As such, it was not surprising when the African Women’s Development Fund – an innovative organization at the cutting edge of social justice and women’s rights philanthropy in Africa – named Nigerian artist, Nneka, as their first ever Ambassador for the Arts, under an innovative new programme to use the arts, culture and sports as a tool for social justice.

The thirty-one year old half-Nigerian, half-German singer (who sings in English, Ibo and Nigerian pidgin) has established herself as an international musical force. Singing about everything from love and corruption to the politics of her native Niger Delta, she has won or been nominated for awards from Channel O, MOBO and Museke amongst others; shared the stage with a host of stars including Damien Marley and Nas (who featured on a remix of her track, “Heartbeat”). Her song ‘Kangpe’ even features on the soundtrack for EA Sports FIFA 2010 video game.

During her recent visit to Accra for AWDF’s Arts, Culture & Sports programme launch, she sat down with DUST Editor, Kobby Graham, and answered a few questions.

DUST: In your personal opinion, what is the single biggest issue facing the African girl-child today?

Nneka: “I would have to think very deeply to answer that question. Every person has her own cross to bear. [You] cannot compare the weight of one woman to another woman. I cry myself as well. Why I have decided to work with AWDF is because while I’m carrying my cross, I have a little less weight on my shoulders to bear… I’m okay, so maybe I can help [someone] carry [theirs] in the process of living life. Pain brings people together. But I can never carry your cross for you. In the end, we all have to strengthen ourselves and empower one another. I have my own history as well. That’s why I’m doing what I’m doing. That’s why I’m doing music. That’s my own way to channel that energy into a different direction. But there are many problems that I have not met before. It is about being selfless to a certain degree. Dropping the ego. That’s why I like what AWDF is doing.”

DUST: When you talk to young people about politics they say, “Oh God, I don’t do politics…” You have however been able to merge politics and popular culture quite well.  Does your politics stop your music from spreading? How well do young people receive it?

Nneka: “I think the youth are becoming more conscious about being involved. When I was growing up, politics was just a subject you were learning, far away from your personal life. You just crammed the states of Africa and the governors, but we were not close to what was happening. If elections come we elect, but our problems don’t change due to the kind of leaders that we have (unfortunately). But this is changing, partly because of the African diaspora or those who are coming back home to bring the change that they have been raised in. We have been able to identify where we went wrong and change that way of educating ourselves. Youth are becoming more outgoing towards politics… more courageous; women as well.

“I don’t think about difficulty of pushing music. Someway, somehow there will always be difficulty. People won’t allow you to perform somewhere because they think your message is too harsh. I have once or twice had problems with the police or secret service wanting to arrest me. But people invite you for a reason. So if you like me… na you sabi now. Abi? Why you now want to block my road. I will do it: I won’t yab you. I will yab myself first. Then I will yab everybody. Then I go. It’s normal. That doesn’t stop me… that’s what triggers me. Roadblock? Okay, let’s go!”

DUST: African parents are not renowned for their support of children going into the arts. How encouraging were your parents of your art?

Nneka: “I left my father’s house in Nigeria at quite a young age for an African person. From there on, I was cut off from family entirely. Music is what sustained me. I found music a long time ago but I never saw her until I went away from Africa. So basically, everything I’ve done up until now is without the support of my family. Now that I have moved back to Nigeria, of course I had to reintroduce myself to my father. Tell him, “this is a part of me and how I weave my stories. Just to let you know.” I have my degree, so nobody can hold my yab oo.

I know God has sustained me to do [this]. I know other musicians from intact family backgrounds who have problems with their parents. But I always tell other artists that you can have love for music but you must always deliver to Caesar what Caesar wants. It is important. Educate yourself and have an alternative in life. You can’t just walk one way. One day your voice will be gone. One day you can’t travel. Anything can come up.”

DUST: You have benefitted from being able to make music both in and outside of Africa. Is there anything you see abroad that you think could be utilized over here to foster a better arts scene?

