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While the mystery surrounding the usage of Kirani Ayat’s video by the Ghana Tourism Authority without the musician’s consent is yet to be demystified, another musician, Fuse ODG, has issued a statement saying his legal team is in touch with the authority for using his video for the promotional video in question without his approval.
“As a company, we feel that the last few days have exposed an issue in Ghana that goes beyond the office of the President: The lack of respect and understanding of intellectual property.
“We have sanctioned works in the past for government use, most notably, our 2018 record “Bra Fie” ft Damian Marley, which was used as the theme song for the Year of Return; which we launched via our TINA festival alongside the President,” parts of the statement issued on September 29, 2022, read.
While sympathising with Kirani Ayat, Fuse ODG and his New Africa Nation in the press statement said the government has made mistakes “in this situation, but hopefully, they can simply hold their hand up and take corrective action to compensate accordingly.
“Going forward, the solution must be to invest in more education around intellectual property. This is something the ministry can do both internally and for the creative sector as a whole. Ghana has always been an influential voice in music globally and a lot more can be done to support artists from an early stage.
“In the meantime, our legal teams are in discussion with the ministry and their legal team in order to resolve this issue.”
The last few days have exposed an issue in Ghana that goes beyond the Office of the President, Ghana ???????? …@ghanatourismGTA @NakufoAddo pic.twitter.com/PSBpah3g2i
— Fuse ODG (@FuseODG) September 29, 2022
Kirani Ayat fights Akufo-Addo, GTA
Kirani Ayat in a tweet accused President Akufo-Addo of using excerpts of his music video ‘GUDA’ for a promotional ad.
“The president of Ghana has used my video ‘GUDA’ in this ad to promote Ghana. I was actively reaching out to the Ministry of Tourism in 2018/19 to use this video to push tourism in the North and got NO reply, yet today it’s in an ad and no one reached out to me for permission,” he shared on September 28, 2022.
The Ghana Tourism Authority in response said contrary to the claim by the musician, the footage was acquired legitimately through an agency and has been using it since 2019.
“For the record, the footage in question was acquired legitimately from a bespoke creative agency as part of a project in 2019.
“This video has thus been played severally locally and internationally without any issue. The content was used in accordance with the terms agreed with the agency and not as being alleged,” the GTA statement read.
Agency responds
The agency at the center of Kirani Ayat and the Ghana Tourism Authority, GTA, feud, Samsal, has denied ever granting permission to the Authority to use the promotional video it produced with some part of the musician’s video.
In a September 28, 2022 statement, the agency explained that it entered into a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with GTA to promote Digital Wrist Band – a wrist band that granted access to highly sought-after events slated for the Christmas season – to tourists and foreigners.
Per the MoU, the agency said GTA was to give it the needed support in terms of finances and logistics in order to produce video content to market Ghana to the world in that regard.
Consequently, Samsal said it put together a video reel (mood board) for the GTA that included parts of Ayat’s ‘GUDA’ video to demonstrate the vision it had for videos it intended to subsequently create for the campaign.
It stated emphatically that it did grant GTA the permission to share the mood board whiles also categorically denying that the video put out by the Authority and president was not the very one it had created.
