Our
Publications
Published Papers
Promoting culture and creativity in Ghana: Bottom-up strategies for creative industries development
By Akosua K. Darkwah, Eleonora Belfiore, Adwoa O. Bobie & Katherine V. Gough
Published in: Cultural Trends
Abstract: The neoliberal turn in the cultural and creative industries has led to two distinct bodies of work. Global North scholars focus on the tension between the emphasis on the creative industries as an engine of growth and the unequal access to the means of cultural production and consumption that neoliberalism presents. Global South scholars face a different reality; the increasing inability of governments to provide institutional support, particularly finance, for growing these industries. This article documents grassroots alternatives to financial support from the state for growing a cultural and creative industry in the global South. Drawing on data generated from multiple sources about the work of two private institutions in Ghana, this article shows how private institutions and individuals can fundamentally shape the creative and cultural industries in ways that allow them to make their mark globally, even in the absence of financial support from the government.
Read the article here:
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/09548963.2024.2358198
Customized Prèt-a-Porter: West Africa’s Answer to the Quest for Sustainable Fashion
By Adwoa Owusuaa Bobie
Published in: Fashion Practice
Abstract: The discourse on sustainable fashion has so far ignored two important perspectives; the contribution of fashion from Africa and how socio-cultural factors contribute to sustainability. The paper bridges this gap. It discusses the West African prèt-a-porter fashion production model which is undergirded by socio-cultural milieu of exclusivity, uniqueness, and individuality. Customized prèt-a-porter is a limited-edition ready to wear model by Ghanaian and Nigerian fashion designers that ensures measured volume of production, demands high level of creativity, and proscribe sustainable laundry measures to ensure long-life span of clothes. The paper is a qualitative research study conducted in Lagos, Nigeria, and Accra Ghana between 2018 and 2021. It involved in-depth interviews of fashion designers in the two cosmopolitan cities on their experiences as fashion producers in Africa.
Read the article here:
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/17569370.2024.2310295
The relational and redistributive dynamics of mutual aid: Implications of Afro-Communitarian ethics for the study of creative work
Ana Alacovska, Robin Steedman, Thilde Langevang & Rashida Resario
Published in: Business Ethics Quarterly
Abstract: Studies of non-standard, project-based forms of work prevalent in the creative industries have typically theorized the relational dynamics of work as a competitive process of social capital accumulation involving an individualistic, self-enterprising, zero-sum, and winner-takes-all struggle for favourable social network-positioning. Problematizing this prevailing conceptualization, our empirical case study draws on fifty in-depth interviews and two focus groups with creative workers in Ghana to show how relations of mutual aid, including elaborate efforts to live harmoniously with others, are intricately intertwined with economic practices of getting by and getting ahead. Our analysis abductively mobilizes insights from Afro-communitarian ethics to theorize the mutual aid we observed as a complex socio-economic practice of relational resource redistribution contingent on degrees of social proximity. In applying “a theory from the South” to foreground the role of moral obligations, social harmony, and hands-on practices of mutual aid in non-standard forms of work, we contribute a “decolonial critique” of relationality of relevance to scholars of creative work and business ethicists.
Read the article here: https://doi.org/10.1017/beq.2024.14
Career geographies in the Ghanaian fashion industry: from brain drain to brain gain and brain circulation
By Adwoa Owusuaa Bobie, Akosua Keseboa Darkwah & Katherine V. Gough
Published in: Globalisation, Societies and Education
Abstract: Brain drain has long been argued to be one of Africa’s key development challenges. This paper provides a more nuanced analysis of African career mobility through a focus on professionals in the creative industries, specifically Ghanaian fashion designers. Drawing on interviews with 31 fashion designers but focusing on the career geography of internationally renowned Kofi Ansah, we show how ‘brain drain’ turned into ‘brain gain’ and consequently ‘brain circulation’, fundamentally transforming Ghana’s fashion industry. The paper thus demonstrates how the knowledge and expertise return migrants gather through international career mobility can be converted into assets at an individual, national, and international level.
