Akosua K Darkwah
Biographic Data
| ID | 150418 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Akosua K Darkwah |
| GIVEN NAMES | Akosua K |
| FAMILY NAME | Darkwah |
| SIGNATURE | DARKWAH A K |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Ghana |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-2713-4407 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 26 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 90 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 26 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2001 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 5 |
Out of Place: Mixed-Race Identities in Ghana
This article discusses the identity formation of mixed-race children in Ghana. We recognize the cultural, historical, and geographic specificities in conceptions of race and focus in this piece on exploring the processes by which individuals with parents from two racial groupings come to a sense of their identity in a context where their epidermal visibility makes them markedly different. Using the life histories of eight individuals with mixed-r…
Career geographies in the Ghanaian fashion industry: From Brain Drain to Brain Gain and Brain Circulation
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 focussing on the career geography of internationally renowned Kofi Ansah, we show how ‘brain drain’ turned into ‘brain gain’ and consequently …
Rethinking Women's Political Power in West Africa
(Re)presenting Women's Political Participation on the Continent
Negotiating Gender Roles and Power Relations Through the Management of International Migrant Remittances in a Patriarchal Community in Ghana
This paper draws on a feminist poststructural perspective to examine gendered dimensions of sending and managing international migrant remittances in a patriarchal community in Ghana. It relies on primary data collected through in-depth interviews, focus group discussions, and observation in Nkoranza, a Ghanaian community with a long history of international migration and receipt of remittances, to analyze the fluidity of gendered and intergenera…
Gendered dynamics of the flow and use of migrant remittances in Northern Ghana
This paper draws on qualitative data to examine gendered dynamics of remitting and remittance use in households in northern Ghana. The findings indicate that remitting and remittance use are shaped by the interaction of social norms on household provisioning and agency of household members. While social norms on gender roles and conjugality tend to shape patterns of remitting, the household context and the agency of the individual household membe…
From Makola to Insta: Changing the Narrative of Ghanaian Women Traders
Much has been made of the potential of the digital economy to provide women with new or increased work opportunities. Our study brings nuance to this narrative by investigating the extent to which, within the socio-economic context of Ghana, different categories of women are able to leverage opportunities in the growing digital economy. Based on interviews with 40 female workers and eight experts in the Ghanaian digital space, our analysis sugges…
Promoting culture and creativity in Ghana: Bottom-up strategies for creative industries development
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, particular…
This place becomes a place’: Artists and placemaking on the margins
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 …
Identity construction amongst individuals with binational heritage in Africa
This paper draws on interviews with Africans of binational parental heritage to expand the literature on identity formation in two ways. First, it takes on the factors that shape primary identity formation more fully by extending it beyond the current focus on state constrictures on primary identity formation. We argue in this paper that in addition to state constricture, closeness of family ties is yet another factor that shapes the primary iden…
When being obese is a good thing: Voices of Ghanaian participants in a dance reality TV show
The discussion on (mis)representations of black women's bodies often focuses on their hyper-corporeality and hyper-sexualisation, with little attention paid to the women thus represented and their views. Reality shows are roundly criticised for objectifying women, being unAfrican and offering little to Africans. This paper contests this perspective by drawing on interviews with 19 contestants in a dance reality show in Ghana. We demonstrate that …
The President's Prerogative”? The Cabinet Appointment Process in Ghana and the Implications for Gender Parity
This article seeks to understand why Ghana, unlike several other African countries, has seen relatively few women appointed as ministers to the cabinet since the transition to democracy. We draw on Annesley, Beckwith, and Franceschet's 2019 bookCabinets,Ministers and Gender, which provides an in-depth analysis of the cabinet appointment process in seven democracies (but no African cases) and demonstrates that the cabinet appointment process is ge…
African Women and Globalization
Fat women, performance and subversive commodification on Ghanaian reality television
Critics of weight loss reality shows often present the contestants as victims of commodification and exploitation without any form of agency. This paper seeks to contest this one-sided view of such shows. It draws on interviews with the producers and 19 contestants in the first season of a dance reality show in Ghana, the Di Asa show, as well as recorded video performances online. We argue that indeed the show was organised in a manner that commo…
A (Re)turn to Older Conversations in African Studies
An abstract is not available for this content. As you have access to this content, full HTML content is provided on this page. A PDF of this content is also available in through the ‘Save PDF’ action button
African Women and Globalisation
We would rather be leaders than parliamentarians: Women and political office in Ghana
Ghana, an emerging democracy, lags far behind in women’s representation in Parliament. This article, based on interviews with delegates, aspirants, candidates, Members of Parliament and potential female presidential candidates, suggests that women are dissuaded from standing for Parliament by the exorbitant ‘cost of politics’, humiliating ‘politics of insult’ and keen appreciation of Parliament’s limitations. Still, women may be eager to hold app…
