Women Activists From Ghana

"Vitamin C quickly breaks down in the heat and evaporates easily out of the fruit. What is orange without Vitamin C."

"Guys, don't let the internet rush you oooooo!!!!! Life is not a competition!!! Life is working for you in your own time zone. You're not too late or too early."

"There is this sudden craze for superficiality. This has resulted in women undergoing surgeries to remove fat from the tummy. Since when did we get here? It is something I can never do because let's just say I am an outmoded woman. I am just focused on my job. I am a very grounded and simple personality."

"None can be compared to me; whether the old or the new generation. I am second to none. My fans on various social media platforms are solidly behind me."

"When I started taking this journey, there was something that was my motivation and my motivation was poverty. I was a broke women, I was poor. There were days when I didn't know where the next meal was going to come from. I used to live with friends."

"My story is a typical grass to grace and from poverty to financial independence or success. Typically, mine is just from zero to hero, a nobody to somebody."

"There are two types of men; the one who can spoil you financially now and the one who can do that in the future. Don't miss out on your soulmate cos you're blinded by material things!"

"Instead of 'Africanizing' Western stories, I'm interested in reclaiming African history rendering them into what is happening in the present day."

"My definition of success isn’t about the accolades and the awards, but being authentic and consistent in my work and opening audiences up to seeing other perspectives in film."

"Through my artwork and films, I hope to open audiences up to a new dialogue between the continents of Africa and America; one that incorporates more than just stereotypes, but includes both conventionalized and un-conventionalized discourses of race in its service. By creating complex contradictions, I hope that new meaning can emerge and be deposited into the universal consciousness. If I can do this by creating an experience for the audience that enables them to experience what it is like to find oneself, while being foreign in a community, then perhaps I can help that new meaning come to light."

"Being a Black woman who was born and raised in America to African parents is, naturally, where I draw my inspiration from as an artist and filmmaker."

"I would like to insert myself in the tradition of African storytelling through cinematic language."

"I want to encourage everyone to never give up on their dreams. If I can do it, anyone can do it. Just believe in yourself and keep your focus"

"When female media practitioners – who better understand the problems of women – take interest in highlighting the challenges of women in society, it would help in addressing same."

"Suddenly in 1951 I started…creative writing seriously."

"Thank you for meeting with me today so that we can discuss the development of literary broadcasting in Ghana and your experiences of it. I am glad that you asked for us to meet here, in the home of my mother Efua Sutherland, as it was home, of course, not only for me but also for you. So we should be able to look at the trajectory of our lives since we were young around this place and how literature has shaped our lives in so many different ways. Welcome."

"Into us a child is born."

"You will have a way which you would need to design the thing, you get to a climax and you need to stay up there and let people go home with that feeling of patriotism and so on."

"records of the military standard have not been completely told in light of the fact that individuals were occupied with working without archiving."

"I suddenly saw …[w]e needed a programme to develop playwriting and…that led to… the Ghana Experimental Theatre."

"I want to be able to look up as I walk and see dignity in the place of my birth. All of us should want that."

"I shared Nkrumah’s belief in and vision for the integration of different ethnic groups on the continent, I stated in my play Foriwa (1967) through the character Labaran, “Who is a stranger anywhere in these times in whose veins the blood of this land flows?”"

"Everyone’s talent should be exercised for the good of the whole of society, because [w]hat we cannot buy is the spirit of originality and endeavour which makes a people dynamic and creative."

"The Drama Studio came as a sudden answer to a problem I had been having, starting the theatre programme."

"Traditional media in Ghana has a reputation for being politicized, particularly during elections. That’s why social media initiatives like Ghana Decides are important. They offer a good balance for Ghanaians at home and abroad: non-partisan, factual, and issue based information, with none of the ‘politricks’."

"If I might add, as this is a challenge for all journals, we also had our fair share of slow or even totally non responsive reviewers. Now that you ask us to look back, I remember a couple of senior scholars who promised, and I mean promised, us a review, and then went totally cold on us. I find this particularly disheartening because, one, everyone knows GS work is a real labor of love. But more importantly, I want to believe that most of us, especially our more senior colleagues, are invested in nurturing the next generation and not simply having their own names up in gold. For what does it profit a man (and in this case by "man" I do mean a couple of biological and social males) if he is considered to be a superstar but does not invest in his intellectual DNA?"

"Stephan and I spent a lot of time working together online; we also held a few e-conversations as well as in-person meetings when he was in Ghana. We set very rigid timetables for ourselves, so that when we did lose momentum or got swallowed up by our day jobs, we didn't veer too far off our self-imposed schedules. We assigned ourselves concrete tasks to be completed in between our meetings—who would read what, who would follow up on what with whom, and so forth. I think one of the things that worked best for us was a mutual respect of each other's schedules, as well as ideas."

