Arts and GH Heritage
Fugu Goes to Milan: Ghana and Italy Eye Creative Economy Boom to Export Culture Beyond the Continent
When Ghanaian designer Victor Reginald Bob Abbey-Hart stepped onto the Milan Fashion Week runway last January, he carried more than a collection of denim garments.
He carried a vision: that the voluminous, hand-woven smock known as fugu or batakari — a garment once worn by warriors and kings in northern Ghana — could find a new life on the global stage.
His show, which featured jackets with raglan sleeves, coat-capes, and cargo-pocketed trousers in “dirty-washed” denim, was inspired by the deconstructed forms of traditional Ghanaian attire. For Abbey-Hart, a graduate of Milan’s Istituto Europeo di Design (IED) who previously worked for Calvin Klein, the collection was deeply personal. “Coming to Italy really gave me a big door of opportunity to understand what the world really asks for, as a designer,” he told the Associated Press.
Abbey-Hart’s debut was supported by the Afro Fashion Association, a non-profit founded by Michelle Francine Ngonmo that has worked with over 3,000 creatives of color over the past decade . But his success is not an isolated story. It is emerging as a cornerstone of a broader strategic push by Ghana and Italy to transform cultural heritage into economic power — taking garments like the fugu from ceremonial occasions in Accra to the fashion capitals of Europe and beyond.
A Diplomatic and Economic Imperative
The timing is deliberate. In February 2026, Ghana’s newly appointed Ambassador to Italy, Mona-Helen Kabuki Quartey, presented her credentials to President Sergio Mattarella at the Quirinale.
The ceremony marked not just a diplomatic formality, but a “renewed phase in the consolidation of bilateral relations,” with culture and tourism featuring prominently in discussions.
Ambassador Quartey’s mission arrives amid growing recognition in Accra that the creative economy — fashion, textiles, arts, and design — represents a significant untapped export sector. Italy, home to some of the world’s most powerful fashion houses and a global leader in luxury goods, is the ideal partner.
The Italian government has signaled its interest in Ghana as a “growing market and a natural gateway to the wider West African region”.
The diplomatic push comes as Ghanaian creatives are making visible inroads into the Italian cultural scene. In May, acclaimed Ghanaian painter Amoako Boafo will open his first solo exhibition in Italy at Venice’s Museo di Palazzo Grimani, coinciding with the 61st Venice Biennale. The show, organized by Gagosian Gallery, will see Boafo engage with Renaissance portraiture traditions — a powerful example of cultural exchange flowing in both directions.
From Ceremony to Commerce
The fugu’s journey from northern Ghana to Milanese runways reflects a deeper ambition. For too long, observers argue, Ghana’s heritage textiles have been reserved for Independence Day celebrations, festivals, and ceremonial photographs — “reduced to a ceremony when it could be an industry,” as Ing. Prof. Douglas Boateng recently wrote.
President John Dramani Mahama has emerged as an unlikely champion of this cause. Speaking after a state visit to Zambia in February, Mahama noted that his deliberate choice to wear the fugu on international stages had sparked a surge in global interest.
“By the power of social media, I have given them branding and marketing they could never have dreamed of,” he said. “I’m sure searches for fugu, batakari, and smock have gone very high”.
Mahama revealed that all his clothing is made in Ghana by Ghanaian designers, and he has set his sights on taking the smock to the United Nations as “a symbol of African identity, culture, and self-confidence”.
The Industrial Challenge
Yet transforming cultural visibility into sustainable industry requires more than diplomatic gestures and runway moments.
The global winter wear market is valued at over $300 billion annually, with premium outerwear brands like Canada Goose and Moncler built on climate-driven demand in North America, Europe, and East Asia. The African diaspora, estimated at more than 170 million people living in cold-weather countries, represents a ready market seeking authentic cultural connection.
The challenge is technical as well as commercial. Traditional fugu, woven from thick cotton strips, is designed for the harmattan winds of northern Ghana — not Helsinki winters or Chicago blizzards. Industrial adaptation will require innovation: thermal linings, wool-infused blends, water-resistant treatments, and structured designs that preserve the garment’s distinctive striped aesthetic while making it functional for global consumers.
Proponents argue that the economic potential justifies the investment. A modest export target of 500,000 premium winter fugu coats annually, at an average retail price of US$250, would generate US$125 million in revenue. Add scarves, gloves, corporate attire, and school uniforms, and the ecosystem multiplies, creating thousands of jobs across farming, weaving, tailoring, and logistics — particularly in northern Ghana, where youth unemployment remains high.
A Growing Cultural Ecosystem
The Italy-Ghana cultural partnership extends well beyond fashion. In January, Ghanaian artists and cultural practitioners led an international project in Lecce, Italy, dedicated to “decolonising heritage and liberating the imagination.” Organized by Ramdom, Museo Castromediano, and Ghana’s Artlife Matters, the programme featured workshops, exhibitions, and a public parade exploring how tangible and intangible heritage can become tools for reclaiming narratives shaped by colonial structures.
Artist Kwame Akoto-Bamfo created a six-foot concrete totem representing memory and ancestry, while the “Echoes of Home” workshop brought together foreign residents in Lecce for a participatory healing process. Luigi Di Luca, Director of Museo Castromediano, stressed the museum’s commitment to redefining its role within the community and expanding international collaboration.
These initiatives build on earlier collaborations. In 2024, Ghanaian playwright Latif Abubakar partnered with the Italian Embassy to stage “The Licence,” an Afrocentric adaptation of a work by Italian Nobel laureate Luigi Pirandello. Then-Ambassador Daniela d’Orlandi expressed hope that the partnership would “set an example for other foreign countries to follow” .