Nneka: “Sound engineering is the most important: audio. Whether in media, making soap operas, programmes… it is very important. Mastering and mixing. Then there is the other aspect: the marketing of albums; creating institutions and labels that promote artists, and protect their rights. Piracy is a big issue here, especially in Nigeria. It’s not almost legal. Alaba is in the ghetto. It is a big pirate market. All you have to do is sell your record to one of the Alaba people, they will give you money and then you serve up your rights. Whatever they earn from your record is their earning. You don’t get anything. That’s how the big artists… some artists get their stuff done. I’m trying to set a label [and] change that: do the right thing. It’s difficult. It’s the longer, narrow way. But you have to be the change.”

To hear more about Nneka and AWDF’s Arts, Culture & Sports programme, visit their website: www.awdf.org

Started back in 1942 with only six shillings, the company came to be known for its fruit juices, marmalades, and soup bases. Its founder is a lot more than just that though. Dr. Ocloo is recognized by the Cambridge Biographical Society as one of the foremost women of the 20^th century.

A Ghanaian industrial pioneer, she was a founding member and the first elected president of the Federation of Ghanaian Industries (now the Association of Ghana Industries). Coming from a poor background, it was always her mission to assist and economically empower the underprivileged in society. Engaging in Corporate Social Responsibility before it became cool to do so, Dr. Ocloo was the quintessential humanitarian and had a total of eight NGOs to her name, including Aid to Artisans; an NGO dedicated to pushing Ghanaian artisans into international export trade. She was also a direct contributor to Ghanaian arts and crafts, engaging in tie-and-dye and handicraft businesses herself.

That said, the most prominent of her NGOs is the Sustainable End of Hunger Foundation (SEHUF), an organization focused on providing women with employable skills: “My main aim is to help my fellow women”, Dr. Ocloo said at the time; “If they make better marmalade than me I deserve the competition”.

She was the first chairperson of Women’s World Banking, advocating strongly for the microfinancing of small women-run businesses. In recognition of her commitment to improving the lives of her fellow Africans, she became the first woman to win the Africa Prize for Leadership in 1990.

Dr. Ocloo passed away in February 2002, taking with her a long list of honours and achievements both locally and internationally. This extraordinary woman is a testimony to what the Ghanaian can achieve, once determined and in empathetic touch with his or her identity. The legacy she has left is (or ought to be) an inspiration to all.

In the end, Dr. Esther Afua Ocloo embodies three words necessary for the revolutionizing of our society:

Industrialist, Humanitarian and – most importantly – Ghanaian.

Words by Esenam Dogoe

Illustration by Alfred Achiampong

I looked through the paper photocopies of photographs that he had brought with him, mounted on large pieces of black card. I saw portraits from the 1940s of a Ghanaian ballroom dancing champion and of one of Ghana’s first female policewomen taken in his Ever Young Studios. I saw pictures of foreign dignitaries and of local market women that came to witness the handover of power to Africa’s first sub-Saharan country to gain its independence from colonial rule. I saw cover shots of young Africans who came to London to study in the 1960s, taken for Drum, the first magazine produced by Africans for an African audience. These pictures filled the gap between the stories my parents told me, and the portrayals to the world of Africans by a largely negative Western media.

I told James Barnor I wanted to do an exhibition of his work and a few months later, the opportunity arose for us to do one at the Black Cultural Archives in London. Only this was somehow not enough. In the seeming absence of us presenting our own stories to the world, others had told them for us, often in ways that were incongruous. I decided I had to write a book on James Barnor and his pictures and through them trace the history of photography and the birth of our nation, to uncover what the images told us about how we have represented ourselves, and our own modernities. James Barnor’s photographs and negatives were under his bed in his apartment, so following the advice of David Adjaye, the Ghanaian architect, I approached Autograph ABP, who agreed to digitize his work and put on a major retrospective last year.

A country is nothing without its history, and yet we do not always honour those that have told and created the stories of our becoming. James Barnor is one of our greatest storytellers and now, the time has come for him to have an exhibition at home in Accra to celebrate him and his work, accompanied by a documentary, and the book.

The story has come full circle, James Barnor, as the older, I as the younger, will together try to tell a history of Ghana that will allow us as Ghanaians, to reflect on ourselves, our provenance and our direction, to reclaim the framing of our own representations, and so to stand stronger in our contribution to the world.

