AAF✫
2026

Enam, Kwesi Botchway (Worldfaze), Peace Adzo Medie, Poetra Asantewa, DJ and director Kobby Ankomah Graham, Leti Arts, Dr. Terry Ofosu

Speakers, Scholars and Performers (in order of events) 

Kwesi Botchway is the founder of WorldFaze Art Studio in Accra, a studio and residency space focusing on supporting young local artists. This support for emerging talent is deeply inflected by his own introduction to painting through apprenticing with a Ghanian street artist at a young age. He studied art at the Ghanatta College of Art and Design in Accra before enrolling at the Academy of Visual Arts in Frankfurt, Germany. He has held solo exhibitions in Denmark, Ghana, the UK, and Belgium, some resulting from his residency at Gallery 1957 in Ghana in 2020. 
 

Sally Nuamah is an associate professor at Northwestern University and co-covener of the African Arts Futures symposium. A political scientist and educational researcher by training, Sally's work is inter-disciplinary, exploring   the treatment of Black women and girls in American democracy, and creative possibilities for art as a tool of liberation.  Her latest award-winning book, Closed for Democracy, investigates the political consequences of mass closures on Black Americans’ relationship with government. An arts patron and community archivist, Nuamah has been a recipient of several awards and fellowships for her work with projects such as "Exile Archives" working with Ghanaian institutions, "Common Archives: A Celebration of Chicago Black Neighborhood Life" and the "Grace House Archives."  She is the founder of Herstory: the TWII Foundation Girls Scholarship. 
 

Fola Adeleke - Executive Director, Global Center on AI Governance. Atlantic Institute Senior Fellow on social and economic equity at London School of Economics. Assistant Professor, Sobey Business School, St Mary's University. Fola is global authority on AI and development studies, focused on African autonomy.

​

Seyram Avle - Associate Professor of Global Digital Media in the Department of Communication at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, where she is also the co-founder and director of the Global Technology for Social Justice (GloTech) Lab. She's been working on tech innovation and Ghana, China and beyond since the early 2010s.

​

Sela Adjei - A multidisciplinary artist, curator and researcher. Founder of Grin Studios Limited, an art consultancy that connects artists & researchers, specializing in museum studies, art exhibitions, and design. He is a founding member of AI4Afrika.com — a collective working toward authentic African sovereignty in AI.

​

Tony Abikisi - Senior executive and private equity investor with over 15 years of experience in digital infrastructure, fintech, and advisory across Africa and the U.S. Board-level leadership across financial services, BPO, and tech-driven platforms. Patron and supporter of arts and African cultural expression.

​

Osemu (Sebastian) Ebhohimen - Head Of marketing & partnerships at LetiArts, a multi-modal video game studio based in Ghana and Kenya, which has received numerous awards for its game design, focused on social good, African values and creative inspiration. ​

​

Reginold Royston is an Associate Professor in the Department of African Cultural Studies, and at the College of Computing and AI at University of Wisconsin, Madison. He examines technoculture in Ghana and the role of the diaspora in African digital media — in areas such as ICT, urban development, and artificial intelligence. His work in the digital humanities explores the new media orality of viral dances, and podcasting. His 2025 book is titled Pan-African Futurism: Ghana, and the Paradox of Technology for Development.​​

​​

Peace Adzo Medie — Peace Adzo Medie is an award-winning scholar and author. A former editor of African Affairs, her latest novel Night Bloom has won several awards. Peace will be debuting her play 'When You See Me" on Day 1 of the AAF symposium. Medie is associate professor in politics at the University of Bristol and her research is at the intersection of African studies, women’s and gender studies, and international relations. She studies state and non-state actors’ responses to gender-based violence and other forms of insecurity. 
 

Enam (born Angela Enam Keteku) is an award-winning Ghanaian afro-spiritual singer, songwriter, and vocalist from Anloga in the Volta Region, widely recognized for her unique "Afro-Spiritual" style that blends traditional Ewe cultural heritage with soulful contemporary sounds.