Intersections of gender and water: Comparative approaches to everyday gendered negotiations of water access in underserved areas of Accra, Ghana and Cape Town, South Africa
A large and growing body of literature suggests that women and men often have differentiated relationships to water access, uses, knowledges, governance, and experiences. From a feminist political ecology perspective, these relationships can be mediated by gendered labour practices (within the household, at the community level, or within the workplace), socio-cultural expectations (e.g. related to notions of masculinity and femininity), as well a…
If times change, should we throw away the hearthstone? Exploring (Dis) continuities in autonomy and decision-making in the lives of Ghanaian women
This paper attempts to investigate continuities and discontinuities between traditional and modern representations of womanhood and female gender roles focusing primarily on family and work settings. Using approaches informed by Sociology, Cultural Psychology, and African Studies, the paper explores traditional views of womanhood encapsulated in (and also transmitted intergenerationally) through proverbs. This customary perspective is contrasted …
Researching empowerment: On methodological innovations, pitfalls and challenges
Researching women's empowerment: Reflections on methodology by southern feminists
Keeping hope alive: An analysis of training opportunities for Ghanaian youth in the emerging oil and gas industry
Over the last decade-and-a-half, African youth have been the target of much scholarly attention. Faced with poor access to education and high levels of unemployment, many researchers have explored the ways in which they make sense of these dual realities. Relatively little attention has been paid to the ways in which the introduction of active labour market policies, specifically labour market targeted skills training, fundamentally reconfigures …
Religious Differences in Modernization of the Family: Family Demographics Trends in Ghana
This research examines trends in a broad set of reproductive and marital behaviors in Ghana, focusing on religious group differences. These comparisons provide evidence of how family trends are constrained by religious identity in a less developed country. Three waves of the Ghana Demographic and Health Surveys are used to track trends in the age at family formation, marital status, contraceptive use, and family size. Results indicate that women …
Education: Pathway to Empowerment for Ghanaian Women
Education has long been seen as crucial to women's empowerment. Increasingly, however, scholars such as Stromquist have questioned our faith in the power of education to empower women. Drawing on a survey of 600 women of three age groups in three regions of Ghana and 36 intergenerational interviews, this article makes the case that the benefits of education for women is context specific, for example when decent work in the public sector is availa…
(A)Sexualizing Ghanaian Youth: A Case Study of Virgin Clubs in Accra and Kumasi
In the early 1980s, HIV/AIDS, first diagnosed in gay men living on the West Coast of the United States, gripped the imagination of Western scientists regarding its origins, transmission and cure. However, the disease has over the years come to be associated with Africa since the world’s largest
Keeping hope alive: An analysis of training opportunities for Ghanaian youth in the emerging oil and gas industry
Over the last decade-and-a-half, African youth have been the target of much scholarly attention. Faced with poor access to education and high levels of unemployment, many researchers have explored the ways in which they make sense of these dual realities. Relatively little attention has been paid to the ways in which the introduction of active labour market policies, specifically labour market targeted skills training, fundamentally reconfigures …
Intersections of gender and water: Comparative approaches to everyday gendered negotiations of water access in underserved areas of Accra, Ghana and Cape Town, South Africa
A large and growing body of literature suggests that women and men often have differentiated relationships to water access, uses, knowledges, governance, and experiences. From a feminist political ecology perspective, these relationships can be mediated by gendered labour practices (within the household, at the community level, or within the workplace), socio-cultural expectations (e.g. related to notions of masculinity and femininity), as well a…
The President's Prerogative”? The Cabinet Appointment Process in Ghana and the Implications for Gender Parity
This article seeks to understand why Ghana, unlike several other African countries, has seen relatively few women appointed as ministers to the cabinet since the transition to democracy. We draw on Annesley, Beckwith, and Franceschet's 2019 bookCabinets,Ministers and Gender, which provides an in-depth analysis of the cabinet appointment process in seven democracies (but no African cases) and demonstrates that the cabinet appointment process is ge…
We would rather be leaders than parliamentarians: Women and political office in Ghana
Ghana, an emerging democracy, lags far behind in women’s representation in Parliament. This article, based on interviews with delegates, aspirants, candidates, Members of Parliament and potential female presidential candidates, suggests that women are dissuaded from standing for Parliament by the exorbitant ‘cost of politics’, humiliating ‘politics of insult’ and keen appreciation of Parliament’s limitations. Still, women may be eager to hold app…
Researching empowerment: On methodological innovations, pitfalls and challenges
Researching women's empowerment: Reflections on methodology by southern feminists
Religious Differences in Modernization of the Family: Family Demographics Trends in Ghana