Read the article here: https://doi.org/10.1080/14767724.2023.2236563
By Rufai Haruna Kilu, Mohammed-Aminu Sanda & Ana Alacovska
Published in: African Journal of Economic and Management Studies
Key insights: There is growing scholarly discourse towards COVID-19 pandemic and creative entrepreneurship in the perspectives of Global South. Extant literature lacks sufficient empirical evidence on the subject matter. This paper therefore provides insights into business models and business model shifts in response to the COVID-19 pandemic among creative entrepreneurs in Ghana.
Read the paper here:
https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.1108/AJEMS-07-2022-0305/full/html
Exploring everyday resilience in the creative industries through devised theatre: a case of theatre students and recent graduates in Ghana
By Rashida Resario, Robin Steedman & Thilde Langevang
Published in International Journal of Cultural Studies
Key insights: The concept of resilience has become widely used to account for how people respond both to acute crisis and, increasingly, to protracted precarity. Yet, cultural studies theorists have also vigorously critiqued resilience discourse as a tool of neoliberal governmentality. In this article, we turn from the discourse of resilience to the practice of resilience. We argue, through a case of theatre students and recent graduates in Ghana, that the practice of resilience can be both individual and collective. Moreover, we show that resilience practices involve the exercise of agency at various scales through the specific practices of coping, reworking, and resisting. Finally, we show the merits of using artistic research methods, such as devised theatre, to unveil the complex ways that creatives practice resilience in the everyday.
Read the article here: https://doi.org/10.1177/13678779231163606
‘The show must go on!’ Hustling through the compounded precarity of Covid-19 in the creative industries
By Thilde Langevang, Robin Steedman, Ana Alacovska, Rashida Resario, Rufai Haruna Kilu & Mohammed-Aminu Sanda
Published in Geoforum
Key insights: The article offers a qualitative examination of compounded precarity in creative work during the Covid-19 pandemic. Drawing on repeated in-depth interviews with twelve creative workers operating in the creative industries in Ghana, we examine one of the most prevalent practices for navigating, coping with, and managing compounded precarity: that of hustling. We empirically identify and discuss three interrelated practices of hustling in creative work: digitalization, diversification, and social engagement. We present a new way of conceptualizing creative work in precarious geographies by theorizing hustling, and the associated worker resourcefulness, improvisation, savviness, hopefulness, and caring not merely as an individualized survival strategy, but rather as an agentic and ethical effort to turn the vicissitudes of life into situated advantages and opportunities, and even social change.
Read the article here: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.geoforum.2022.09.015
Imaginaries of platform entrepreneurship in the creative industries: techno-optimism and subversion in Ghanaian filmmaking
By Robin Steedman, Ana Alacovska, Thilde Langevang & Rashida Resario
Published in Information, Communication & Society
Key insights: Drawing on interviews and focus groups with 50 filmmakers in four different regions in Ghana we show how Ghanaian filmmakers mobilize, deploy and resist imaginaries of platform entrepreneurship in their efforts to make sense of their situated entrepreneurial practices and to imagine the future of their creative businesses. We found that rather than naïvely adhering to techno-optimist imaginaries, through their practices, Ghanaian filmmaking entrepreneurs challenged the power geometry of the current platform ecosystem dominated by major Silicon Valley players.
Read the article here:
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/1369118X.2022.2062252
Care in creative work: Exploring the ethics and aesthetics of care through arts-based methods
By Thilde Langevang, Rashida Resario, Ana Alacovska, Robin Steedman, Dorothy Akpene Amenuke, Sela Kodjo Adjei & Rufai Haruna Kilu
Published in Cultural Trends
Key insight: Building on our experiences of conducting an artistic workshop in Kumasi in 2020 we argue that the ethics and aesthetics of care in creative work can best be captured and appreciated through the use of innovative arts-based methodologies that afford researchers the opportunity to explore care-fully the relational aspects of creative work. We show that artistic workshops themselves constitute a caring and socially useful form of empirical research that upholds the principles of ‘creative justice’ by fostering more respectful, attentive and affective relationships among research participants and between researchers and participants.
