By Michael Klugey
Diallo Sumbry, the founder of the Washington D.C. based The Adinkra Group, an African Cultural Edutainment Resource, and Consulting Company, and organizer of the Back2Africa Festival and Tour has been appointed as Ghana’s first African-American Tourism Ambassador by the Ghana Ministry of Tourism, Arts and Culture.
Mr. Sumbry will join Ghana Tourism Ambassadors including Afrobeats Star Fuse ODG, Ghanaian Rap Star, Sarkodie, Ghanaian British Singing Sensations, Reggie N Bollie, and Singer Wiyaala to transform and promote tourism as a leading sector of the economy in Ghana.
In the appointment letter presented by Ghana’s former Minister of Tourism and Culture, the Honorable Catherine Afeku, MP, Mr. Sumbry’s commitment and talent for promoting Ghana’s Sustainable Domestic and International Tourism through Music, Arts and Culture led to him being selected.
In the past few years Mr. Sumbry has organized the Back2Africa Festival and Tour, a birthright journey to Africa with a mission to connect people of African descent with the culture and traditions of Africa, bringing over hundreds of diasporans to Ghana including Washington DC-based artists the Backyard Band, Farafina Kan Drum and Dance Ensemble, Wes Felton, and Grammy-nominated R&B singer Raheem Devaughn.
Prior to his designation, Mr. Sumbry organized a three U.S. state visit for Ghana Tourism Authority in March 2018, led the organizing team for the Year of Return Launch in Washington, DC. and business delegations to Ghana to explore partnership and investment including the Chairman and CEO and Staff of Ebony Magazine and the President and Executive Staff of NAACP.
In his first order of business as an official tourism ambassador for Ghana,Mr. Sumbry delivered the first U.S. State and Capital City joint Legislative Resolution in support of the Year of Return from his birth state and city – Trenton, NJ to His Excellency, Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo Addo in his office early March.
Ambassador Sumbry, worked together with his father, Aula Sumbry, a devote Pan Africanist and activist who lives in New Jersey, to obtain the resolutions from the State of New Jersey and City of Trenton.