Quakers in Ghana, also known as the Religious Society of Friends, have celebrated their centenary at Hill House Meeting at Achimota School in Accra.
Five days of activities including discussions on social concerns and opportunities for transforming Africa, culminated in the celebration of World Quaker Day.
The celebration coincided with the birthday of George Fox, the Founder of the Quakers.
Delegations from Kenya, Uganda, South Africa, and Rwanda joined their Ghanaian counterparts for the celebration.
Quakers are historically Protestant Christians formed in the 17th Century.
They emphasise social action, equality, non-violence, peace, integrity, simplicity, sustainability, and community.
The Hill House Meeting at Achimota was established by British Quakers, who came to the Gold Coast when Achimota College was being built in the 1920s.
Quakers had earlier been in the Gold Coast working for the abolition of the slave trade and doing other social works.
Activities carried out during the celebration included strengthening public and church finance accountability.
The meeting also discussed how to improve the criminal and juvenile justice system emphasising that incarceration should be the last resort.
Healing, they argued, must include psychosocial support, capacity building, and restorative approaches.
Touching on the impact of colonialism, slavery, racism, and economic exploitation, Quakers reaffirmed that reparative justice must go beyond compensation.

African Quakers must discern how to respond to the call for reparation and what action to take to heal relationships marked by historic and ongoing injustices.
Faith-based organisations must, therefore, encourage compassion, dialogue, and listening.
It was suggested that the Quakers could include “ubuntu” in their testimonies, actions, and behaviours that express their faith.
Ubuntu is a traditional South African philosophy that emphasises the interconnectedness and humanity, often summarized as “I am because we are.”
A vibrant session of the youth explored voluntary work and how it could build skills for employment.
Speaking on the theme of World Quaker Day, “Love Your Neighbour,” the Clerk of the Africa Section of Quakers, Bainito Wamalwa, identified some ways of living by the biblical exhortation.
These included prioritising the needs of others, expressing unconditional love as Christ did as well as promoting peace and harmony.
To facilitate activities of Quakers in Africa and the hub in West Africa, The Clerk of Hill House Meeting, Leslie Ephson, identified that as Quakers believing that there is ‘That of God’ in each one of us, a relationship could be found between Christ’s exhortation to love God and one another and the African Concept of UBUNTU (I am as we are).
He proposed that in this spirit, going forward, the organisation should set up a website to promote communication between Quakers across the African continent and raise the influence of Quaker values on Social Justice issues in Africa, the UBUNTU website.
He proposed the establishment of a trust fund, the UBUNTU trust fund, to facilitate Quaker inter-African travel.
Ishahilidza Shem Amadi, Kenyan High Commissioner to Ghana, and Quakers from Ghana, Kenya, and South Africa gathered at Hill House to commemorate the centenary.
The Treasurer of Hill House Meeting, Edwina Assan, a textile designer, engaged the group in a hands-on batik production.
Earlier, the group visited Cape Coast and Cape Coast Castles; sites of the Trans-Atlantic slave trade.
They described the visit as a solemn experience that deepened “Our understanding of enduring wounds of injustice and strengthened their collective commitment to truth-telling, healing and transformation.”