Read the article here: https://doi.org/10.1080/09548963.2021.2016351
Understanding creative enterprise creation, functionality and sustainability from the lenses of Ghanaian creative entrepreneurs
By Mohammed-Aminu Sanda, Rufai Haruna Kilu & Ana Alacovska
Published in Cogent Business & Management
Abstract: This paper explored the dynamics of the Ghanaian creative industry to understand creative entrepreneurs’ lived experiences in the process of turning their creativities into business ventures and the challenges they encounter in bids to sustain ventures. Guided by the business canvas model and a qualitative approach, data was collected from 40 creative entrepreneurs. Using both descriptive and thematic analysis, coupled with sense-making, it was established that creative entrepreneurship, as business practice was constrained by several phenomena, including the lack of governmental and investor support, high cost of creative productions, a dearth of practical teaching of creative skills and research in educational institutions, unfavourable regulatory policies for creative works, and a lack of appreciation for the Ghanaian culture. It is concluded that the constraints associated with the business dynamics of creative entrepreneurship could be used as innovative spaces for the derivation of plausible practices to enhance creative enterprise performance, in terms of future creative policy development and creation of viable business opportunities.
Read the article here: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/23311975.2024.2336271
The work of hope: Spiritualizing, hustling and waiting in the creative industries in Ghana
By Ana Alacovska, Thilde Langevang & Robin Steedman
Published in Environment and Planning A: Economy and Space
Key insight: Drawing on twenty four in-depth interviews with creative workers in Accra, we contend that in conditions of radical and pervasive precarity, hope represents a distinct form of work in which the potentialities of the moment extend the present into the future, while the future, however hazy and unimaginable, affects the economic vitality of the present. We explore three dominant practices of hope: hustling, waiting, and spiritualizing.
Read the article here: https://doi.org/10.1177/0308518X20962810
‘This place becomes a place’: Artists and placemaking on the margins
By Katherine V. Gough, Adwoa Owusuaa Bobie, Akosua Keseboa Darkwah & Thilde Langevang
Published in: Geoforum
Abstract: Culture and creativity are active but often overlooked processes in contemporary urbanisation. This paper contributes to scholarship on the cultural and creative industries, as well as urban placemaking on the margins, by adopting a placemaking approach in which artists are positioned at the centre of the analysis. The focus is on why artists choose to be located away from national cultural hubs, how this shapes their work, and how their work in turn shapes the city. Qualitative research was conducted in the northern Ghanaian city of Tamale with artists based in three creative and cultural industries: film, music and visual arts. The paper makes three important contributions to the literature: first, sense of place, attachment to place and feeling at home are shown to be key to artists’ decisions to be based in peripheral locations; second, the material and cultural attributes of place and associated access to resources influence the work artists produce when located far from cultural urban hubs; and third, artists are changing the perceived marginality of their home cities by shaping urban infrastructure and projecting new geographical imaginaries.
Read the article here:
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0016718524001581?via%3Dihub
Advancing epistemology in creative arts research in the Global South: A critical review of Ghana
By Rufai H. Kilu & Mohammed-Aminu Sanda
Published in: African Journal of Creative Economy
Abstract:
Background: Studies showed that epistemological ways of knowing in artworks has continued in two-fold dimensions between the global north and global south. Despite centuries of local artworks, scholarly works in the field are predominantly Euro-American, with only a few
works on Africa. This phenomenon constitutes both knowledge and theory gaps that this article seeks to bridge.
Objectives: This article joined the wider conversation on creative art scholarship questioning the predominance of Euro-American authorship, and examining the phenomena of minimal creative art scholarship in the Global South, Ghana specifically. The discussion of creative arts scholarship on Global South perspectives is not only a contribution to strengthen objectives of this journal but also resonates well with the journal’s readership.
Method: In working towards achieving the aim of the study, a desk review was done, and extant literature was reviewed using various databases and search engines to maximise information.
Results: Results point at minimal art scholarship in Ghana, which is in line with trends across Africa. Reasons include creative art curricula and implementation challenges, the lack of Ghanaian scholars’ interest in creative art scholarship in Ghana and minimal local participation in creative arts discourse. Also, art scholarship is awash with epistemological perceptions which project the proponents of Western creative art as the compelling archetype of ‘global’ creativity.
Conclusion: The study seeks a creative art epistemic change through the creation of more creative art-based local platforms for the practice and promotion of the industry. Also, the article seeks constant creative artistic engagement among academia and creative art practitioners for balance. For promotion, the organisation of annual creative art conferences could lead to special issues on art.
