Forward Ever, Backward Never?

This evening I had the great pleasure of joining a panel of fantastic and thoughtful folks discussing the power of history. We were brought together by the great folks at the OER Project who create resources to support K-12 teachers and think about what you can do with history/social studies education. 6 years ago Trevor Getz (who has led the creation of these materials as a content editor and…

This evening, thanks to a very generous invitation from Brian Crim, I had the great honor of delivering the Ida Wise East lecture at the University of Lynchburg. I had a catch in my throat several times as I looked out on an amazing audience of faculty, students, community members, and staff at an institution where the humanities has been gutted after several exhausting weeks where we’ve faced…

If you haven’t seen it already, Making an African City – a new book I published with Indiana University Press – is now out and is available for sale on the IUPress website, Amazon, and other typical booksellers. Most exciting, however, is that it is also available open access on the IUPress website as part of a new initiative supported by the trustees of Indiana University and you can access it…

I have long used the social media handle @detroittoaccra as a gesture to the two spaces that had such an influence on my life and work and where I could often be found. While I moved to Michigan last year and am no longer living in Detroit, it still plays a large role in my life. Notably, I’m in the city this summer beginning a new project with long-time research partner Steve Marr of Malmö…

Last year I was honored to serve as the guest speaker at New Student Convocation. Leading up to that and more over the last year, I thought a lot about what to tell new students about why they were here. Here's what I said. What would you add?

Last year, I was honored to be asked to serve as the guest speaker at New Student Convocation (thank you to Laurie Clabo for the invitation!). Coming back together after a long time apart, in the midst of of ongoing public and political attacks on higher education (and education more broadly), I thought long and hard about why I’m so invested in this work. I believe in the transformative power of…

Losing a Legend: Reflecting back on an interview with highlife musician Nana Ampadu

This interview with Nana Ampadu, who died last week, was conducted in his home in La Paz Accra on June 6, 2007 as part of dissertation research on the history and culture of driving and the public culture of religion in Ghana. We began by discussing his popular song “Driver Adwuma” (Driver’s Work, or, as it’s popularly known, “Drivers”). Nana Ampadu LaPaz, Accra 6-21-07 A:  Yeah, we were…

I’ve stepped back from this blog in recent years as I started work on a new project. Making an African Cityis about the history of spatial politics in 20th century Accra. It takes seriously indigenous systems of knowing and inhabiting space to look anew at colonial-era debates about city life. This work required asking critical questions about the way that we think about and govern the city…

“Making an African City” – Instagram Preview

It might be a minute before I get to writing about this book in any detail because, well…I’m writing the book. But last weekend I did a takeover of @thearchitectsproject Instagram page, where I talked about the history of spatial colonization and its legacies in 20th century Accra. I wrote way more than you normally find in most Instagram captions. If you want a preview of the book, check it out!

This blog has been inactive for a while, in part because I was writing in other public venues, and in part because I was in a little lull as I shifted from my old project to a new one. As that’s now up and going, however, I’m getting back to it. I did not get to go to Ghana this summer, and I’m very disappointed that our study abroad program was cancelled this year. But I have spent the summer…

Several years ago, the Wayne State University History Department hosted Jason Steinhauer (then working at the Kluge Center), who talked to us about a new field called “History Communication“, which he was developing with colleagues at Purdue, UMass Amherst, the National Council on Public History, the National History Center, and elsewhere.  While I’m still unconvinced that we will see a…

I couldn't stop thinking about "The Crown" this evening...

Today, metro Detroit was blanketed with a pretty thick layer of snow, so I wrote a few overdue emails and then hunkered down in the basement with pillows, blankets, and pizza to binge-watch the newest season The Crown.  I knew from Ghanaian friends on Facebook that Episode 8 featured a storyline with Ghana’s first president, Kwame Nkrumah, so I worked my way through the episodes looking forward…