The Road Ahead
As Ghana hosts a week-long celebration of its 69th Independence Day in Rome this March, complete with trade fairs showcasing textiles, music, and cuisine, the cultural diplomacy offensive is in full swing . But the ultimate measure of success will be commercial.
For designers like Victor Hart, the path forward is clear despite persistent challenges.
“Sometimes, before you even get to the room for the interview, you’ve been disqualified already,” he said of the obstacles facing Black creatives in Italy. “Take away the color, take away what I represent, just look at the job”.
His message resonates beyond fashion. As Ghana and Italy deepen their cultural partnership, the goal is not merely to export garments but to export a vision: that heritage, when industrialized with intention, can compete on the global stage. The fugu has survived the harmattan for centuries.
Now, it is being engineered for winter.
A constellation is never just about the stars. It is about the lines we imagine between them.
That idea sits quietly at the heart of Nsoromma, a group exhibition at The Mix Art Gallery bringing together five participants from the Rising Star 2026 cohort: Albert Nii Nortey Dowuona, Baaba Sarpong, Christabel Dzandu, Paul Leslie Ahadji and Emmanuel Tetteh.
Named after the Akan word for “children of the stars,” Nsoromma takes celestial imagery beyond decoration.
Here, the night sky becomes a way of asking an older Ghanaian question: where do we come from, and what parts of that inheritance continue to shape who we become?
The exhibition’s significance lies partly in how these emerging artists approach cultural memory. Tradition does not appear as a sealed archive or an untouched inheritance.
It is something negotiated—carried through families, altered by migration, questioned through personal experience and reinterpreted by each generation.
Across painting, installation and mixed media, the artists explore ritual, spirituality, belonging and self-discovery.
Their works occupy the space between what is inherited and what is invented, reflecting a generation increasingly comfortable moving between Ghanaian cultural references and contemporary artistic languages.
That makes the constellation metaphor especially fitting. A single star can be striking, but its meaning changes when placed among others.
So it is with these five artistic voices: distinct in approach, yet connected by questions of identity and place.
Rather than offering definitive answers, Nsoromma asks visitors to “find their own cosmologies”—to look, interpret and perhaps recognise something of themselves in the spaces between the stars.
Presented as part of Accra Art Week, the exhibition runs until September 2, 2026.
Before privacy became a prized feature of modern housing, Ghanaian compounds offered something harder to design: a built-in community.
You did not need a WhatsApp group to know what was happening in a Ghanaian compound. You simply opened your door.
Someone was pounding fufu. Children were chasing a football between rooms. An auntie was calling a neighbour’s child by name. From somewhere above, a radio played highlife while a grandmother sat outside, watching the afternoon unfold.
The compound house was more than a place to live. It was an informal social network long before the phrase existed.
Where Everyone Looked Out for Everyone
Children often grew up surrounded not only by parents and siblings but by cousins, grandparents, tenants and neighbours who could all exercise a little authority. If you climbed a mango tree too high, an older person passing by could order you down—and that instruction carried weight. By the time you reached home, your parents probably already knew.
There was irritation, certainly. Privacy was limited, and family disagreements could become everyone’s business.
Yet the same closeness created a powerful safety net. A child always had another adult to turn to. Food could be shared. News travelled quickly. Births, funerals, festivals and everyday celebrations became collective experiences.
Modern housing has changed that rhythm. Gated communities, apartments and detached homes offer security, privacy and independence, but they can also create physical distance between households. Even families living under one roof may spend much of their day communicating through phones rather than across a shared courtyard.
What We Lost Along the Way
The compound house was never perfect, but it embodied an important Ghanaian idea: community was something you lived, not something you scheduled.
Perhaps the challenge today is not to recreate the old compound house exactly, but to recover its spirit—neighbours who know one another, children who can play together, and communities where someone notices when you have not been seen.
That may be a form of heritage worth preserving.
Arts and GH Heritage
When Football Becomes Heritage: Shutabug’s Bold Reimagining of African Identity
A football jersey can tell you which country a player represents. In the hands of Nigerian artist Mayowa “Shutabug” Alabi, it can tell you something much bigger: where that country comes from.
His striking digital artworks transform African football nations into regal cultural figures, replacing the familiar language of sports illustration with one shaped by fashion, heritage and visual storytelling.
The result is football imagery that feels as comfortable on a gallery wall as it does on a stadium poster.
When Sport Carries Memory
Shutabug’s figures are deliberately stylised. Elongated bodies, dramatic facial structures, deep ebony skin and oversized traditional headwear give his subjects an almost ceremonial presence.
Football shirts become starting points rather than finished designs, merging with indigenous textiles, patterns and national symbols.
Ghana’s Black Star, for instance, becomes part of a contemporary football look framed by an elegant headwrap. Elsewhere, Cameroon’s cultural identity is amplified through dramatic headwear, while DR Congo’s diagonal sash and Senegal’s understated traditional styling become visual markers of national character.
The approach is significant because African football has long been more than competition. National teams can become vessels for pride, history and belonging, particularly when players step onto an international stage carrying colours and symbols recognised far beyond their borders.
A New Archive of African Football
Shutabug’s practice places that emotional connection into a contemporary visual language.
His textured digital surfaces retain an intentionally imperfect quality, giving technologically produced images the warmth of something handmade.
Since his breakthrough in 2017, when he won the European Union/UN Women “Picture It” competition, his multidisciplinary career has expanded across digital painting, photography, animation and graphic design.
His football works now offer another possibility: an African sporting archive built not only from match results and trophies, but from clothing, symbols, faces and cultural memory.
In Shutabug’s world, the pitch becomes a canvas—and African identity gets to take centre stage.
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