Empowering Community Engagement

Mobilizing and inspiring mass active participation in the festival through academic presentations, socio-cultural tourism of northern Ghana, business and investment networking and linkages.

Fostering Reconciliation Among Conflicting Parties

Leveraging the religious significance and values of Damba to achieve reconciliation among conflict parties.

Driving Development

Facilitating academic, media and national discourse on key development potentials and challenges and prefer solutions for the consideration of local chiefs, local government agencies, policy makers, civil society organizations, NGO, political parties, corporate and private business entities.

Preserving Indigenous Knowledge

Documenting and preserving researched works on indigenous knowledge untapped development potentials and assessed conflicts at UDS for benefit of present and future generations.

The Specific Objectives of the ADFLs

  • At least one Development for Peace issue in Northern Ghana attains local and national attention through the institution of Annual Damba Festival Lectures (ADFL).
  • Within fives years the Indigenous Knowledge, the cultural values and development potentials of the Damba Festival of Northern Ghana would have been enriched and added to global body of knowledge through publications for academic purposes and digitization.
  • Peacebuilding and conflict transformation have become a central theme in the celebrations of the Annual Damba Festival.
  • The ADFLs promote the economic development of northern Ghana. (livelihood)

What is unique about the ADFLs?

  • The cultures of the people of Northern Ghana as the foundation of sustainable development, the Damba Festival being the foundation.
  • Peacebuilding and conflict transformation is considered the bedrock of sustainable development and so has been mainstreamed.
  • The ADFLs in order to solicit local, national and international responses to some of the systemic, structure and distributive causes of conflicts in Northern Ghana.
  • ADFLs would expose the development potentials of northern Ghana to the world, especially entrepreneurs, corporate entities, donor agencies, the government of Ghana and Ghana’s development partners leading to sustained fallouts for entrepreneurs and the local economies.
  • It places the development of Northern Ghana in the strides of the people themselves through their value system, viz their culture.
  • About 4 million people celebrate the Damba Festival thus the ADFLs would put the spotlight on the people to take a mirror view of themselves
    and what they want to be, both in the immediate present and the future.

Who Drives The ADFLs

The original celebrants of the Damba festival relating as primus inter paris, namely
The Chiefs and people of Dagbong, led by the Ya Naa and the Gbewaa Palace.
The chiefs and people of Mamprugu, led by the Nayiri
The Chiefs and people of Yagbong, led by the Yagbonwura and the Japka Palace.
The chief and people of Wala Traditional Area, led by thw Wa Naa