The Chief Executive Officer of the Ghana Tourism Authority, Akwasi Agyeman has provided an update on the settlement reached between the government and musician Kirani Ayat in the aftermath of their 2022 copyright infringement lawsuit.
In 2022, the musician took on the Tourism Authority for using portion of his music video for a promotional content without his consent.
President Akufo-Addo’s account on X posted the video which featured scenes from Ayat’s single ‘Guda’ on the occasion of World Tourism Day on September 27, 2022.
Fast forward, the Authority held a meeting with the musician and compensated him and pledged that “moving forward, Ayat and GTA will collaborate on a number of projects aimed at showcasing Ghana, our beautiful landscapes, and exciting talents to the world.”
However, the CEO, Akwasi Agyeman in an interview on Hitz FM, November 18, revealed that when the government reached out to the musician, he was unavailable for their intended project, despite their willingness to collaborate with him.
“We reached an agreement and a settlement. And then in that agreement we said going forward we will work together. So this was somewhere in the middle of the year. So when we were doing our December programme, we reached out to him and his team, because he is from Navrongo.
“We are even keen and eager to have programmes in other parts of the country apart from Accra, Cape Coast, Takoradi which is dominating the December in GH calendar. And he said they were not ready. Since then we have not actually heard from him. So we haven’t been able to go the whole nine yards with him,” he said.
Akwasi Agyeman further noted that the authority is still open to working with Kirani Ayat when he is ready.
“But we are still keen on working with him,” he said.
When Kirani Ayat filed the complaint regarding the copyright infringement case in 2022, he stated that he had previously contacted the Ministry of Tourism, Arts, and Culture to get their approval for his video to be used as a promotional tool for tourism in Ghana’s north, but he received no response.
After the situation was addressed, Kirani Ayat was tight-lipped about how much was paid to him as compensation.
He did, however, affirmed the GTA’s claim that they had decided to work together on tourism-related projects.