I’m teaching the second half of the African history survey this semester, which technically begins in 1800, but which I normally begin with a review of the age of exploration – a sort of “how did we get here” lesson to connect African History and the history of colonialism with what are probably more familiar narratives about European exploration to find new routes to the gold and spices of the East.  Since I missed that day in class, I told students that I would see the sights themselves in Lisbon and report back.  In many ways, this is where it started in the late 15th century – where Vasco da Gama set sail on his trip around the Cape of Good Hope and into the Indian Ocean, where Columbus visited on his way to the Americas, where Prince Henry the Navigator funded the development of new sailing technologies and seemingly far-fetched expeditions.  The narratives we get of those histories are romantic.  Only more recently have people raised questions about the appropriateness of celebrating Columbus Day.  Most people could repeat to you that Columbus’s voyage was extraordinary because he traveled West in defiance of conventional wisdom of the time that said that the world was flat.  They could not really tell you much about what happened once he arrived or what and who he found when he got there.  They could tell you that he was looking for gold and spices.  They probably couldn’t tell you anything about the threat posed by the encroaching Islamic Empire and the wealth it obtained through control over the Silk Road and Trans-Saharan trading routes.  I was curious about whether anything was different in Portugal.

On the very first day that I arrived, I was already primed by my Airbnb host, who said that the old quarter of Belem was a sort of shrine to the explorers, built from the profits of colonialism without of a lot of thought about its negative consequences.  Some of that is less obvious.  The monks at Jeronimos Monastery, for example, provided assistance to seafarers passing through Lisbon.  Vasco da Gama and his sailors famously spent the night and prayed in the monastery the night before setting off on their famous voyage around the southern tip of Africa and on to India.  The building was completed with money obtained through a tax of trade from Africa and Asia – trade that Portugal increasingly controlled as “explorers” established new sea-based routes, allowing them access to foreign markets that had previously only be accessible through long-distance, land-based trade that was under the control of the Islamic Empire.  In the process, they effectively reshaped global trade and enriched themselves.

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Nearby the Tower of Belem protected the enclave from potential attack.

While these sites have been preserved as part of a national historical narrative, they sit near a huge monument that makes clear how that narrative is remembered and its significance in the national imaginary.  The giant Monument to the Discoveries sits in between Jeronomos Monastery and Belem Tower, jutting out into the sea, towering over the people below, standing on top of a stone map set into the ground, marked by distinguished Portuguese discovery and conquest.  Built in 1960, this monument reflects a final effort by the dictator Salazar to boost the confidence of the struggling country, which steadfastly refused to give up its empire until the mid-1970s (and then only through significant struggle on the part of African resistance fighters in armed conflict) despite widespread international condemnation.  Read within this clearly political and imperialist context, one reads the symbolism of the monument in different ways.  In turning the “discoverers” into larger-than-life heroes, Salazar makes a moral claim to Portugal’s right to imperialism – an experience and a culture that unites all parts of Portuguese society.  On the monument itself, the explorers are aided by aristocrats and religious leaders, who literally push the explorers up the incline around the monument’s base, symbolizing the critical financial, moral, and political backing that made these voyages possible.

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On the ground around the monument, a giant map marks the sites of Portuguese conquest, symbolically fueled by the winds, risking the dangers of the open ocean, and empowered by the gods of the natural world.

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It’s hard not to feel a little taken aback at the explicit self-congratulatory celebration if one questions at all the narrative of “discovery” and imperialism.  Today, in the aftermath of Portugal’s near-economic collapse, these kinds of statements about historical greatness feel desperate.  In another time, we might easily fall into a sort of self-congratulatory critique.  But very similar questions are being raised about history and memory in this country right now, particularly around monuments.  As these public conversations and some of the excellent public writing by professional historians make clear, monuments often reflect attempts to enshrine particular interpretations of historical narrative and shape historical memory to suit political purposes and to support political claims to power.  Particularly when one is as large as the Monument to the Discoveries, you’re kind of stuck with it.  But how do we recontextualize it after that historical moment, as our understanding of power and the past changes?  How do we address present inequalities and discrimination when monuments to the very people and processes who created the systems and structures of inequality sit in our cities and public squares?

