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The Ghana Tourism Authority (GTA) has launched the first ever African choral festival in Accra. The African Choral Festival under the theme,�� Celebrating Culture through Choral Music�� is slated for March 9-13, 2012 and will take place in the National Theatre in Accra and the Cape Coast Castle in the Central Region. Launching the event, the Honourable Minister of Tourism, Mrs. Akua Sena Dansua said the festival will bring together choral groups from the United States of America, Asia, Europe, Western and Southern Africa and host Ghana. She added that the event will bring heavy inflows of foreign exchange, promote domestic tourism, foster national, regional and international cooperation and cohesion and also give Ghana the much needed publicity and exposure to boost investment. She continued that Ghana is an ideal tourist destination with impeccable democratic credentials, a stable economy, an emerging oil and gas industry a 550km stretch pristine shoreline among others. The Honourable Minister further added that, there will be regional choral competitions in all the ten regions to select winners who will compete for the three top slots to represent Ghana at the event. On his part, the Chief Executive Officer of the Ghana Tourism Authority, Mr. Julius Debrah stressed that, the Choral Festival will provide enormous opportunities especially for the private sector operators in the industry. He emphasized that, by this the GTA is creating a vehicle to market our tourism potential to the outside world. He added that, the tourism industry globally has become very competitive hence the need to develop niche products to stay competitive. The Special Events Manager of the Ghana Tourism Authority, Mr. Ben Anane-Nsiah took turn to outline the dates for the regional competitions which take place between 10-28 January 2012. He stressed that Choral festival will not only be restricted to church music but will also embraced other traditional forms of choral music.