Renowned Ghanaian journalist Ben Asante has died at the age of 76.
TheNewsGuru.com (TNG) reports that the esteemed war correspondent and publisher died in Accra on August 12 after a prolonged illness.
Asante was a leading journalist during the civil wars in Liberia and Sierra Leone and was one of the first reporters to break the news of the Liberian civil war in 1990.
Over a career spanning more than fifty years, he extensively covered politics and social development across Africa.
Alongside his colleague, notable journalist Lindsay Barrett, Asante was recognized for his bravery, risking his life to report from the war frontlines. Their reporting became a vital source of information for the global press during that tumultuous period.
Born in Keta in 1949, Asante’s early years were shaped by his membership of the Nkrumahist youth movement known as the Ghana Young Pioneer Movement (GYP), set up in the same spirit of the Boys Scout movement at a time when the socialist/nationalist and Pan-African views of Kwameh Nkrumah was sweeping through Ghana and the African continent.
According to Asante, Nkrumah’s fiery personality, accompanied by his excellent oratory skills, attracted young men like him to the movement.
Asante reflected the voice of African youth on such matters as the Environment and population by organising seminars and workshops within countries and on a regional basis. He attended crucial Organisation of African Unity (OAU) summits and served on the Bureau for Refugees based in Addis Ababa.