I’m curious to learn more about how this process is unfolding in Portugal, particularly as people pour into the country from former colonies like Angola and Mozambique and the kleptocratic leadership of those countries use their wealth to buy stakes in important Portuguese telecommunications and financial firms.  No one seemed to be talking about it and the permanent exhibits in spaces within the Jeronimos Monastery or the National Tile Museum don’t do much to complicate the narrative, but I likely missed a lot as a tourist who speaks no Portuguese and some of the visiting artists are at least thinking through the relationship between Portugal and its sites of discovery, like the interesting tile work of Japanese artist Haru Ishii found in the National Tile Museum.  And there’s certainly lots of engagement with the history of Moorish occupation in the city.

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The connection to a Portuguese history of colonialism in Africa, however, is a little harder to find – in the winding streets of Mouraria, for example, where many Angolan and Mozambican residents live or in the tours of “African Lisbon” which take visitors through major sites of the city’s contemporary African community.

I walked away from the Monument of Discoveries, and Lisbon more broadly, struck by the incredibly beauty of the city and its connection to its history – I can’t wait to go back.  But I was also reminded once again of how pervasive and insidious the narrative about “discovery” and “civilization” really are and how much we live unthinkingly in the shadow of imperialism and neocolonialism and relive its worst attributes in language, assumption, politics, and perception.  That’s yet another reason why it’s important to learn to grapple with the complexities and contradictions of history rather than sit comfortably with the romanticized memories and monuments of our supposed “heroes”.  People are complicated; so is the past.  And isn’t there a saying about not putting someone on a pedestal unless you want to get them knocked off?

Reviews for "Ghana on the Go" are out!

Reviews are beginning to come in for Ghana on the Go:  African Mobility in the Age of Motor Transportation!  I read an article in the New York Times yesterday about how we are, collectively, too close to our own work and, thus, our own least reliable critic.  The article went on to talk about how your job as author was not serve as your own harshest critic but rather to do the work.  I’ve always…

Technology in Africa: A Review of Historiography and Recent Research

Historians Gabrielle Hecht and Keith Breckenridge discussed the current state of scholarship on technology in Africa in a May 2016 interview published in the January 2017 issue of the Radical History Review. Read here to see how Ghana on the Go fits into a larger scholarship on technology in Africa – here referenced by Hecht as part of a literature on repair, maintenance, and mobility.  Hecht and…

Delivering my new book to the leadership of the La Drivers’ Union

Digital history also opened new analytical, conceptual, and creative possibilities.  Digital technologies enabled me to visually represent the complexity of the network that my work could only describe linearly.  That complexity was represented through the map itself.  But the multiple layers we could build into the map – sensorial layers of audio, visual, and kinetic experience – could also demonstrate the meaning associated with place.  By bringing the map to life, we could transform the way that we understand mapping.  By opening the site to public submissions, we could create a new form of engaged community history.  That community most obviously included residents of Accra and citizens of Ghana – trotros represented a uniquely Ghanaian culture of automobility and urban life.  But trotros were also part of a global conversation about the possibilities and challenges associated with motor transport technologies and urban growth.

As such, I saw Ghanaian experiences of automobility and urbanity as opportunities to engage a much broader audience across Africa and the postcolonial world, where one might find similar sorts of quasi-informal urban networks.  Those same issues spoke in a different way to questions about public transport infrastructure and urban development in cities like Detroit – parallels that provided new opportunities to educate and engage the American public in more complex and dynamic understandings of the diverse cultures and histories of the African continent.

I also saw an opportunity to engage a broad and diverse audience in questions about the production and practice of history.  The map’s contents constitute an archive of primary sources, which could be explored and analyzed to answer historical questions about the social, cultural, economic, and political life of Accra’s residents.  We plan to create itineraries that would guide people through the map – a sort of entry point and introduction to the city and its rich offerings.  By more clearly exposing the process and methodology of history and guiding users through the interpretation and analysis of sources, we hope we can inspire further exploration of the map’s rich offerings and engage the general public in the production of history.  At the same time, I saw the map as an educational tool that teachers and students could use inside and outside of the classroom.  Faculty in relevant courses could ask students to follow an itinerary and develop historical questions, or even research and propose new itineraries.  Graduate students and researchers could upload their data or construct their own itineraries informed by fieldwork.  This engagement, we hoped, would mean that the site would stay fresh and dynamic and growing.