Read the article here:
Spirituality in creative work: How craft entrepreneurs in Ghana cope with precarity
By Rufai Haruna Kilu, Ana Alacovska & Mohammed-Aminu Sanda
Published in: Cultural Trends
Abstract: We investigate how craft entrepreneurs navigate the precarious conditions widespread in Ghana’s creative industries. Drawing on data from in-depth interviews with weavers of Kente cloth and smocks in the Northern, Savannah and Ashanti regions, we focus on the role of spirituality as a significant resource for coping with the extreme challenges and uncertainties faced by craftspeople in this context. Our empirical findings reveal how deploying spiritual narratives, including everyday invocations of God and divine spirits, helped our interviewees attain a sense of purpose and empowerment while further strengthening their communal ties, including care and mutual support for a shared way of weaving life. As our data further reveal, however, these important benefits of spirituality in creative work came with constraining effects, trapping weavers in dismal working conditions and reinforcing gender boundaries and exclusion by tabooing women’s engagement in craft entrepreneurship.
Read the article here:
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/09548963.2024.2404627
“Squeezing money out of a rock”: Diverse economies of contemporary theatre in Ghana
By Robin Steedman, Rashida Resario & Thilde Langevang
Published in: Cultural Trends
Abstract: Ghana has a vibrant theatre tradition, and yet making theatre in Ghana is complex and theatre artists must grapple with the challenges posed by a lack of state support, limited access to formal funding and theatre venues, and a precarious labour market. This paper employs the perspective of diverse economies to explore how theatre artists make theatre. Rather than privileging formal institutions, capitalist enterprises, and waged labour, the diverse economies perspective brings to the fore diversity in labour arrangements, transactions, funding, and livelihood activities. We explore how theatre artists in Tamale, the capital of the Northern Region, and Accra, the national capital, engage in a diverse array of income generating activities, use different forms of labour, blend formal and informal finance, and engage in a multitude of transactions – that is, deploy diverse economies – to make the kinds of theatre they want and to lead the kinds of lives they find valuable.
Read the article here:
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/09548963.2025.2522453
Positionality of Female Visual Artists in Ghana
By Adwoa Owusuaa Bobie
Published in: Revista Brasileira de Sociologia
Abstract: Positionality is crucial in determining career participation, representation, and access, especially in the creative industry. However, the creative industry is wrought with inequality and discrimination, which is heightened by the industry’s informality and precariousness. This paper contributes to discussions on gender discrimination in the creative sector by highlighting the unique context of Ghana. It
discusses the intersectional positionality (that marginalizes) of female visual artists amidst the booming visual art industry. Drawing on the three tenets of positionality by Kezar and Lester, this paper analyzes the influence of the intersection of gender underrepresentation with a geo-political stereotype and unfavourable socio-cultural expectations in positioning female visual artists at a disadvantage in the industry. The study comprises qualitative research with female visual artists in Ghana, showing that the minority representation of females cast shadows on their professional identity and recognition. This underrepresentation also enables unbalanced power relations favoring male artists in industry entry, practice, and career growth. Contextually, female visual artists face double subordinate positioning, as females and as nonWestern artists based in the Global South, when collaborating with Western artists. This racial subordination is further heightened by artists’ struggles to find a balance between the demands of their careers and socio-cultural expectations associated with their gender.
Read the article here: https://rbs.sbsociologia.com.br/rbs/article/view/1006
Government and Investor Support Challenges and Future Visions Relative to Successful Creative Entrepreneurship in Ghana
By Rufai H. Kilu & Mohammed-Amida Sanda
Published in: Kabongo, J., Sigué, S., Baba Abugre, J. (eds). Understanding Entrepreneurship in Sub-Saharan Africa. Palgrave
Abstract: The purpose of the study is to examine government and investor support constraints, as well as future visions relative to successful creative entrepreneurship in Ghana. Two future workshops were organized to source data for the study. Workshops as arts-based methods are usually useful for the study of creative works in helping to strengthen the research-practice-knowledge nexus. The results point at both public sector and private sector challenges. The implications of the challenges and the declining state of the sub-sector are discussed, and future visions are proffered to solve the challenges. On the issue of future visions relative to government and investors support to ensure successful creative entrepreneurship activities, participants at the workshop proposed a public support funding scheme; grants for capacity building relative to training and innovation, equipment, and machinery; construction of regional and district theaters and Exim banks to finance artistic and creative entrepreneurs.
