Festivals & Events
Where Tradition Walks the Streets: The Story of Fetu Afahye in Cape Coast
As dawn breaks over Cape Coast, the streets begin to pulse with life. The sharp rhythm of fontomfrom drums echoes through the old fishing town while clouds of white powder drift into the morning air.
Women wrapped in bright kente cloth balance trays of food on their heads, children weave excitedly through the crowds, and chiefs adorned in gold ornaments emerge beneath richly decorated umbrellas.
It is Oguaa Fetu Afahye season — the most celebrated festival among the Fante people of Cape Coast and one of Ghana’s most visually striking cultural events.
Held on the first Saturday of September, the festival marks far more than celebration. Historically, Oguaa Fetu Afahye began as a purification rite performed after an outbreak of disease in the old town centuries ago.
Community elders instituted sacred rituals to cleanse the area, honour the gods, and seek protection for the coming year.
Over time, the event evolved into a grand thanksgiving festival symbolising renewal, unity, and cultural pride.
The days leading to the festival are filled with anticipation. Traditional bans are placed on noise-making and fishing in certain areas as part of spiritual observances.
Families return home from across Ghana and abroad, turning Cape Coast into a vibrant reunion ground.
On festival day, the town transforms into an open-air spectacle. Asafo companies march through the streets in elaborate displays of colour and military-style pageantry, carrying flags, firing muskets, and performing ancient war dances that connect modern generations to their ancestral past.
At the heart of the celebration are the chiefs and queen mothers, whose processions draw enormous crowds. Their appearance is both ceremonial and symbolic — a reminder of the enduring authority of traditional leadership within Fante society.
Today, Oguaa Fetu Afahye remains deeply important socially and spiritually. It strengthens family ties, preserves oral traditions, promotes tourism, and reaffirms the identity of the Fante people in a rapidly modernising world.
For visitors, the festival offers something unforgettable: a chance to witness Ghanaian heritage not inside a museum, but alive in the streets, beating with drums, dancing with history, and wrapped in dazzling cloth beneath the coastal sun.
Festivals & Events
Inside Ghana’s Climate Champion Competition: Innovation Meets Purpose
In Accra, conversations about climate change no longer belong only to scientists, policymakers, or international conferences held behind closed doors.
Increasingly, they are happening in classrooms, creative hubs, community spaces, and among young entrepreneurs determined to reshape Africa’s future.
That spirit comes alive on May 22 as the Climate Champion Competition Ghana gathers innovators, investors, and curious visitors for a day dedicated to bold environmental solutions and African ingenuity.
Organised by Startup Discovery School Africa, the event marks the culmination of the organisation’s Venture Builder programme under the theme, “Empowering Africa’s Climate Innovators For A Better Future.”
More than a competition, the gathering reflects a growing movement across West Africa where young entrepreneurs are responding to climate pressures with locally grounded ideas.
For Ghana, the conversation is especially urgent. From coastal erosion threatening fishing communities to unpredictable rainfall affecting farmers across the north, climate change is increasingly shaping daily life. Yet Ghana’s response has also become deeply creative.
Across the country, startups are developing clean energy solutions, sustainable agriculture systems, recycling innovations, and eco-friendly technologies rooted in local realities rather than imported models.
The Climate Champion Competition offers visitors a chance to witness this energy firsthand. The atmosphere is expected to feel less like a formal conference and more like a cultural exchange between technology, activism, and African optimism.
Founders will pitch ideas designed to transform communities while competing for grant opportunities and potential placement in SDA’s Venture Studio Programme.
Beyond the presentations, visitors can expect networking sessions filled with students, business leaders, environmental advocates, and members of Ghana’s growing startup ecosystem.
Conversations will likely spill beyond the venue into discussions about food security, urbanisation, renewable energy, and the future of African cities.
For international visitors, the event offers a refreshing perspective on Ghana beyond the usual tourist itinerary. It reveals a country not only rich in heritage and hospitality, but also actively shaping global conversations around sustainability and innovation.

Many travellers encounter Ghana through its music, markets, and historic landmarks; this event introduces another dimension, a generation of young Africans building practical responses to one of the world’s greatest challenges.
For locals, the competition presents an opportunity to reconnect with a sense of collective possibility. In a time when climate anxiety often dominates global headlines, seeing homegrown innovators present solutions rooted in African realities can feel both inspiring and empowering.
As Accra continues to position itself as one of West Africa’s rising innovation capitals, the Climate Champion Competition Ghana stands as more than a demo day.
It is a gathering of ideas, ambition, and cultural resilience — proof that some of the continent’s most important climate solutions may already be emerging from within its own communities.