These visions fit within a roadmap for the project, which we prioritized within short, medium, and long-term timelines.  I knew the project was complex.  That complexity brings with it a number of challenges in terms of time, money, and labor.  Two years later, we do not yet have an operational website.  But that does not mean that the project has stagnated or failed.  While some digital history projects are fast and easy – work that can be accomplished during a semester or a few weeks – others, we know, require much greater planning and collaboration.

Presentations

Both the challenge and the appeal of digital history projects is that they are or can be constant works in progress.  Talking about that progress – its challenges and opportunities – provides important opportunities to gain feedback, establish partnerships, and reflect on the projects goals and the means by which we anticipate achieving our goals.  Over the course of the last two years, I have taken multiple opportunities to share the methodology and vision behind the Accra Wala project with diverse audiences in the US and Ghana – from the Humanities Center Conference at Wayne State University to HASTAC 2015 to the Ghana Studies Conference to the Meltwater Entrepreneurial School of Technology (MEST) and Impact Hub in Accra.

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Those presentations generated feedback and support from scholars and practitioners with a wide range of experience and expertise.  It also generated new collaborative partnerships, which will be crucial for both initial data collection and continued growth once the site goes live.  The enthusiasm with which the project has been received is invigorating, but it’s also great to see that the project is tapping into a dynamic community in Ghana and occasionally generating new ideas among young, entrepreneurial Ghanaians who are keen to use new technologies to address the country’s problems based on grassroots initiatives and experiences.

Collaborations

I have been grateful to have such experienced and enthusiastic partners at the MATRIX Center for Digital Humanities at Michigan State University and Ashesi University.  Initially, our greatest challenge appeared to be data collection.  We began this project daunted slightly by the task of mapping all of the trotro routes in Accra.  The trotro system is dense and complicated and constantly changing.  The prospect of riding all of these routes was in itself overwhelming and exhausting.  We also faced the challenge of developing an app to conveniently capture the necessary information to map the route.  In January 2016, Jackie Klopp from the Digital Matatus project at Columbia University, introduced me to Simon Saddier of the French Development Agency and Zachary Patterson of Concordia University.  Simon and Zachary had been working with the Accra Metropolitan Assembly (AMA) to map the city’s trotro routes.  Their map launched in December 2015.

On May 27-28, 2016, the AFD hosted a “Trotro Data Throwdown” or “hackathon”, in partnership with the Meltwater Entrepreneurial School of Technology (MEST) in Accra.  The winner was promised a prize of 4,000 Ghana cedis (approximately $1,000).

I approached Simon and Zachary to ask if they would grant us access to their data and allow us to use it in the Accra Wala project.  They endorsed our use of their data and we downloaded the data set once it was released to the public for the hackathon.  This data set made our project much more feasible.  However, it posed a new, smaller problem – their map project was also named “Accra Mobile”.  Neither of us had known of each other’s work beforehand, so this was a huge coincidence.  That coincidence led to a new name – “Accra Wala” (wala is variously translated as “life” or “energy”).  Simon also signed on to serve as a member of the Accra Wala Advisory Board.

The members of our Advisory Board highlight the rich network of collaborations that are central to the development of this project. In addition to specialists in humanities disciplines, we also seek to draw in innovative practitioners who pursue humanities questions through the realms of urban planning practice, architecture, or technology.

Simon Saddier is an official with the French Development Agency, has served as team leader for a mapping project, which documented trotro routes and stops throughout Accra in collaboration with the Accra Metropolitan Assembly (AMA).  Saddier’s open data will enable us to create the base of the map, and he will help us identify potential collaborators within the political and development/aid communities in Ghana.  We hope that his participation will also allow us to engage the development community directly about the history of infrastructure and urban planning in Accra, as well as the challenges and visions of drivers and passengers in the city.

Yasmine Abbas is a co-leader and co-organizer of Impact Hub Accra, where this project had its first public feedback session and where we will organize future public testing events and public mapping projects.  Abbas also works with architect D.K. Osseo-Asare to map e-waste sites in Agbogbloshie, Accra via the Agbogbloshie Makerspace Platform.

Jackie Klopp is a founding member of the Digital Matatus Research Consortium, which is providing technical support and advice based on their own experiences mapping matatus in Kenya.

