Arts and GH Heritage
Jenga’s Ghanaian Roots and the Raging Debate Over Cultural Ownership Amid its Global Success
Jenga, one of the world’s most recognizable tabletop games, is once again at the centre of debate as renewed attention focuses on its Ghanaian origins, questions of cultural appropriation, and who truly benefits from its global commercial success.
The popular block-stacking game was developed in the late 1970s by British game designer Leslie Scott, who adapted a traditional wooden block game she played with her family while growing up in Ghana.
Using simple, handcrafted wooden blocks, the original game was a household pastime long before it was commercialized and introduced to the international market.
Scott later named the game “Jenga,” derived from the Swahili word kujenga, meaning “to build.” Although the name is East African rather than Ghanaian (West Africa), Scott has said she believed it would grow into its own meaning as the game gained popularity. Jenga went on to become a global phenomenon, selling tens of millions of sets worldwide and becoming a staple of family gatherings, social events, and competitive play.
However, critics have long argued that while Jenga’s success is rooted in a Ghanaian cultural experience, Ghana itself has seen little to no proportional financial or institutional benefit from the game’s worldwide popularity.
This has fueled broader conversations about cultural ownership, intellectual property, and the extraction of cultural ideas from Africa without meaningful returns to their places of origin. The sentiment is often summarized by critics as “everyone cashed out but Ghana.”
Beyond its origins, Jenga has also attracted controversy over gameplay rules and interpretation. One of the most debated issues is the so-called “brace” move, a technique used by some players to test the looseness of blocks. In certain informal or experimental versions, this has even involved minimal use of glue or stabilising techniques, prompting arguments over whether such moves represent strategic skill or outright cheating.
There is also ongoing debate over whether Jenga is fundamentally a game of skill or luck. While some players see it as largely dependent on chance and the physical state of the blocks, others argue it demands careful observation, steady hands, and strategic thinking. Some enthusiasts and commentators have gone further, likening the game to metaphors for life, risk-taking, or even warfare, where small decisions can destabilise an entire system.
Attempts to digitise Jenga in video game form have highlighted another layer of discussion. Early digital versions struggled to replicate the complex physics and tactile satisfaction of the physical blocks, reinforcing the view that Jenga’s enduring appeal lies in its physicality rather than its rules alone.
As conversations about cultural appropriation and fair benefit-sharing gain momentum globally, Jenga’s story continues to resonate, particularly in Ghana, where the game’s origins are increasingly being reclaimed in public discourse.
For many observers, the Jenga debate is not just about a game, but about recognition, equity, and the value of cultural contributions from the Global South in the global marketplace.
Every memorable art gallery begins with someone who believes a painting deserves more than a wall—it deserves an audience.
In Accra, that belief has shaped Berj Art Gallery into one of Ghana’s enduring champions of West African art.
Founded in 1996 by collector Joyce Quarshie, Berj emerged at a time when many Ghanaian artists were still searching for spaces that could connect their work with wider audiences.
More than three decades later, Quarshie’s commitment has grown into a gallery that celebrates both established masters and emerging voices under one roof.
A Living Story of West African Art
Walking through Berj feels less like entering a showroom and more like stepping into a conversation across generations.
Bold paintings share space with finely carved wooden sculptures, bronze works catch the light from different angles, and photographs add contemporary perspectives to centuries-old artistic traditions.
The gallery’s strength lies in that balance. Acclaimed painters stand alongside rising talents, creating a rare opportunity for visitors to see Ghana’s artistic evolution unfolding in real time.
It is a reminder that culture is not frozen in history; it continues to grow with every new brushstroke and every fresh creative voice.
More Than a Gallery
For international visitors exploring Accra, Berj offers something deeper than a sightseeing stop. It opens a window into Ghana’s creative identity, where craftsmanship, storytelling and heritage intersect.
As the gallery continues hosting exhibitions that bring together local and international artistic influences, it reinforces a simple but powerful truth: preserving culture is not only about protecting the past.
It is about creating spaces where the next generation of artists can imagine—and exhibit—the future.
A family photograph resting on a shelf may look like decoration. A half-finished piece of woven cloth may seem incomplete. A living room may simply be a place to sit.
At Nubuke Foundation in Accra, however, these familiar things are being asked to tell deeper stories.
Weight of the Ordinary, a group exhibition featuring Josiah Tsibu Manu, Priscilla Agbeti, Blanche Boni-Mississo, King David Osabutey (Kakalicka) and Sena Burgundy Appau, turns its attention to the overlooked details of daily life—and finds history hiding there.
Manu’s domestic interiors are particularly evocative. Furniture, photographs and household details become unofficial archives, recalling how Ghanaian homes often carry memories that never enter formal histories.
In Agbeti’s unfinished woven works, meanwhile, labour refuses to disappear behind polished craftsmanship.
The incomplete becomes deliberate, leaving viewers to consider the economic and social histories carried by textiles.
Elsewhere, Boni-Mississo examines how spaces determine who can move freely and who is kept at the margins. Kakalicka draws on Akan cosmology through his Ɔhɔhoɔ, or stranger, connecting questions of displacement and belonging with indigenous ideas.
Appau’s monumental blue figures turn inward, contemplating the uncertainty and possibility of becoming.
Together, the artists suggest that the everyday is not neutral. It is where memory is stored, identities are formed and social boundaries are experienced.
For audiences in Ghana and abroad, the exhibition offers an invitation to look again at what familiarity can conceal. Sometimes, the objects closest to us have the most to say.
Sometimes history survives not in monuments, but in memory. In Ghana, the beat of the atumpan once carried messages across kingdoms.
In Jamaica’s mist-covered Blue Mountains, that same language of rhythm became a weapon of survival.
Queen Nanny’s story begins in oral tradition, which holds that she was born among the Akan people before being captured during the transatlantic slave trade and forced to Jamaica.
What followed transformed her into one of the Caribbean’s most celebrated freedom fighters.
When the drum became a battlefield language
Leading the Windward Maroons, Nanny turned the rugged mountains into a fortress. British troops struggled against hidden trails, surprise attacks and a commander who understood that knowledge of the landscape could outweigh military strength.
Just as remarkable was her reported use of the atumpan, the Akan talking drum. What colonial forces dismissed as eerie sounds echoing through the hills became a coded communication system that helped coordinate resistance.
Years of failed campaigns eventually forced Britain to negotiate. The 1739 peace agreement with the Maroons remains one of the most striking acknowledgements that enslaved Africans had built a resistance too formidable to erase.
A bridge between Ghana and Jamaica
Today, Queen Nanny is Jamaica’s only female National Hero, and her portrait appears on the Jamaican $500 banknote.
Her legacy also reaches back across the Atlantic, reminding Ghanaians that culture can outlive displacement.
The rhythms that once echoed through Akan communities did not disappear at the coast.
They crossed an ocean, climbed a mountain, and became part of one of history’s most remarkable stories of resistance.
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