I come from Avatime.
Not Amedzofe.
Not Vane.
Not Biakpa.
Not Gbadzeme.
Not Dzogbefeme, Dzokpe or Fume.
I come from Avatime.
That distinction may sound unnecessary. After all, each of us comes from a particular town. Our families belong somewhere. Our histories are rooted somewhere. Our loyalties are often local before they are collective.
But I increasingly think that one of the most important development questions facing Avatime is whether we can learn to see ourselves not only as seven separate towns, but as one economic, cultural and tourism space.
Because the future may depend on it.
Avatime is made up of seven towns: Amedzofe, Biakpa, Dzogbefeme, Dzokpe, Fume, Gbadzeme and Vane, with Vane serving as the traditional capital.
Each town has its own story. Each has its own geography, traditions, personalities and ambitions.
And that is precisely where our opportunity lies.
If Avatime were presented as a case study in a business school, the conclusion might be surprisingly simple: we possess a collection of potentially valuable assets, but we have not yet organised them into a sufficiently compelling proposition.
We have mountains.
We have waterfalls.
We have forests, caves, valleys and breathtaking landscapes.
We have history.
We have food.
We have agriculture.
We have culture.
We have stories.
And perhaps most importantly, we have seven communities close enough to one another to function as one destination, yet different enough from one another to offer distinct experiences.
That combination is rare.
The question is what we do with it.
Beauty is not a development strategy.
Growing up around places of natural beauty can sometimes make us take them for granted.
A mountain becomes just another mountain.
A waterfall becomes somewhere we passed as children.
A historical site becomes an old building or a cemetery.
A traditional food becomes simply what we eat at home.
But development often begins when we learn to see familiar things differently.
What is ordinary to us may be extraordinary to someone else.
The challenge, however, is that beauty alone does not create prosperity.
Ghana is full of beautiful places that remain poor.
A waterfall does not automatically create jobs.
A mountain does not automatically bring investment.
A cultural festival does not automatically produce sustained economic opportunity.
Potential is only potential until somebody organises it.
That requires planning.
It requires branding.
It requires investment.
It requires infrastructure.
It requires entrepreneurship.
And, above all, it requires us to think beyond the boundaries of our individual towns.
The Amedzofe question.
For many outsiders, Avatime is almost synonymous with Amedzofe.
That should not offend us.
It should excite us.
Amedzofe has already achieved something important: it has entered Ghana’s tourism imagination.
People know Mount Gemi.
They know the waterfall.
They know the cool weather.
They know the mountain landscape.
Hotels, guest houses and tourism businesses have developed around that reputation.
The mistake would be to look at Amedzofe and ask how the other six towns can compete with it.
The better question is:
How can the rest of Avatime benefit from Amedzofe’s success?
In business, an anchor product is not necessarily a threat to the rest of the portfolio. It can be the product that brings people through the door.
Amedzofe can be that door.
A tourist arriving in Amedzofe should not simply see Amedzofe.
They should encounter Avatime.
Their experience should make them curious about Gbadzeme.
It should lead them to Biakpa.
It should give them a reason to visit Vane.
It should persuade them to spend another night.
And perhaps another.
Because there is an enormous economic difference between a tourist who spends four hours in Avatime and one who spends three days.
The first may pay an entrance fee, buy lunch and leave.
The second needs accommodation.
They eat several meals.
They require transport.
They may hire a guide.
They buy local products.
They visit multiple attractions.
They support businesses.
They interact with communities.
That is how tourism begins to move from sightseeing to local economic development.
So perhaps the question we should be asking is not simply:
How many tourists come to Avatime?
But rather:
How much value does Avatime retain from every visitor who comes?
Seven towns should not sell the same thing.
There is another temptation we must resist.
Development does not mean every town needs a waterfall project.
Every town does not need a hotel.
Every community does not need to imitate Amedzofe.
The strength of Avatime may lie precisely in difference.
Gbadzeme has its own natural attractions and landscape.
Biakpa has caves, mountains and the potential for adventure tourism.
Dzogbefeme offers elevated landscapes and opportunities around hiking, viewpoints and retreats.
Dzokpe’s lower-lying terrain creates a different proposition altogether. It could support accommodation, leisure, restaurants, pubs and heritage experiences.
Fume can build around agriculture, nature and recreation.
Vane, as the traditional capital, can become a cultural gateway into Avatime: a place where visitors encounter our traditional institutions, food, history and identity.
And Amedzofe continues to play to its established strength as the best-known tourism anchor.
Each town does not need to be everything.
It needs to be something.
Something distinctive.
Something worth travelling for.
Something that complements what exists elsewhere.
This is how destinations are built.
Not through duplication, but through connection.
Imagine staying in Avatime.
Imagine arriving on a Friday afternoon.
Perhaps you begin in Amedzofe.
You climb Mount Gemi. You visit the waterfall. You spend the evening enjoying the mountain air.
But instead of driving back to Accra or Ho the next morning, your itinerary tells you that this is only the beginning.
Saturday takes you through Biakpa for hiking and adventure.
You continue to Gbadzeme for a waterfall experience.
You stop in Vane for food, culture and history.
Perhaps the evening ends in Dzokpe, where accommodation and entertainment have developed as part of the wider destination plan.
Sunday morning offers another experience: a hike, an agricultural tour, a cultural visit, a community market or a historical trail.
