr. Kyerematen died on the 4th November, 1976, he had grown in ideas about cultural preservation. He published si