Read the chapter here:
Female film entrepreneurs in Ghana: Shirley Frimpong-Manso and Evelyn Asampana in focus
By Robin Steedman & Rashida Resario
Published in: L. Dovey, A. Agina, & M. W. Thomas (Eds.), Contemporary African Screen Worlds. (pp. 139–150). Duke University Press.
Abstract: Digital production and spectatorship have fundamentally disrupted the way Ghanaian filmmakers make movies and run their businesses. Digital distribution mechanisms have devastated parts of the industry principally because consumers no longer buy DVDs due to the accessibility of films on digital platforms such as YouTube, while at the same time distribution on online platforms has opened up new business models. This chapter examines women’s experiences of the digital transition through a comparison of two contemporary Ghanaian female filmmakers: Shirley Frimpong-Manso and Evelyn Asampana. Whether by developing a bespoke distribution platform or trying to build a business on YouTube, Frimpong-Manso and Asampana were ambitiously trying to seize digital opportunities, something that required a constellation of resources and competencies, so they could build the kinds of careers they wanted and produce the kinds of movies that resonated with their audiences.
Read the chapter here:
Book
Cultural and Creative Industries in Ghana: Policy, Labour and Entrepreneurship
By Akosua K. Darkwah, Katherine V. Gough & Thilde Langevang
Publisher: Routledge
Book Chapters
Chapter 1: Introduction: Researching creative industries in Ghana
By Thilde Langevang, Akosua K. Darkwah & Katherine V. Gough
Chapter 2: Creative industry polices: Enhancing regulatory frameworks to promote Ghana’s creative economy
By Olivia Anku-Tsede, Eleonora Belfiore & Sela Adjei
Chapter 3: Creative labour in Ghana: Sectoral, relational and spatial variations
By Adwoa Bobie, Akosua K. Darkwah & Katherine V. Gough
Chapter 4: Modelling indigenous weaving practices as creative entrepreneurial business activity in Ghana
By Rufai Haruna Kilu, Mohammed-Aminu Sanda & Ana Alacovska
Chapter 5: Trending in the music industry: Evolving dynamics of Ghana’s music streaming landscape
By Reginald Arthur
Chapter 6: ‘We wear masks’: Creative entrepreneurs in Ghana’s fashion industry
By Lilian Ama Afun
Chapter 7: Women producers in the Kumasi film industry: Navigating post-production
By Wilhemina Tetteh
Chapter 8: Visual arts in Ghana: An unprecedented excitement
By Ana Alacovska, Thilde Langevang & Sela Adjei
Chapter 9: Artistic research workshops: An innovative method for studying creative work
By Rashida Resario, Robin Steedman & Thilde Langevang
Conference Proceedings
Beyond fashion consumption: Mapping the functional systems of the psychologists in socio-environmental issues of the fashion industry
By Lilian A. Afun, Rufai H. Kilu, Mohammed-Aminu Sanda & Ana Alacovska
Published in: Human Factors and Systems Interaction
Abstract: This paper explored and conceptualized the functional systems of industrial psychologist practice and its socio-environmental influence on entrepreneurs’ adaption of sustainable business practices in the fashion industry. The exploration is informed by the observation that although research on socio-economic aspect of sustainability has gained prominence in the fashion industry, the socio-environmental dimension which is a vital part of sustainability has not yet been fully explored in the extant literature. Since the functional role of the industrial psychologist cannot be overlooked with regards to issues of socio-environmental discussion in any discourse, this paper reviewed and conceptualized such functional roles and its socio-environmental consequences on entrepreneurship activities in the fashion sector. It is posited that the application of cognitive psychological principles and conceptions is critical in orienting entrepreneurs’ adaption of sustainable business practices in the fashion industry.
