Ibrahim Mahama Brings Ghana’s Industrial Past to Paris
In 1966, a glass bottle factory opened in Aboso, in southwestern Ghana. It was one of the last large projects started under Kwame Nkrumah, the country’s first president, before he was overthrown in a military coup that same year. After decades of restructuring and privatisation, the factory was abandoned. According to the Fondation Cartier pour […]
Africa’s Creative Work Is Training AI. Who Makes the Terms Count?
Over six instalments, The Sovereign Stack followed African creative work into the AI systems now being built on top of it: how it is seen, paid for, found, bought, recorded and governed. The season closes on the question beneath every one of them: who can make those systems come and ask, and who will still be there to answer?
African Art Doesn’t Need the White Cube
For centuries, African art has thrived through colour, movement and ritual. But as contemporary African galleries rethink how work is shown, the white cube is no longer the only option.
The Commercial Life of African Culture
Ownership, rights and distribution shape who profits from the African creative economy, from wax print and photography to Afrobeats.
Whose Taste Is It Anyway? The Cultural Renaissance of the African Home
In the 2009 published book Yoruba Proverbs and Philosophy, author and traditional leader Chief F.I. Sotunde coined the term “westernosomiasis,” a condition he believed was draining African youth of cultural pride, treating their heritage with indifference while embracing anything Western. He wrote about what was at stake for future generations and the significance of returning […]
In Lagos & Accra, an Underground Queer Ballroom Scene Thrives Again
When Timileyin Olaide Kayode started Pride in Lagos in 2021, he didn’t anticipate how big it would become. He only knew there was a need for queer Nigerians to have a visible, collective space to exist and celebrate themselves. Five years later, it has grown into a major Owambe ball and the very reason a […]
Before the Album, Rapsody Went to Ghana
Rapsody did not come to Ghana for a show. There was no tour routing to explain the visit, no announced album cycle. She came to walk the country, and she came with questions about where she was from. Amino’s 2025 film, “Rapsody in Ghana, A Conversation With Joseph Amino,” follows those questions through markets and […]
How DJs Helped Take Afrobeats Global
Trill Xoe, a Lagos-raised DJ and producer who studied in Mauritius and has worked with Native Records, remembers hearing Afrobeats there, thousands of miles from home. Hearing the sound playing loudly from a DJ set felt like more than a surprise. “Just being in a foreign man’s land where they don’t speak English, and just […]
The Game Is Already There
This conversation was recorded in mid-June, as the group stage of the World Cup was opening. Anita Asante remembers the game before it became a career. She was eleven or twelve, back in Ghana on a family visit, playing barefoot with her cousins on whatever ground was nearest, a patch of grass, a stretch of […]
Puma Brought the Continent to Downtown LA. The Postcards Were the Tell
A week before the 2026 World Cup, Puma turned its Salehe Bembury launch in downtown LA into a study in designing an African football moment for the diaspora — and the postcards, not the product, told the real story.