Suddenly, Avatime is no longer a waterfall.
It is no longer a mountain.
It is no longer one town.
It is an experience.
That is the difference between an attraction and a destination.
And Avatime should aspire to become a destination.
The history beneath our feet.
Our future tourism economy should not be built only around nature.
We also have history.
The connection between Avatime and German missionaries, particularly the Bremen Mission, is part of a larger story linking our communities to education, Christianity, colonial history and Europe.
There are physical traces of that history.
There are graves.
There are institutions.
There are stories.
Yet how often do we think of these as economic and cultural assets?
A cemetery may simply be a cemetery until someone explains who is buried there, why they came, what happened while they were here and how their presence changed local history.
Then it becomes heritage.
The same applies to buildings, pathways, traditions and oral histories.
Avatime could develop a carefully researched German-Avatime heritage trail connecting missionary history, local responses, educational development, Christianity and the broader history of German Togoland.
The attraction is not merely the physical site.
The attraction is the story.
And stories, when properly preserved and told, can travel much further than buildings.
We need capital, but on our terms.
Tourism development will also require investment.
There is no point pretending otherwise.
Government will not build everything.
Traditional councils cannot finance everything.
Communities cannot fund every hotel, restaurant, recreational centre, cultural facility or tourism enterprise that Avatime may need.
Private capital must be part of the equation.
But we should be thoughtful about what kind of investment we attract and how communities participate in the value created.
Too often in local development, communities bring the land, the culture, the landscape and the social capital, while somebody else captures the long-term economic return.
That should not become the default model.
If community assets create private value, then communities should have opportunities to participate in that value.
This may mean leases rather than outright transfers.
It may mean equity arrangements.
It may mean revenue-sharing.
It may mean local employment commitments.
It may mean community trusts.
The precise model can vary.
But the principle should be clear:
Development should create value with communities, not simply extract value from them.
One Avatime does not mean one identity.
Whenever we talk about working together, there is sometimes an understandable fear that individual towns will lose something.
Their identity.
Their influence.
Their recognition.
Their autonomy.
But collaboration does not require sameness.
In fact, the strongest networks are often built precisely because their members are different.
Amedzofe should remain Amedzofe.
Vane should remain Vane.
Gbadzeme should remain Gbadzeme.
Every community should preserve what makes it distinctive.
But distinction does not require isolation.
One town’s success does not have to mean another town’s failure.
A hotel in Dzokpe can benefit from visitors travelling to Amedzofe.
A restaurant in Vane can benefit from tourists heading to Gbadzeme.
A guide in Biakpa can receive visitors introduced to Avatime through Amedzofe.
A farmer in Fume can supply hospitality businesses across the traditional area.
This is how an economy begins to connect.
Seven local plans, one larger vision.
Every Avatime town should have its own development plan.
That much should not change.
Local people should determine local priorities.
But those plans should not be written as though the other six towns do not exist.
If one town is planning accommodation, it should understand accommodation capacity elsewhere.
If another is developing hiking routes, those routes should connect to the wider tourism network.
If Vane develops a cultural centre, it should help tell the story of Avatime as a whole.
If Amedzofe receives the largest number of visitors, systems should deliberately direct some of those visitors elsewhere.
Seven plans.
One vision.
This is perhaps the most important idea behind the Seven-Town Manifesto.
We should not build seven competing tourism economies.
We should build one Avatime economy with seven centres of opportunity.
The business case for togetherness.
There is also a very practical reason for cooperation.
Scale matters.
One small town may struggle to market itself nationally.
Seven towns can market Avatime.
One attraction may struggle to convince a family in Accra to travel several hours.
A weekend destination containing waterfalls, hiking, history, food, culture and accommodation presents a much stronger proposition.
One community may find it difficult to attract a serious investor.
A clearly branded tourism area with a pipeline of opportunities becomes easier to sell.
Together, we can build a stronger brand.
Together, we can develop common standards.
Together, we can negotiate more effectively.
Together, we can attract tour operators.
Together, we can create itineraries.
Together, we can market Avatime beyond Ghana.
The irony is that working together may ultimately give every individual town more opportunity to express what makes it unique.
The manifesto.
So here is the proposition.
The Seven-Town Manifesto begins with a simple belief:
Avatime is more valuable together than apart.
Every town should develop.
Every town should have a proposition.
Every town should benefit from tourism.
But those ambitions should connect.
We need one destination brand.
One investment story.
One broad tourism strategy.
One interconnected economy.
Seven communities contributing different experiences to the same destination.
The ambition should not simply be to increase the number of people who visit Amedzofe.
It should be to increase the number of people who experience Avatime.
Not simply to attract visitors, but to make them stay.
Not simply to show them what we have, but to create opportunities from what we have.
Not simply to celebrate potential, but to organise it.
Because our waterfalls already exist.
Our mountains are already there.
Our history has already happened.
Our culture is already ours.
What remains is the difficult part.
To imagine them together.
To plan together.
To invest together.
And to build something that becomes larger than any one of our towns could build alone.
Perhaps, then, the future of Avatime tourism will not belong to Amedzofe, Vane, Biakpa, Gbadzeme, Fume, Dzokpe or Dzogbefeme individually.
Perhaps it will belong to the idea that connects all seven.
One Avatime. Seven towns. One destination.
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