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Fashion entrepreneurs’ experiences of hope in a precarious Ghanian creative industry
By Lilian A. Afun, Obi B. Damoah, Mohammed-Aminu Sanda & Ana Alacovska
Published in: Application of Emerging Technologies
Abstract: This paper explored creative entrepreneurs’ experiences of hope in navigating precarious working conditions in the Ghanaian fashion industry. The inquiry was motivated by a mistaken belief in the existing entrepreneurial literature that successful creative entrepreneurs enjoy a comfortable lifestyle. However, the reality in the creative arts sector is that individual entrepreneurs must deal with wave after wave of tumultuous work environments caused by precarity. Emerging research reveals that issues of precarity within the fashion industry have been intensified due to the influx of substitute goods and governmental structural adjustment programs. The fashion and entrepreneurship scholarship acknowledges that several fashion entrepreneurs are ‘hustling’ to build and sustain their labels and brands in the face of difficulties. However, we discovered that rather than giving up, entrepreneurs must persevere, resilient and bounce-back. Ghanaian fashion owners focus on and theorize the most prevalent practices of navigating, coping with, and managing compounded precarity: that of hope. In this paper, we examine the ‘practical dimensions of futurity’, how precarity is worked on, and how one may become more than one presently is or was fated to be. This notion is in contrast to the precarity-induced state of paralysis caused by waiting. This paper explores the strategies, practices, and spatial dynamics of hope in the Ghanaian fashion industry. Taking a comparative and intersectional approach, we explore the practices and narratives that fashion entrepreneurs construct in such dire work conditions. This fact has implications for how we think about hope and entrepreneurship in the fashion industry. By so doing, this study contributes to the ongoing conceptual debates regarding the nature of creative work in the fashion industry. Therefore, this paper, examined two (2) research questions: (i) what are creative entrepreneurs’ experiences of precarity in the Ghanaian fashion industry? (ii) How do creative entrepreneurs cope with precarity in the Ghanaian fashion industry?
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Conceptualizing the Influence of Digital Musicpreneurs on the Music Streaming Ecosystem in the Global South: An Actor-Network Perspective
By Reginald Arthur, Olivia Anku-Tsede, Mohammed Aminu Sanda, Eleonora Belfiore & Thilde Langevang
This paper appears in: Ahram, T. & Karwowski, W. (Eds.), Application of Emerging Technologies: Proceedings of the AHFE International Conference on Human Factors in Design, Engineering, and Computing. AHFE 2023 Hawaii Edition (pp. 56–67).
Abstract: This study, employing Actor-Network Theory (ANT), examines the impact of digital musicpreneurs on Ghana's music streaming ecosystem amidst the rise of music streaming and independent music production. Through qualitative research, it delves into the interactions among key actors in Ghana's music streaming landscape. The findings underscore the challenges faced by artists due to a lack of professional structures, leading to their adoption of multiple roles. Artist managers, often close associates, play a significant role in artist management. Additionally, the integration of streaming data into music awards decisions reflects evolving success metrics. Fanbase communities emerge as crucial supporters, promoting streaming culture and serving as pivotal resources for artists. By offering insights into the roles, challenges, and growth prospects of actors within the ecosystem, this study enhances understanding of Ghana’s dynamic music streaming landscape.
The paper can be read at: https://doi.org/10.54941/ahfe1004302
Application of the “Resource-Based Theory of the Firm” and its relevance in the creative industries: A developing country perspective
By Reginald Arthur, Olivia Anku-Tsede, Mohammed-Aminu Sanda & Eleonora Belfiore
Published in: Human Factors and Systems Interaction
Abstract: This study, by way of contributing to contemporary understanding of the heterogeneity and immobility arguments of the resource-based view, offers insights into how the resources of creative industries present a nuanced but relevant ground for exploring the theory of the firm. In its discussion, this paper highlights the idiosyncratic characteristics of the creative industry and through the lens of intellectual capital and entrepreneurship, identifies the valuable, rare, inimitable, and non-substitutable (VRIN) resources that underlie the creation of heterogeneous cultural and economically viable creative works by actors in the industry. The paper finally discusses resources that explain the state of the creative industry in developing contexts. In terms of theoretical contribution, this study leads and contributes immensely to understanding how the resource-based theory of the firm could be relevant in unleashing the economic potentials of the creative industry.