This research examines trends in a broad set of reproductive and marital behaviors in Ghana, focusing on religious group differences. These comparisons provide evidence of how family trends are constrained by religious identity in a less developed country. Three waves of the Ghana Demographic and Health Surveys are used to track trends in the age at family formation, marital status, contraceptive use, and family size. Results indicate that women …
Negotiating Gender Roles and Power Relations Through the Management of International Migrant Remittances in a Patriarchal Community in Ghana
This paper draws on a feminist poststructural perspective to examine gendered dimensions of sending and managing international migrant remittances in a patriarchal community in Ghana. It relies on primary data collected through in-depth interviews, focus group discussions, and observation in Nkoranza, a Ghanaian community with a long history of international migration and receipt of remittances, to analyze the fluidity of gendered and intergenera…
Education: Pathway to Empowerment for Ghanaian Women
Education has long been seen as crucial to women's empowerment. Increasingly, however, scholars such as Stromquist have questioned our faith in the power of education to empower women. Drawing on a survey of 600 women of three age groups in three regions of Ghana and 36 intergenerational interviews, this article makes the case that the benefits of education for women is context specific, for example when decent work in the public sector is availa…
Career geographies in the Ghanaian fashion industry: From Brain Drain to Brain Gain and Brain Circulation
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 focussing on the career geography of internationally renowned Kofi Ansah, we show how ‘brain drain’ turned into ‘brain gain’ and consequently …
This place becomes a place’: Artists and placemaking on the margins
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 …
Identity construction amongst individuals with binational heritage in Africa
This paper draws on interviews with Africans of binational parental heritage to expand the literature on identity formation in two ways. First, it takes on the factors that shape primary identity formation more fully by extending it beyond the current focus on state constrictures on primary identity formation. We argue in this paper that in addition to state constricture, closeness of family ties is yet another factor that shapes the primary iden…
Fat women, performance and subversive commodification on Ghanaian reality television
Critics of weight loss reality shows often present the contestants as victims of commodification and exploitation without any form of agency. This paper seeks to contest this one-sided view of such shows. It draws on interviews with the producers and 19 contestants in the first season of a dance reality show in Ghana, the Di Asa show, as well as recorded video performances online. We argue that indeed the show was organised in a manner that commo…
Aid or Hinderance: Faith Gospel Theology and Ghana’s Incorporation into the Global Economy
Over the course of the last two decades, globalization has become one of the terms that has been used frequently in the social science literature.[1][1] The term refers primarily to global changes in a variety of areas, such as the spatial reorganization of the major manufacturing production zones
Aid or Hinderance: Faith Gospel Theology and Ghana’s Incorporation into the Global Economy
Over the course of the last two decades, globalization has become one of the terms that has been used frequently in the social science literature.[1][1] The term refers primarily to global changes in a variety of areas, such as the spatial reorganization of the major manufacturing production zones
(A)Sexualizing Ghanaian Youth: A Case Study of Virgin Clubs in Accra and Kumasi
In the early 1980s, HIV/AIDS, first diagnosed in gay men living on the West Coast of the United States, gripped the imagination of Western scientists regarding its origins, transmission and cure. However, the disease has over the years come to be associated with Africa since the world’s largest
Education: Pathway to Empowerment for Ghanaian Women
Education has long been seen as crucial to women's empowerment. Increasingly, however, scholars such as Stromquist have questioned our faith in the power of education to empower women. Drawing on a survey of 600 women of three age groups in three regions of Ghana and 36 intergenerational interviews, this article makes the case that the benefits of education for women is context specific, for example when decent work in the public sector is availa…
Religious Differences in Modernization of the Family: Family Demographics Trends in Ghana
This research examines trends in a broad set of reproductive and marital behaviors in Ghana, focusing on religious group differences. These comparisons provide evidence of how family trends are constrained by religious identity in a less developed country. Three waves of the Ghana Demographic and Health Surveys are used to track trends in the age at family formation, marital status, contraceptive use, and family size. Results indicate that women …
Keeping hope alive: An analysis of training opportunities for Ghanaian youth in the emerging oil and gas industry
Over the last decade-and-a-half, African youth have been the target of much scholarly attention. Faced with poor access to education and high levels of unemployment, many researchers have explored the ways in which they make sense of these dual realities. Relatively little attention has been paid to the ways in which the introduction of active labour market policies, specifically labour market targeted skills training, fundamentally reconfigures …
If times change, should we throw away the hearthstone? Exploring (Dis) continuities in autonomy and decision-making in the lives of Ghanaian women
This paper attempts to investigate continuities and discontinuities between traditional and modern representations of womanhood and female gender roles focusing primarily on family and work settings. Using approaches informed by Sociology, Cultural Psychology, and African Studies, the paper explores traditional views of womanhood encapsulated in (and also transmitted intergenerationally) through proverbs. This customary perspective is contrasted …
Researching empowerment: On methodological innovations, pitfalls and challenges
