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Yvonne Chaka Chaka, Rocky Dawuni, Wiyaala and Amandzeba Set to Headline African Festival Concert in Accra

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Ghana’s capital is preparing to host one of the most significant Pan-African music events of the year as legendary South African icon Yvonne Chaka Chaka, Ghana’s Rocky Dawuni, Wiyaala, and highlife trailblazer Amandzeba Nat Brew headline the African Festival (TAF) Concert on December 30, 2025.

Scheduled for the Accra International Conference Centre (AICC), the concert will serve as the grand finale of the three-day African Festival, a flagship cultural experience anchoring Ghana’s globally celebrated Detty December season. Gates open at 7pm, with performances beginning at 8pm.

Billed by organisers as a “landmark Pan-African music night,” the concert is expected to attract thousands of music lovers, diaspora visitors and international tourists, reinforcing Accra’s growing reputation as Africa’s December cultural capital.

A multi-generational celebration of African sound

This year’s African Festival Concert brings together some of the continent’s most influential voices across generations and genres. Yvonne Chaka Chaka, widely known as the Princess of Africa, brings a catalogue that has defined African popular music for more than three decades. Rocky Dawuni, a four-time GRAMMY Awards nominee, is set to deliver his globally recognised Afro-roots sound rooted in peace, culture and social consciousness.

Ghana’s own Wiyaala, often described as the Lioness of Africa, is expected to electrify audiences with her powerful vocals and commanding stage presence, while Amandzeba Nat Brew, a living legend of Ghanaian highlife, anchors the night in heritage and tradition. Also on the bill are Bessa Simons of the iconic Osibisa band and The Adaha Band, whose contemporary live sound is expected to elevate the concert experience.

Together, the artistes promise a rare blend of rhythm, dance, history and cultural pride, celebrating African excellence on a global performance scale.

Part of a three-day Pan-African cultural journey

The concert crowns the African Festival, running from December 28 to 30, 2025, curated as a holistic cultural immersion designed to position Ghana as Africa’s leading December tourism destination.

The festival opens on December 28 with Don Quixote Africa, a bold African reinterpretation of the 1605 literary classic, reimagined within the Gonja Kingdom by playwright Latif Abubakar. On December 29, audiences will experience The Second Coming of Nkrumah: The Musical, a large-scale theatrical production envisioning the return of Ghana’s first President, Osagyefo Dr. Kwame Nkrumah.

Beyond stage performances, festival-goers will enjoy a wide range of cultural experiences, including The Den of History with fireside storytelling and film screenings, Sahara-inspired camel rides, iconic African installations, contemporary art and craft markets, an African food village, and dedicated family and children’s zones.

Strengthening Ghana’s creative economy

The African Festival Concert is presented by Globe Productions in partnership with the Ministry of Tourism, Culture and Creative Arts, the Ghana Tourism Authority (GTA), ECOWAS Bank (EBID), MoMo (Mobile Money), the Embassy of Spain, and Joy Entertainment. Organisers say the collaboration underscores the festival’s role in advancing Ghana’s creative economy, cultural diplomacy and international tourism footprint.

Tickets and access

Tickets are already on sale, with prices set at GH¢300 for standard access and GH¢500 for VIP. Purchases can be made via www.theafricanfestival.com or by dialing 4471092#. The ticket hotline is 0571 900 900. With strong diaspora interest and December travel demand, organisers expect tickets to sell out quickly.

As Accra gears up for another high-energy December, the African Festival Concert is shaping up as a defining moment of Detty December 2025 — a night where Africa’s rhythm, history and unity take centre stage.

Festivals & Events

Agile Accra Returns With Bold Conversations on AI and Africa’s Future

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As evening traffic hums through Accra and food vendors light charcoal grills along busy streets, another kind of energy is gathering in the city’s growing tech corridors.

On Thursday, June 4, Agile Accra returns with a theme that feels impossible to ignore: how artificial intelligence is reshaping the way Africans build, work, and collaborate.

But this is not the stiff conference room culture many people associate with technology events. Agile Accra has built its reputation on something more personal — candid conversations between practitioners navigating real pressures in real time.

Project managers, software developers, startup founders, designers, and curious students gather not simply to network, but to compare experiences in a rapidly changing digital economy.

A New Kind of Cultural Gathering

Ghana’s rise as a regional technology hub has transformed Accra into one of West Africa’s most interesting meeting points for innovation.