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The dysfunctional systems of creative entrepreneurship in Ghana
By Rufai Kilu, Mohammed-Aminu Sanda, Lilian A. Afun & Ana Alacovska
Published in: Human Factors and Systems Interaction
Abstract: This paper aims at generating knowledge on creative industries in a Ghanaian context, which drive understanding of creative entrepreneurship forward and shape theorization on dysfunctional systems of the creative entrepreneurship. Ghana’s Creative Arts Industry is perhaps the oldest industry: our forefathers danced, had theatre, played music, made amazing crafts and artifacts and created fine garments. Ghana’s Creative Arts span from smock weaving, xylophone and calabash making centers in Savanah and Northern Ghana to kente weavers of Bonwire and Agbozome; and from wood carving at Ahwia and Aburi to the bead makers at Ada and Somanya. However, little is known about the dysfunctional systems of the creative industry in Ghana. It is against this backdrop that this study seeks to explore the dysfunctional systems of creative entrepreneurship in Ghana. An empirical research design with qualitative approach was used. Interviews, Focus Group Discussions and Workshops were used for the data collection. The results showed the creative industry is a functional engine for sustainable and inclusive economic growth, it creates decent jobs and lead to sustainable development. The results however showed a system of dysfunctions among the creative entrepreneurs in a form of government and investor support related challenges, a lack of creative capacity building and research, unfavorable policies to regulate creative activities and the lack of appreciation for Ghanaian culture. The current study generated novel empirical and theoretical knowledge on both functional and dysfunctional systems of creative entrepreneurship in Ghanaian context. It is intimated that; periods of economic challenges are characterized with creative entrepreneurship playing key survival roles. This implies industry wide partnerships is key to have a salient role in driving innovation, economic growth, and welfare, in addition to their effect on job creation. Therefore, innovative and creative entrepreneurship is considered key factor in modern Ghanaian economic development.
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Humane Entrepreneurship in the Creative Fashion Industry: The Role of Entrepreneurs’ Intuition on Entrepreneurial Decision-Making and Performance
By Mohammed-Aminu Sanda, Lilian A. Afun, Ana Alacovska & Obi B. Damoah
Published in: Humane-Centered Design and User Experience
Abstract: The purpose of this study was to identify the humane-oriented factors that are predictive of creative entrepreneurs’ intuition, decision-making and entrepreneurial performances, and also to establish the dynamics between their intuitions, decision-making and entrepreneurial performances when engaged in their entrepreneurial activities. The study was informed by the realization that the traditional concept of entrepreneurship has mainly focused on new venture creation with the entrepreneur at the centre of all entrepreneurial activities. But with the changing tide of conceptualization, the human aspect of entrepreneurship has evolved as humane entrepreneurship and is operationalized as the pursuit of entrepreneurial growth and humane development for opportunity realization and sustainable organization. Yet, unlike the application of the business aspect of entrepreneurship in established firms, the human aspect of the creative entrepreneurial approaches are often overlooked, and thus represent a knowledge gap. Thus, in the pursuit of filling such gap, exploring the human-oriented dynamics in entrepreneurship has attracted much attention and continue to gain currency in humane entrepreneurship research. In this stead, the following questions were explored relative to creative entrepreneurs’ entrepreneurial activities in the Ghanaian fashion industry. (i) what factors are predictive of the entrepreneurs’ intuitions, and decision-making as well as their entrepreneurial performance. (ii) is there an influencing association between the entrepreneurs’ intuitions, decision-making and entrepreneurial. Using the quantitative philosophical approach informed by the entrepreneurs’ subjective evaluations of their intuitions in decision-making and entrepreneurial performance was enabled, data was obtained from 728 respondents operating in the Ghanaian creative fashion industry. Analytical Findings from principal components analysis identified seven (7) factors that are predictive of the Entrepreneurs’ intuitions in decision-making, eight (8) factors that are predictive of their entrepreneurial decision-making, and ten (10) factors that are predictive of their entrepreneurial performances. The influencing association between the entrepreneurs’ intuitions, decision-making and entrepreneurial is also established. The study outcome provides an important insight on the dynamics of human-factors in creative entrepreneurship and the influencing significance of entrepreneurs’ intuition in their entrepreneurial performances. The insights provide human-oriented perspectives that could enable educators associate with the neuroergonomics constraints in creative entrepreneurship development over the past years and the impact it has, and continue to have, on individuals in developing economies who desire to create business around their creativities. The study outcome provides a good understanding of the influence of creative entrepreneurs’ intuitions on their entrepreneurial performances in the to educators and administrators, which could be used to effectively design a humane-centered creative entrepreneurship skills and practices in the Ghanaian fashion industry.