"I urge the Ministry of Education to make history a compulsory subject in schools. That would enable young people to know their true identity as Ghanaians and Africans, and empower them to become responsible citizens."

"I urge parents, teachers, and religious leaders to read about the country’s history and teach their children."

"History should be taught from the kindergarten level, adding that the current practice in some tertiary institutions where students undertook history as a course for one semester “is not enough."

"We should let the children learn about our history so that when someone speaks an untruth about the country, they can defend with the facts. History should be a compulsory subject for all. If you do not know your history, you will not know your identity and the future."

"For what does it profit a man (and in this case by "man" I do mean a couple of biological and social males) if he is considered to be a superstar but does not invest in his intellectual DNA?"

"Step to the side or to the back. Allow the people for whom this is life and death to take the lead. We all live on this planet, need each other’s support."

"All of us have capacity that can be built. We teach because we are building capacity we’re not the 'super knowers' but we do have certain experience, e.g how to do a survey or write a paper for publication and present it within 15 minutes. But the way in which capacity building is seen is very technocratic and Eurocentric in the sense that people all over the world have some of these 'hard skills', but they do them differently we may write differently, for example, but the standard for a journal article, supposedly international, is really Eurocentric."

"If you’re not careful, a movement can lose its edge. Other people can appropriate it for their own careers, It becomes devalued."

"The African Studies Association of Africa: We’re still young – formed in 2013. The thinking behind this was that when African Studies became a discipline in Europe and North America, it wasn’t about centring African people’s lives; it wasn’t about how can we enable Africans to understand each other better. The agenda was how do we understand the natives so that we can better colonize them – to put it crudely, but realistically! The African Studies associations in UK, US, came out of that mould. They’ve changed a lot, but still don’t centre Africans enough – most of their members are not Africans, and the research is often about the researchers’ own interests."

"Just like with feminism, I would say step to the side or to the back. Allow the people for whom this is life and death to take the lead. We all live on this planet, need each other’s support. I’ve been supported throughout my life and career by people of different races, classes, genders. I would be lying if I said no, we can do this alone. We need support, but don’t want the white man to be the centre of the stage. Support us financially, give credit where credit is due – there’s power that comes with whiteness, and you have to acknowledge that. Say ‘you don’t need to invite me, I know this other person who would make an excellent lecturer."

"But it doesn’t always work that way. You have researchers on the British side who are invested, sensitive, humble enough to recognize the knowledge that is in Ghana. But it means that if the person applying for the funds has to be from the UK, or Germany you have to have that respectful relationship, or the Northern partner ends up dictating the process."

"And this has a financial cost as well. You’re not only not recognized, but the ‘northern researcher’ then has their name on the report, puts it on their CV when they’re applying for the next research grant. As we say in Ghana, you use fish to catch fish. And the person who was the ‘research assistant’ is nowhere, they can’t claim credit, they are losing money now and in the future."

"But there’s also the ‘soft skills’, which we hardly ever talk about. Capacity building is always two way. Someone may come from LSE to do a workshop at the University of Ghana to build the capacity of young PhD scholars on how to write for a high impact journal, but that same LSE scholar might go into a small community with a Ghanaian scholar and learn how better to sit with them and how you speak to the chief, how you need to drink the water, even if you think ‘wow, that is going to kill me’! How to do those things so that the community will embrace you – that is mega, but it doesn’t appear anywhere."

"Two people could be doing research on slavery, but what questions are they asking? Somebody could map out where people go, how many people moved, do a nice quantitative map, maybe say how many people in North America are related to people in Nigeria, but it wouldn’t get you to the heart of what people are feeling today, to the injustice, to the issue of reparations. If we’re crunching numbers, how about we try and calculate the cost, including the psychological cost? Who would fund that if it was linked to reparations? I suspect it wouldn’t be seen as serious science."

"This may be pie in the sky, but we should be looking for more money locally. There’s a lot of money in Africa – I’ll give one example: when the Centre for Gender Studies and Advocacy at the University of Ghana was putting together a sexual harassment policy in the early 2000s and needed to do some research, one of the women on our steering committee said ‘I’ll speak to my Church’. She comes back with some money for us – it’s an example we don’t normally think about. Many of the big churches are extremely wealthy, are very good at raising money. We haven’t approached them enough, with a proposal they would be comfortable with."

"My late husband and I loved God’s word and after his demise, the Bible remains my most important source of comfort and encouragement; by the word of God, you can overcome any challenge that you face in life and it will help you take responsibility of your own lives."

"Investing in girl-child education has immediate and long term benefits. It does not only build the assertiveness of the girls, it also builds self-confidence and empowers them to properly position themselves to be active participants in nation building,"—— "As an educationist, my joy knows no bounds when I see girls excel and as First Ladies and agenda shapers of our respective countries, we must resolve to continue to give more meaning to girl-child education and not only pay lip service to it."