New Year’s Eve Greetings Glocal Citizens!

As we bid 2024 farewell, we have another Glocal Citizen to thank for our connection with this weeks guest. This fall in Accra, Rita Kusi and her team hosted their Global Conference on Human Resources in Africa 2024 where this week's guest was a featured panelist sharing her expertise as a leading business leader in the technology space. Ghanaian born and raised, Deborah Asmah is a trailblazing expert in digital governance and fintech, whose contributions have significantly impacted Ghana's fintech landscape. Her innovative approaches have enabled seamless access to payment tools, promoted financial inclusion, and driven digital transformation in various sectors. She is co-founder of Npontu Technologies Ltd, a tech company specialising in the use of AI for the provision of financial solutions and digital transformation. As a Certified Information Privacy Manager with the International Association of Privacy Professionals (IAPP), she is also an ardent activist for Public Policy. With extensive research experience at the intersection of technology and financial inclusion she is passionate about leveraging digital tools and platforms to bridge social divides and promote financially inclusive, sustainable societies.

Where to find Deborah?

What’s Deborah listening to?

Other topics of interest:

Special Guest: Deborah Asmah.

Season’s Greetings Glocal Citizens!

This week on the podcast, our first guest, Cordie Aziz is back with fresh insights from her work and life changes since our first conversation. Cordie, now a mother of three is Founder and Executive Director of Enviornment360 an NGO turned social enterprise that has successfully executed sustainable waste management projects in urban and coastal communities in Greater Accra and Kumasi. Cordie’s achievements include creating of the first successful community plastic collection program in Accra; developing the first waste picker-run sorting center in West Africa; and successfully partnering with local and national agencies as the recycling coordinator for the city of Accra, to name a few. We recorded this conversation during the ramp up to their 10th anniversary celebration at their new headquarters. In this conversation, we catch up on how Cordie is designing her work-life balance with purpose, allowing her to continue to evolve as an entreprenuer while staying rooted in her new role as a working mother.

Where to find Cordie?

Other topics of interest:

Special Guest: Cordie Aziz.

Anniversary Greetings Glocal Citizens!

We’ve been coming together nearly every week for five years!! On this day in 2019, this two-part interview with my first guest launched the podcast. In celebration and commemoration, stay tuned for episodes throughout the year revisiting past guests and catching up “Where are they now?” style. This week it’s a flashback to the very beginning with our first guest, environmentalist and social entrepreneur, Cordie Aziz. It’s delighting that this conversation stands the test of time and is as relevant then as now. Check out the show notes for Cordie’s other episodes to find out more about her then. And come back next week to catch up on Cordie’s now.

Where to find Cordie?

What’s Cordie reading?

Topics of interest:

Special Guest: Cordie Aziz.

Greetings Glocal Citizens!

This week is the finale of our writing as activism series at the 2024 Pa Gya! Literary Festival. It has been such a pleasure bringing the works and words of these writers to a wider audience. It has been a wonderful multi-generational compilation of wisdom across genres. Joining us this week is Ivana Akotowaa Ofori, a Ghanaian storyteller known also by the alias, “The Spider Kid.” She is a weaver of words in many forms, including fiction, non-fiction and spoken-word poetry. Akotowaa has been nominated for various awards for her prose writing. Her work is included in the Flash Fiction Ghana anthology, Kenkey for Ewes and Other Very Short Stories, and the Writivism anthology, And Morning Will Come.

She is also included in the Africa Risen Anthology 2022 with her short story, “Exiles of Witchery”. Akotowaa’s debut novella, The Year of Return (2023) has been published in the US with Android Press and in West Africa with Smartline Publishers.

Writing aside, Akotowaa spends much of her time looking for excuses to make everything purple and this imaginative, playful spirit definitely shines through our conversation.

Where to find Akotowaa?

What’s Akotowaa watching?

What’s Akotowaa reading?

Other topics of interest:

Special Guest: Ivana Akotowaa Ofori.

Greetings Glocal Citizens!