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Always on “Academia without Walls” Psychosocial Experiences of the Academic Precariat. College of Humanities Conference Proceedings, University of Ghana
By Lilian A. Afun, Mohammed-Aminu Sanda, & Obi B. Damoah (2022)
Creative Entrepreneurship and Side-Hustles: A Mainstream Dual-Employment Strategy for Enhancing Income and Sustainable Growth in Ghana’s Fashion Industry. Economic Society of South Africa Conference Proceedings.
By Lilian A. Afun (2025)
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Popular articles
West Africa's fashion designers are world leaders when it comes to producing sustainable clothes
By Adwoa Owusuaa Bobie (April 2024)
Published in: The Conversation
Read the article here: https://rbs.sbsociologia.com.br/rbs/article/view/1006
Kofi Ansah left Ghana to become a world famous fashion designer - how his return home boosted the industry
By Adwoa Owusuaa Bobie, Akosua K. Darkwah & Katherine V. Gough (August 2023)
Published in: The Conversation
Read the article here:
Ghana’s films don’t often make it to Netflix – local solutions may be the answer
By Robin Steedman, Ana Alacovska, Rashida Resario & Thilde Langevang (September 2025)
Published in: The Conversation
Read the article here:
Kreative Erhverv: Afrikas Nye udviklingsaktører?
By Thilde Langevang (2023)
Published in: Georgafisk orientering
Read the article here:
https://www.geografforbundet.dk/media/2951/go1_2023-lille.pdf (pp. 34-37)
Boomplay er Ghanas vej til det musikalske verdenskort
By Stine U. Hansen (August 2023)
(Interviewed/ Featured Expert - Dr. Reginald Arthur, ACIG PhD) - A media feature highlighting Ghana’s positioning on the global music map
Published in: Globalnyt
Read the article here:
https://globalnyt.dk/boomplay-er-ghanas-vej-til-det-musikalske-verdenskort/
Papers in progress
Forthcoming
"Female Film Entrepreneurs in Ghana: Focus on Shirley Frimpong-Manso and Evelyn Asampana", forthcoming in African Screen Worlds (Duke UP)
"The Relational and Redistributive Dynamics of Mutual Aid: Implications of Afro-Communitarian Ethics for the Study of Creative Work", forthcoming in Business Ethics Quarterly
Langevang, T., Resario, R., Steedman, R. (forthcoming): Creative Industries in Ghana Introduction to Special Issue. Cultural Trends
Bobie, A. O., Steedman, R., Langevang, T., Resario, R., & Alacovska, A. (under review.). Global dreams, local realities: fashion design and digital technology in Accra, International Journal of Fashion Studies.
Steedman, R., Bobie, A. O., Langevang, T., Resario, R., & Alacovska, A. (under review). The “Headache and Painkiller”: How fashion entrepreneurs manage visibility on social media, Social Media + Society.
Afun, L.A., & Sanda, M.A. (in progress). Paying Tribute to Decent Work From Mainstream Employment to Side Hustles, Whose World?: Dual Labour Markets in Ghana’s Fashion Industry
Afun, L.A., & Alacovska, A. (in progress). The Aesthetics of Afro-communitarianism: Rethinking Nnoboa and Funtufunefu Denkyemfunefu as Ethical Blueprints for Relational Ethics in Creative Work from the Global South.
Arthur, R. (forthcoming submission). Mapping Value in Ghana’s Digital Music Economy: Actors, Resources, and the Politics of Visibility. Invited full paper for the special issue on Mapping Value in Cultural and Creative Work (Cultural Trends), Guest-edited by Inge Panneels and Caitlin McDonald (abstract accepted, full paper due December 2025).
In development
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Working with platforms: The use of social media in fashion entrepreneurship in Accra
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Alacovska, A., Steedman, R., Langevang, T., & Resario, R. (under development). The life/work knot in creative industries. Human Relations