From co-working spaces in East Legon to startup communities around Osu and Cantonments, the city increasingly attracts entrepreneurs and creatives from across the continent.

Agile Accra reflects that shift. The event emerged to address a challenge many African tech professionals quietly faced for years: learning alone.

While global conversations about Agile systems and digital transformation often centered on Silicon Valley or Europe, African practitioners were building products, solving logistical problems, and scaling startups under very different conditions.

This year’s edition pushes the conversation further by examining artificial intelligence through an African lens — not as futuristic hype, but as a tool already influencing teamwork, product delivery, and business culture.

What Visitors Can Expect

Expect lively panel discussions, honest debates, networking sessions, and the unmistakable social rhythm that defines Accra’s event culture.

Conversations often spill beyond the stage into informal circles over drinks, local snacks, and music.

International visitors will experience a side of Ghana rarely captured in tourism brochures: a confident, youthful city shaping its own digital future.

For locals, the event offers something equally valuable — a chance to reconnect with a fast-growing community of thinkers and builders helping redefine African innovation.

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Reels & Social Media Highlights

The Vibes on the Timeline: A Tense Homecoming & A Jersey War

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If you opened your X app in Ghana this Thursday morning, May 21, you didn’t just check the news—you ran straight into a national debate. The algorithm is spicy, and the streets (online) are divided.

The iron fist in the velvet glove of today’s trends is The Evacuation. The first batch of 300 Ghanaians fleeing xenophobic tensions in South Africa touched down today.

While Foreign Minister Ablakwa was hailed for the “welcome home” financial packages, the comments section turned into a fierce class war. “Taxpayer money for those who left?” argued one side, pointing at Ghana’s struggling youth. “Safety is non-negotiable,” fired back the other. It is empathy versus economics, and the replies are a battleground.

But the tension broke for a moment thanks to Parliament. A clip of NPP MP Davis Opoku Ansah teasing Tema Mayor Ebi Bright—calling her “our wife” —exploded faster than any policy debate.

The revelation of her marriage to Rockson-Nelson Dafeamekpor has turned a PAC sitting into Ghana’s favorite reality show. It’s rare to see MPs trending for love and laughter instead of cuts and bruises.

And if you thought sports were a relief, think again. Puma is in the trenches. The sports brand dared to drop new Black Stars jerseys featuring primarily light-skinned and mixed-race models. Ghanaians are furious. “#StopUsingMixedRace” is burning up the timeline, with users asking, “Why is the white girl our identity?” . For a nation proud of its Black Star, this felt like an own goal.

Today, Ghana’s digital space proved to be a mirror of its anxiety. We are laughing (at the MPs), fighting (over the jerseys), and arguing about who deserves a safety net. It is loud, chaotic, and deeply, undeniably Ghanaian.

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Arts and GH Heritage

Poetra Asantewa and the Beautiful Contradictions of Accra

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By the time a trotro rattles from a quiet Accra suburb into the dense energy of Jamestown, an entire theatre of human experience has already unfolded.

Hawkers negotiate through traffic with impossible grace, passengers exchange sharp political commentary between stops, and handwritten slogans on taxis preach survival, faith, and hustle.

For spoken word artist Ama Asantewa Diaka, these fleeting encounters are not background noise; they are raw creative material.

The poet, widely known as Poetra Asantewa, describes Accra as “trying to kill me and save me at the same time” — a line that captures the uneasy rhythm of Ghana’s capital more accurately than any tourism brochure could.

It is a city where frustration and invention exist side by side. The same traffic congestion, unstable electricity, and overcrowded transport systems that exhaust residents also shape one of West Africa’s most vibrant contemporary art scenes.

That contradiction has become central to a generation of Accra’s artists, many of whom transform social pressure into performance, fashion, film, and music.

In neighbourhoods like Jamestown, murals climb colonial-era walls while poets perform beside fishermen’s canoes and experimental musicians rehearse through power cuts. Creativity here is rarely detached from daily struggle.

Poetra’s reflections, shared during conversations around the documentary Accra Power, reveal a city constantly remixing itself. Her inspiration does not emerge from isolation or silence, but from movement — from overheard conversations, crowded buses, and the emotional tension of urban life.

In Accra, art is not merely produced. It is survived, negotiated, and carried home through traffic at dusk.

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