We are nearing the end of our Writing As Activism series @ the 2024 Pa Gya! Literary Festival in Accra. This week, Ghanaian writer and editor winning acclaim as a children's author, poet, broadcaster and novelist, Nii Ayikwei Parkes joins the conversation. Winner of multiple international awards including the ACRAG (Arts Critics and Reviewers Association of Ghana) award, his novel Tail of the Blue Bird won France's two major prizes for translated fiction – Prix Baudelaire and Prix Laure Bataillon – in 2014. Nii Ayikwei is the founder of flipped eye publishing, a leading small press; serves on the boards of World Literature Today and the AKO Caine Prize; and was chair of judges for the 2020 Commonwealth Prize. Translated in multiple languages, he has also written for National Geographic, Financial Times, the Guardian and Lonely Planet. His most recent books are The Ga Picture Alphabet and Azúcar, a novel. Currently Producer of Literature and Talks at Brighton Festival, he is also author of two collections of poetry The Makings of You (2010) and The Geez (2020), both published by Peepal Tree Press.

In this conversation, we journey with Nii Ayikwei through his works, his entreprenuership, his love for food and rum, and much more!

Where to find Nii Ayikwei?

What’s Nii Ayikwei listening to?

Nii’s Pan-African Activism essential reading list:

Other topics of interest:

Special Guest: Nii Ayikwei Parkes.

Greetings Glocal Citizens!

This week writing as activism is taking us to a land with a long history of activist thought ans action - Ireland. Born and raised in Nigeria, Dagogo Hart migrated to Ireland at an early age to complete his studies and now calls it home along with his young family. He is a poet, playwright, and spoken word artist whose words have wowed audiences from bar basements to electric picnic stages. He started performing in Dublin in 2016 in open mics and poetry slams, which saw him win the Slam Sunday grand slam and become an All Ireland poetry slam finalist. Since then he has performed for festivals like Electric Picnic, St. Patricks, Dublin Fringe, Drogheda literary festival, Cuirt International Poetry Festival, and First fortnight. He is one-third of the collective WeAreGriot - a poetry collective that curates art events around poetry. His personal works include, The Home Project (a series of poetry films), RedBeard Paddy (a poetry short film), Mmanwu (a play in the 2023 Dublin Fringe Festival), See True (a spoken word variety show) and Boy Child (a spoken-word play), the last two co-written with FeliSpeaks, Talkatives; a hip-hop and poetry slam as part of WeAreGriot. As you’ll learn in our conversation and glean from his works, his poetry is inspired by his hometown in Lagos, Nigeria, and his experience since moving to Ireland.

Where else to find Dagogo?

What’s Dagogo watching?

What’s Dagogo listenining to?

Other topics of interest:

Special Guest: Dagogo Hart.

Greetings Glocal Citizens!

Click the and check out Vamba’s Pa Gya! session centering his latest book The Emperor's Son.

Where to find Vamba?

Vamba’s essential Pan-African activism reading list:

Other topics of interest:

Greetings Glocal Citizens!

Next up in our Writing as Activism series, this week’s episode, recorded at the 2024 Pa Gya! festival (in case you are wondering, this is the session taking place during our interview, features Nigerian poet and children’s book author, Aduke Gomez. Aduke embraced writing in the past decade after a career in law and finance. She now utilises her legal and advisory skills to assist in business and creative development. Commencing her career in legal practice with the law firm of Udo Udoma & Belo-Osagie, she later worked for many years in various leadership roles within Ecobank Nigeria Ltd and Leadway Pensure PFA. She is regularly called to speak and moderate on topics related to her interest in history and culture and these have included sessions at Cornell University; The Institute of Africa and Diaspora Studies at the University of Lagos; the Lagos State Record and Archive Bureau; the annual conference of the Lagos Studies Association; the Ake Festival; and the Lagos Book and Art Festival (LABAF) amongst others.

Her published collection of poems have featured as festival books for both the LABAF and the Ake Festival. And her children's books have also featured at previous editions of LABAF and Akada Children's Book Festival.

In this conversation we not only get to know how Aduke pivoted into arts and public service, we also get to know more about her local in the context of her paternal ancestor's return from Brazil to Lagos. This speaks volume to the idea of activism as a way of being.

Where to find Aduke?

Who is on Aduke’s essential Pan-African reading list?

Other topic of interest:

Special Guest: Aduke Gomez.

New Month Greetings Glocal Citizens!

