The aesthetics of nostalgia
Looking back at 20 years of research-based practice in Ghana, Jesse Weaver Shipley’s latest exhibition blurs the distinction between political rebels and artists.
Ghana
Kwame Nkrumah today
New documents looking at British and American involvement in overthrowing Kwame Nkrumah give us pause to reflect on his legacy, and its resonances today.
Why the Black Stars deserve to fail
No one should be surprised at Ghana's Afcon exit.
Matchday 1: Kwame Nkrumah
Up next in the African Five-a-side podcast, we name our central defender, and explain how Ghana's first president boycotted the 1966 FIFA World Cup and won two Afcons.
Archiving pan-Africanism
A project - helmed by historians Benjamin Talton and Jean Allman - to archive post-independence African revolutions, including Kwame Nkrumah's personal and professional papers.
“Black African” may be oxymoronic
For many African immigrants in the United States, being seen as Black doesn’t necessarily equate to seeing oneself as Black.
The used car problem
It’s tempting but unsatisfactory to blame poverty and weak regulation for the dumping of used vehicles in Africa.
After we have grown too tired of jumping
The Ghanaian game, Ampe, is an education in Blackness and womanhood.
The haunting draw of the West
To be African means at some point to desire to leave. African cinema can provide solace for our tortured relationship to the West and our own continent.
Postcolonial cons, scandals, and fraud
Business fraud and illicit financial flows are not a new problem for Africa—the "Drevici Affair" in Nkrumah's Ghana is instructive.
Kwasi Wiredu’s golden rule
The greatest achievement of Ghanaian philosopher Kwasi Wiredu was to recast African knowledge from something lost to something gained.
Soccer capitalism
Soccer academies in Africa sprang from European club interventions with varied success, but, as examples in Ghana prove, they can be sites of local, entrepreneurial spirit.
How should we struggle?
Lawyerfication discourse in Ghana ignores the operation of power on the ground and conflates legality with justice.
God was everywhere in the street
Renowned Ghanaian highlife musician, Nana Ampadu, died on September 28, 2021. In this interview from 2007, historian Jennifer Hart talks with him about the music that made him famous.
Christianity and new queer African imaginations
The leading African writers and creative artists who are reimagining Christian thought and the several Christian-inspired groups who are transforming religious practice.
Breaking the shackles
Ghana is slowly developing its mental health care to protect human rights. Yet sensationalist journalism, including in the progressive media, continues to portray the treatment of mental health in the country as backward and abusive.
Kwame Nkrumah’s Encounter with Karl Marx
Nkrumah’s written works and speeches reveal a selective encounter and appropriation of tools—in this case from Marxist thought—that were translated through Nkrumah’s traveling theory.
Reading List: Kwasi Konadu
On telling stories through the evocative and varied moments in which humans live, rather than through the predictable and artificial plots historians devise.
The pathology of economics
COVID-19 exposes the deadly dominance of neoclassical economics in Africa.
Ghana’s moral panic
Enough of the ignorance: LGBT+ rights are Ghanaian and human rights, not an attempt by Westerners to impose their values or culture.