Researching women's empowerment: Reflections on methodology by southern feminists
Intersections of gender and water: Comparative approaches to everyday gendered negotiations of water access in underserved areas of Accra, Ghana and Cape Town, South Africa
A large and growing body of literature suggests that women and men often have differentiated relationships to water access, uses, knowledges, governance, and experiences. From a feminist political ecology perspective, these relationships can be mediated by gendered labour practices (within the household, at the community level, or within the workplace), socio-cultural expectations (e.g. related to notions of masculinity and femininity), as well a…
African Women and Globalisation
We would rather be leaders than parliamentarians: Women and political office in Ghana
Ghana, an emerging democracy, lags far behind in women’s representation in Parliament. This article, based on interviews with delegates, aspirants, candidates, Members of Parliament and potential female presidential candidates, suggests that women are dissuaded from standing for Parliament by the exorbitant ‘cost of politics’, humiliating ‘politics of insult’ and keen appreciation of Parliament’s limitations. Still, women may be eager to hold app…
African Women and Globalization
Fat women, performance and subversive commodification on Ghanaian reality television
Critics of weight loss reality shows often present the contestants as victims of commodification and exploitation without any form of agency. This paper seeks to contest this one-sided view of such shows. It draws on interviews with the producers and 19 contestants in the first season of a dance reality show in Ghana, the Di Asa show, as well as recorded video performances online. We argue that indeed the show was organised in a manner that commo…
A (Re)turn to Older Conversations in African Studies
An abstract is not available for this content. As you have access to this content, full HTML content is provided on this page. A PDF of this content is also available in through the ‘Save PDF’ action button
When being obese is a good thing: Voices of Ghanaian participants in a dance reality TV show
The discussion on (mis)representations of black women's bodies often focuses on their hyper-corporeality and hyper-sexualisation, with little attention paid to the women thus represented and their views. Reality shows are roundly criticised for objectifying women, being unAfrican and offering little to Africans. This paper contests this perspective by drawing on interviews with 19 contestants in a dance reality show in Ghana. We demonstrate that …
The President's Prerogative”? The Cabinet Appointment Process in Ghana and the Implications for Gender Parity
This article seeks to understand why Ghana, unlike several other African countries, has seen relatively few women appointed as ministers to the cabinet since the transition to democracy. We draw on Annesley, Beckwith, and Franceschet's 2019 bookCabinets,Ministers and Gender, which provides an in-depth analysis of the cabinet appointment process in seven democracies (but no African cases) and demonstrates that the cabinet appointment process is ge…
Identity construction amongst individuals with binational heritage in Africa
This paper draws on interviews with Africans of binational parental heritage to expand the literature on identity formation in two ways. First, it takes on the factors that shape primary identity formation more fully by extending it beyond the current focus on state constrictures on primary identity formation. We argue in this paper that in addition to state constricture, closeness of family ties is yet another factor that shapes the primary iden…
Gendered dynamics of the flow and use of migrant remittances in Northern Ghana
This paper draws on qualitative data to examine gendered dynamics of remitting and remittance use in households in northern Ghana. The findings indicate that remitting and remittance use are shaped by the interaction of social norms on household provisioning and agency of household members. While social norms on gender roles and conjugality tend to shape patterns of remitting, the household context and the agency of the individual household membe…
From Makola to Insta: Changing the Narrative of Ghanaian Women Traders
Much has been made of the potential of the digital economy to provide women with new or increased work opportunities. Our study brings nuance to this narrative by investigating the extent to which, within the socio-economic context of Ghana, different categories of women are able to leverage opportunities in the growing digital economy. Based on interviews with 40 female workers and eight experts in the Ghanaian digital space, our analysis sugges…
Promoting culture and creativity in Ghana: Bottom-up strategies for creative industries development
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, particular…
This place becomes a place’: Artists and placemaking on the margins
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 …
Career geographies in the Ghanaian fashion industry: From Brain Drain to Brain Gain and Brain Circulation
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 focussing on the career geography of internationally renowned Kofi Ansah, we show how ‘brain drain’ turned into ‘brain gain’ and consequently …
Rethinking Women's Political Power in West Africa
(Re)presenting Women's Political Participation on the Continent
Negotiating Gender Roles and Power Relations Through the Management of International Migrant Remittances in a Patriarchal Community in Ghana
This paper draws on a feminist poststructural perspective to examine gendered dimensions of sending and managing international migrant remittances in a patriarchal community in Ghana. It relies on primary data collected through in-depth interviews, focus group discussions, and observation in Nkoranza, a Ghanaian community with a long history of international migration and receipt of remittances, to analyze the fluidity of gendered and intergenera…
Sociology (18 works) · Political science (14 works) · Economics (13 works) · Gender Studies (11 works) · Geography (10 works) · Business (7 works) · Economic growth (7 works) · Law (7 works) · Migration and Labor Dynamics (7 works) · Psychology (7 works)