The first Tuesday in November represents the official US election day. As polling evolves for higher participation and greater inclusion, most states offer early voting so millions have already cast thier votes. Throughout this year of elections across the globe, the build up to the two where I have a say, the United States and Ghana, has played a critical role in inspiring my most activist self to move the dial in different ways toward manifesting a new world. Coincidentally, this week on the podcast kicks off our Writing as Activism series in coordination with the Pa Gya! Literary Festival in Accra. Recorded live at the eighth installment of the festivaland in the days that followed, starting the panel, Writing as Activism: Ghanaian Voices and Pan-African Perspectives Across Genres, the conversation starts with a distinguished voices covering works of poetry, screenwriting, and nonfiction scholarship with:

Nicole Amarteifio is an acclaimed Ghanaian-American TV/film writer, director, and producer. She successfully launched the hit web series 'An African City’ - dubbed by CNN and the BBC as Africa’s answer to ‘Sex and the City’.

Returning Glocal Citizen, Nydia A. Swaby is a Black feminist artist, researcher and curator. Her practice engages archives, autoethnography, photography, the moving image, and the imagination to explore the gendered, diasporic and affective dimensions of Black being and becoming. In addition to curating artistic programmes, she creates visual narratives, research and performance texts. Nydia's first book, Amy Ashwood Garvey and the Future of Black Feminist Archives, was published by Lawrence Wishart in October 2024 as part of LW's Radical Black Women book series. She is also developing an artist film, Amy and Me in the Archive, which will be screened at the forthcoming Singapore International Photography Festival 2024.

And Poet Laureate of Jamaica, Kwame Dawes, author of numerous books of poetry and other books of fiction, criticism, and essays. His most recent collection is Sturge Town (Peepal Tree Press, UK 2023). Dawes is Professor of Literary Arts at Brown University. He teaches in the Pacific MFA Program and is the Series Editor of the African Poetry Book Series, Director of the African Poetry Book Fund, and Artistic Director of the Calabash International Literary Festival. He is a Chancellor for the Academy of American Poets and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. Kwame Dawes is the winner of the prestigious Windham/Campbell Award for Poetry and was a finalist for the 2022 Neustadt International Prize for Literature. In 2022 Dawes was awarded the Order of Distinction Commander class by the Government of Jamaica. He is the Poet Laureate of Jamaica (2024-2027).

Click through to find out more about the Pa Gya! Literary Festival and the Writer’s Project Ghana and watch this and other festival panels at WPGTV.

Where to find Nicole?

Where to find Kwame?

Where to find Nydia?

Other topics of interest and the Essential Pan-African Activism reading list coming soon!

*This audio recording has been edited for clarity from the original video recording.

Special Guests: Kwame Dawes, Nicole Amarteifio, and Nydia Swaby.

Greetings Glocal Citizens!

This week is the final installment in our collaboration with Bisi Bright’s Livewell Initiative and the Women of Africa Post-Pandemic Empowerment and Advocacy Programme with support from Gilead Sciences USA. In a fitting conclusion, Aggrey Aluso, the Director, Africa Region and global policy lead for the Pandemic Action Network, driving strategic advocacy efforts in Africa and globally joins the conversation. Born, raised and currently based in Kenya, Aggrey also serves as the incoming Executive Director of Resilience Action Network Africa (RANA), PAN’s networked advocacy partner, where he is mobilizing advocates to champion an Africa-centric, globally-facing resilience agenda.

He brings over 15 years of experience in advancing intersectional justice, using citizen-led, rights-based approaches in Africa. Previously, he served as an Open Society Initiative for Eastern Africa’s (OSIEA) Health and Rights program senior manager. He also coordinated the Open Society Africa (Pan Africa) Vaccine Justice to advance Africa’s vaccine-related research, development, and manufacturing. He served as the University of Manitoba’s Global Institute for Public Health’s East African Policy and Advocacy Manager.

Beyond the COVID-19 Pandemic, Aggrey offers excellent insights into the current M-pox crisis as well as a thoughtful discussion on the global policy landscape around elevating health as a human right for all.

Where to find Aggrey?

What’s Aggrey reading?

Whats Aggrey watching?

Other topics of interest:

Special Guests: Adebisi Bright and Aggrey Aluso.