Nana Oforiatta Ayim is a writer, filmmaker and cultural historian. She did an MA in African Art History and is completing a PhD in African Languages and Cultures at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London. She has curated and lectured at institutions, like the Universities of Oxford and London and The Victoria and Albert Museum; written for publications like The National Geographic, The Statesman, frieze Magazine and Arise; and her films have been shown at festivals, like the Milan African Film Festival and The Real Life Documentary Film Festival

If you want to support the project (e.g. invest, in-kind, technical expertise, broadcast, put on a concert, print a James Barnor T-shirt or kaba and top, have photographic workshops for children, host a radio or TV discussion on, e.g., the question of historical representation or the importance of the photographic document or in any other way actively participate), please email: jbghana@gmail.com

The above quote from one of Ghana’s great daughters highlights a lesson in conciliation and putting Ghana first that many a modern politician would do well to remember and emulate.

I met Hawa Yakubu in London back in 2003. I had just started an internship at the Foreign Policy Centre, a think-tank established by British Prime Minister Tony Blair to think of new ways of looking at global issues. We were organising a seminar on intervention in West African conflict, and my bosses – tired of the usual line-up of verbose male panelists – asked me to recommend a Ghanaian woman who was intelligent and outspoken enough to represent the continent well on a high-profile panel. Only one name sprang to mind.

Yakubu spent six decades on Earth, half of which she dedicated to politics until cancer took her life away four years ago. In her twenties, she was elected unopposed to her local council. At various points in her later life, she would become MP for Bawku Central, the first vice-President of the NPP, a Minister for Tourism in the NPP government and eventually an activist against Female Genital Mutilation, in favour of female empowerment, children’s rights, good governance and conflict resolution. It was a tumultuous life during which she overcame not just gender, cultural and financial impediments, but also political exile and several attempts on her life.

Hawa Yakubu was the first real star of the Fourth Republic’s first Parliament. She developed a fierce reputation as the MP most likely to speak the mind of masses and tell pussy-footing politicians what they did not want to hear. I was a mere teenager at the time – relatively uninterested in the news. Yet I still have memories of Yakubu telling things like they were, voicing the thoughts of the voiceless.

The public loved her for it.

On Independence Day in 1992, she said “I strive for a system where we will have a talented youthful populace whose business is to create an environment of daring thinking, test the boundaries and structures of knowledge and above all celebrate the unity that keeps us free.”

Dust couldn’t agree more.

Warren Gamaliel Akwei (Guy Warren, later to be commonly known as Ghanaba) in the midfifties became the talking drum that sounded African American jazz musicians and music lovers back to their roots. A move that could possibly be the summary of his life’s work, which can be summed up by the one Ghanaian proverb he still stands by ‘Sankofa, wonkyir’ (‘There’s nothing wrong with going back to your roots’.)

I met Ghanaba on a Saturday morning in the village where he hides out for a photo-shoot on the occasion of his son Glenn’s upcoming album. I was excited. I had heard so much about this 84 year old who lives in isolation and yet touches many hearts with his life’s work. The click of the camera and popping of the flash seemed to awaken the star in him. He came alive, opened up to me and started to share his story with me.

Ghanaba was born in Accra. As a student, in 1940, he joined the Accra Rhythmic Orchestra as a drummer. After this period, he worked as an undercover for the Office of Strategic Services, a United States Agency dealing with overt and covert operations during the Second World War. He also worked as a DJ, a reporter and he did a series of jazz programmes for the British Broadcasting Service

He was a founding member of the Tempos, where he played drums. The Tempos was considered by many the epitome of an African jazz ensemble. In 1955 he moved to Chicago and joined the Gene Esposito band. This ensemble recorded his best known album, Africa Speaks, America Answers in 1956 for Decca Records. In 1957 he moved to New York City where he formed the Zoundz ensemble, and continued developing a musical style which he called African jazz. He performed with such greats as Charlie Parker, Lester Young and Thelonious Monk.

Today, the New York University intermittently marches their students to sit at his feet and to learn from him. His message of Sankofa continues. It seems he has been deliberately forgotten for political reasons – he was a mentor of Jerry John Rawlings – but someday soon, Ghana will go back, dig through his work and learn from the living legend.

First published online at www.powerofculture.org

By Nana Kofi Acquah