​

Poetra Asantewa is a Ghanaian storyteller, constantly renewing her faith in God and people. A sensational balance of poetry, music, intellect and wit, Poetra Asantewa uses storytelling to subvert the mainstream role of artists as entertainers only – by being unapologetic and unwavering in using her voice to question well, observe closely and reaffirm what ought to be.
 

Dr. Terry Ofosu - Head of Department for the Department for Dance Studies at the University of Ghana, Dr. Terry Ofosu delivers an incredibly vibrant and captivating performance with his talented students at the Ghana Dance Industry Awards. Terry Ofosu is a Ghanaian dance scholar and choreographer.

​

Kwabena Opoku-Agyemang is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of English at the University of Ghana and one of Africa's leading scholars in Digital Humanities, African Digital Literature, and African Electronic Literature. 

​

Masi Asare is a lyricist, composer, playwright, and academic. A past Dramatists Guild Fellow and Kaplan Institute for the Humanities Fellow, Masi’s honors include the Ziegfeld Award for a woman composer of musicals, a grant from the Theater Hall of Fame, and inclusion on the “Women to Watch on Broadway” list. She co-wrote the lyrics to the Broadway musical Paradise Square with Nathan Tysen. For this she was nominated for the Tony Award for Best Original Score at the 75th Tony Awards in 2022. She currently is an associate professor in the School of Communications at Northwestern University.

​

Éric Essono Tsimi is associate professor of French at Northwestern Univ. His current projects examine oral traditions and archival materials in relation to contemporary debates on authorship, including the implications of generative and agentic AI for literary creation. He is also developing work on dissent, sovereignty, and political imagination in the Global South. He has published a dozen books including De quoi la littérature africaine est-elle la littérature ? (Presses de l’Université de Montréal), Vous autres civilisations savez désormais que vous êtes mortelles (Classiques Garnier),and Les Inadmirables (Hermann). 

​

Abena Osei focuses on Postcolonial Studies and African Literature, and specifically on Black Speculative Fiction particularly in emerging children’s media in Africanfuturism, at the University of Maryland, College Park. Lisa Abena Osei holds an MA in Comparative English Studies, Literature and American Culture from Heinrich-Heine Universität, Düsseldorf, and an MPhil in English Literature from the University of Ghana. She has published peer-reviewed articles on Black speculative fiction, specifically Afrofuturism and Africanfuturism, in The Journal of African Literature Association (JALA), Critical Studies in Media and Communication journal and the Global Africa Sciences. She is also the winner of the Best Graduate Student Essay Award at the 2022 African Literature Association Conference. She is also an MLA Edward Giuliano Global Fellow 2024 awardee. Overall, she is interested in the ways Postcolonial African literatures can be used in transformative ways to explore and challenge the complexities of race, identity, and power. 
​

Kobby Ankomah Graham is writer, cultural researcher, lecturer and DJ raised between Ghana and Britain. He is passionately curious about the subcultures shaping African music, art, and thought. He writes and works from within culture. A Miles Morland African Writers Scholar, Graham has been featured in Frieze, Kinfolk, Aperture, The Guardian, the BBC, The Africa Report, and Tampered Press. He has also attracted funding from the likes of DANIDA and Africa No Filter. Kobby's film "Accra Becoming" charts his life and the lives of nine artists working across genres in Ghana, and their paths towards living as working-artists. The documentary will be featured on the closing night of AAF 2026. 

 
Msia Kibona Clark is a professor of African cultural & feminist studies, and the Director of the Hip-Hop Studies minor, at Howard University. Her work includes over two dozen scholarly works in African cultural studies, including the text Hip-Hop in Africa: Prophets of the City & Dustyfoot Philosophers. Her work also explores African feminism’s role in cyberfeminist spaces. Her 2023 book African Women in Digital Spaces: Redefining Social Movements on the Continent and in the Diaspora is a collection of poetry, essays, & scholarship on African feminist conversations around race, gender, and sexuality, co-edited with Ghanaian feminist activist and scholar Dr. Wunpini Fatimata Mohammed. She has been producing the Hip Hop African podcast and blog since 2011.

​

Dodzi Aveh aka Agbenorexi is a graduate student examining cultural production and digital humanities at the University of Ghana, Legon.

​​​

​