In 2011, the Ghanaian poet, musician, and spoken-word artist Poetra Asantewa decided things needed to change. Asantewa had been performing in front of live audiences across Accra, Ghana’s capital, for a year. However, she felt that the city did not offer the infrastructure she needed to succeed. She knew she was talented, but also that it was not enough.

The turning point, she said, was the thought of building a community of like-minded creatives. By collaborating with fellow artists who had similar wants, needs, and goals, she would gain access to an audience, support, resources, and a network, ultimately contributing to the city’s cultural ecosystem.

Her intuition would prove her right. That collaborative and transdisciplinary mindset is now the bedrock on which Accra’s vibrant artistic and cultural scene is built. A cosmopolitan city and, of late, a top tourist destination, it is home to some of the world’s most lively, creative, and colorful scenes.

‘I needed people, places, community, a place where I could fail, a place where I could experiment, and I didn’t want to do that in a self-centered way,’ Asantewa said in a recent interview with Art Basel.

In 2017, Asantewa, who describes herself as a ‘community catalyst,’ founded Black Girls Glow, an Accra-based feminist non-profit, providing space for female artists – including singers, songwriters, rappers, poets, and producers – to collaborate. In 2018, she launched Tampered Press, a literary arts journal and workshop series showcasing the work of local authors. Alumni of both organizations have since initiated their own participatory initiatives.

‘Yes, I’m building for myself. But it’s not only for me. I am building for the artists around me, the artists before me, and the artists who are yet to come,’ says Asantewa, whose first collection of poems, titled Woman, Eat Me Whole, was published by Ecco, an imprint of HarperCollins, in 2022. Her new book, a collection of stories titled someone birthed them broken and published by Amistad Books, will be released in April.

Interest in Ghana’s cultural output has steadily grown over recent years. In the art world, artists from Ghana and its diaspora such as Amoako Boafo, El Anatsui, Serge Attukwei Clottey, and Ibrahim Mahama have been exhibited in major museums across the globe. Ghana’s 2019 Venice Biennale pavilion was a standout, featuring, among others, work by luminaries Lynette Yiadom-Boakye and John Akomfrah – both are British of Ghanaian heritage.

In turn, Ghanaian artists are investing back into their country. Boafo’s dot.ateliers, a three-story, David Adjaye-designed building, includes spaces for exhibitions, a library, and studios for artist residencies. It was ‘born on the back of collaborations and community,’ said Boafo in a 2022 Cultured magazine interview and will welcome its second wave of residents this year.

Similarly, painter Kwesi Botchway parlayed his success into creating opportunities for other young visual artists, officially launching his Worldfaze Studio and Residency in Accra in August 2023. Beyond the capital, collective blaxTARLINES and artist Ibrahim Mahama have garnered attention with their community-based work in Kumasi and Tamale, respectively.

In a nod to Ghana’s rise on the global art map, blaxTARLINES and Mahama were included in ArtReview’s 2023 Power 100 list, a ranking of influential art world figures published annually. So was gallerist, engineer, and art collector Marwan Zakhem. With three spaces in Accra and a fourth in London, Zakhem’s Gallery 1957 represents and exhibits some of the biggest names of the art world in Ghana, Africa, and its diaspora, including Boafo, Botchway, and Clottey. (Gallery 1957 will also participate in Art Basel’s 2024 Hong Kong edition, its first showing at the fair.)

But as Poetra Asantewa’s story shows, Accra is not only fertile ground for fine artists.

Late last year, American essayist Audrey Shipp hosted a workshop at the 2023 edition of Pa Gya!, a literary festival in Accra. Collaborative efforts between the diaspora and Africans on the continent is an idea Kobby Ben Ben, author of No One Dies Yet appreciates, saying that events like these are ‘necessary in the literary ecosystem in Ghana, especially in a global literary ecosystem that favors artists that only can afford Western MFA accreditations for publications.’

Ben Ben’s debut novel, published by New York’s Europa Editions, has received rave reviews from The Africa Report, Publishers Weekly, and The Guardian. Set in 2019, the book follows a group of American friends visiting Ghana with two antagonistic local guides on the occasion of 400 years since the first recorded arrival of enslaved Africans to the Americas. 

Ben Ben says that collaborative literary efforts between diaspora and Africans on the continent help ‘smoothen the social bridges’ that exist between the two communities. The current generation of Ghanaians on the continent and in the diaspora are documenting and reflecting on the country’s story in their own, resourceful ways, reclaiming a narrative that was until recently defined by external voices. They are also creating the structures necessary to do so.

Like Poetra Asantewa, the photographer, filmmaker, and curator Paul Ninson decided to resolve the roadblocks he faced early on in his career ­– he could not find a place to read books on photography or access resources and a community for support – by creating his own organization. ‘I started photography [in 2017] and never had a community,’ says Ninson, ‘so why would I build an institution not focused on community?’ In December 2022, Dikan Center, the non-profit institution founded by Ninson and ‘dedicated to educating the next generation of Africa’s creative leaders,’ was officially launched. Dikan means ‘take the lead’ in Twi, one of Ghana’s local languages.

Located in the South Labadi neighborhood, the center houses what is billed as Africa’s biggest photography library, with some 30,000 books and Dikan Gallery, dedicated to photography. It also has studios, offices, classrooms, spaces for events, a production room, a photography archive, and a record player along with a collection of old highlife music vinyls.

The center has hosted several workshops over the past year, including one co-led by Pete Souza, the official White House photographer during the Obama presidency. (Souza’s ‘Obama: An Intimate Portrait’ exhibition is on view at the center’s gallery until February.)

Dikan Center recently graduated the first cohort of its Photojournalism and Documentary Practice certificate program and subsequently showed their work in an exhibition. This year's programming includes a fellowship in journalism and documentary practice and an exhibition on highlife (a major element of Afrobeats, the generic term that refers to popular music from West Africa, particularly Ghana and Nigeria.)

‘I am here [in South Labadi] because of [painter] Amoako Boafo. He introduced that “let’s all be together” mindset, and I brought other people together. I am trying to get Poetra [Asantewa] to come closer. I am trying to pull [other people] to come closer,’ says Ninson.

The intersectional nature of Accra’s creative hubs is key in making them successful. At Lokko House, for example, visitors can browse and purchase work by African designers, but not only that. Founded in 2008 by creative director, designer, and curator Stefania Manfreda, the space hosts concerts, art exhibitions, music listening sessions, and other events. Similarly, the non-profit organization Surf Ghana, founded in 2016 and led by Sandy Alibo, is behind initiatives such as the East Legon-based community sports, recreation, and art hub, Freedom Skate Park, as well as Vibrate Space, a music studio and educational program accessible to local musicians.

According to Poetra Asantewa, the likes of Ibrahim Mahama, Paul Ninson, and Sandy Alibo, ‘who have seen some kind of stability in their work,’ are crucial to the ecosystem. They have created dynamic structures and cultural institutions; they have dedicated time and energy to building up the country’s artistic community. This approach has been paramount to strengthening Accra’s cultural dynamism. ‘The work I put into my practice is not only to build my trajectory but also building people and institutions around me who can thrive on their own and who I can also lean on,’ Asantewa concludes.

Gameli Hamelo is a journalist, writer and researcher documenting arts and culture in Africa and its diaspora.

All photos and videos by Rachel Seidu for Art Basel.

Published on January 9, 2024.