Festivals & Events
Tamale Set for a Musical Takeover as Nigeria Meets Ghana Concert Returns
As sunset settles over Tamale on May 30, the streets leading to Aliu Mahama Sports Stadium are expected to pulse with music, motorbikes, cheering fans, and the unmistakable excitement that only a major concert can bring.
Vendors will line the roadside grilling kebabs and spicy suya, music will spill from car speakers across the city, and thousands of fans will gather for one of northern Ghana’s most talked-about entertainment events of the year, the Nigeria Meets Ghana Concert 2026.
Headlined by Ghana’s beloved northern music star Fancy Gadam and Nigerian Afrobeats icon Rudeboy, the concert is more than just a night of performances. It represents the deep musical and cultural exchange between two countries whose sounds continue to shape African pop culture globally.
A Celebration of Cross-Border African Music
For years, Ghana and Nigeria have shared a friendly rivalry in music, fashion, dance, and entertainment. Yet events like this reveal something larger than competition, a creative partnership that continues to influence audiences from Lagos to London.
The presence of Fancy Gadam carries special significance for northern Ghana. Often called “One Don” by fans, he has become one of the region’s biggest cultural exports, helping bring Dagbani music and northern Ghanaian identity into mainstream African entertainment spaces.
Pairing him with Rudeboy, one-half of the legendary P-Square duo, creates a lineup designed to unite audiences across generations and borders.

Supporting acts, including Mona 4Reall, JZyNo, Ricch Kid, Daatey, Sapashini, Ibee Melody, Young Pop, Oladis, and Recodz add even more flavour to the night, blending Afrobeats, dancehall, hip-hop, and northern Ghanaian sounds into one massive live experience.
More Than a Concert Experience
Visitors traveling to Tamale for the event will discover a city full of warmth and rhythm. Beyond the stadium, tourists can enjoy local dishes such as tuo zaafi, waakye, grilled guinea fowl, and spicy suya sold across the city after dark. Hotels and guesthouses near the stadium are already preparing for increased bookings as fans arrive from different parts of Ghana and neighboring countries.
The atmosphere surrounding the concert has already begun building through street activations and promotions across Tamale, turning the event into a citywide celebration rather than a single-night performance.
Why This Event Matters
For international visitors, the Nigeria Meets Ghana Concert offers a rare opportunity to experience West African music culture at its rawest and most energetic. For locals, it is a reminder that northern Ghana remains a major force in African entertainment.
By the time the final performance ends and the crowd sings along beneath the stadium lights, the night will likely feel less like a concert and more like a shared celebration of African sound, identity, and connection.
Festivals & Events
How the Ga People Turned Hunger Into a Celebration of Life
By mid-morning, the streets of Accra are already vibrating with drumbeats. Women wrapped in bright cloth move in groups through narrow lanes, children weave through the crowd laughing, and the scent of kpokpoi — the traditional corn meal prepared for the season — drifts through family compounds.
Elders stand at doorways pouring libation, while the sharp rhythm of traditional Ga drumming echoes from one neighborhood to the next.
This is Homowo, the most important annual festival among the Ga people of Ghana’s coast. Celebrated across the Greater Accra Region in towns such as Prampram, the festival arrives in August and September, the season when fishing waters and farms traditionally yield their greatest abundance. Its name translates simply but powerfully: “mocking hunger.”
Remembering Hardship, Celebrating Survival
Homowo traces its origins to a difficult period in Ga history when famine and hardship threatened entire communities.
Oral tradition says the people endured severe hunger before rains finally returned and crops flourished again. The festival became a yearly reminder that suffering does not last forever and that survival itself deserves celebration.
At the centre of the festivities is food. Families prepare kpokpoi, often served with palm nut soup, and share meals among neighbors and visitors. Traditional priests sprinkle the food throughout homes and streets as blessings for peace, fertility, and prosperity.
Music and dance carry the spirit of the celebration. Processions move through town accompanied by energetic drumming, singing, and the firing of muskets.
Chiefs appear in richly embroidered cloth, surrounded by elders and cultural groups performing dances passed down through generations. Every corner feels alive with movement and memory.
More Than a Festival
Today, Homowo remains deeply important socially and spiritually. For Ga communities, it strengthens family ties, honours ancestors, and reconnects younger generations with their heritage at a time when modern city life moves quickly. For visitors, the festival offers something rare — not a staged performance, but a living tradition still woven into everyday life.
As evening falls and the drums continue long into the night, Homowo becomes more than a celebration of harvest. It becomes a reminder of resilience, gratitude, and the enduring power of community.
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