Erica Hagen is the co-founder of Map Kibera, which empowers young residents of the Kibera District of Nairobi, Kenya to create the first free, open, digital map of their community.  Their project has now grown into an interactive community information project, which seeks to make otherwise marginalized communities more visible through mapping.

Kristie Kwarteng co-founded The Nana Project in 2014.  The Nana Project’s mission is to preserve, archive, and share firsthand accounts of Ghanaian history.  They give Ghanaians of all backgrounds and beliefs the opportunity to record the stories of their people. In doing so, they seek to remind one another of our shared culture, to strengthen and build connections, to teach the value of listening, and to weave into the fabric of our culture the understanding that our history matters.

Yaw Odoom is the founder of the successful “Trotro Diaries” project, which provides a social media space where passengers share their subjective experiences of transport.  Yaw will help us to promote the project among passengers and help us organize publicity to engage passengers in Ghana.

Victoria Okoye works at the intersection of media and communications, community engagement and urban planning, living and working in Accra, Ghana.  Over the years, she has worked with a technology park development initiative in Abuja, to research water management in Lagos, to engage community stakeholders on urban transport and land use in Accra, Ghana and on agricultural, employment and development opportunities in Kaduna, Nigeria. Currently, she manages communications, media design and mapping for a project improving water, sanitation and hygiene across Ghana. The manager of the website African Urbanism, Okoye is an urban planner who is extensively involved in current development plans in Accra, including the Bus Rapid Transit system.  Her website is an excellent example of an urban planning practice that engages with both the humanities and digital technologies.

Jon Voss is the Director of Strategic Partnerships at Shift, a charitable foundation and trust company that designs consumer products to drive positive behavior change, influence social and cultural norms and help prevent complex, expensive problems developing. As Director of Historypin and co-founder of the International Linked Open Data in Libraries, Archives and Museums Summit, Voss is an expert and innovator when it comes to working with Open Data on the web.  His past projects include LookBackMaps, a location-based web and mobile app, and Civil War Data 150, which shares and connects Civil War data across local, state and federal institutions. His expertise in digital mapping and working with Open Data will be instrumental in designing the Accra Wala map.

Ato Quayson is a Professor of English and Director of the Centre for Diaspora and Transnational Studies at the University of Toronto.  An expert on postcolonial African culture and literature, Quayson wrote a well-received book, Oxford Street, Accra, which explores life on and alongside the road.  His expertise on street life and roadside signage will help us think more clearly about the possible constituencies, spaces, and experiences represented in the map.  He also has a number of connections among residents in the historic core of Accra, which will be essential in encouraging submission of materials from Accra residents.

Jeffrey Paller is the Earth Institute Post-Doctoral Fellow at the Center for Sustainable Urban Development at Columbia University.  Jeffrey Paller’s research examines the practice of democracy and accountability in urban African slums. He has conducted fieldwork in Ghana, Kenya, and South Africa. Prior to joining the Earth Institute, he was a visiting lecturer of politics at Bates College where he taught courses on cities, slums and democracy; African politics and development; and democratization in the world. He received his PhD from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in the department of political science in 2014. His research interests include African politics, sustainable urban development, democratic theory, and field research methods. His scholarship has been published by Polity and African Studies Review. He served as a Research Associate at the Center for Democratic Development in Ghana, and has been funded by the Social Science Research Council, National Science Foundation, and the University of Wisconsin. Prior to graduate school, he received his B.A. from Northwestern University and served as a Program Coordinator for the Illinois Education Foundation.

Joseph Frimpong is a professor of humanities at Ashesi University, who is an expert on street signage.  Dr. Oduro-Frimpong’s research investigates Ghanaian popular media (political cartoons, video-movies, etc.). He is particularly interested in teasing out how such tangible visual/aural formats (re)-mediate intangible cultural ideas and beliefs, as well as partake in democratic socio-political issues. Some of his works has appeared in: Encyclopedia of Social Movement Media (2011), Popular Culture in Africa: Episteme of the Everyday (2014), International Journal of Communication, and African Studies Review. While he will contribute data of his own, he will also help us train students for data collection as part of the “African Cities” course.

Carolyn Loh is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Urban Studies and Planning at Wayne State University. She studies planning practice, implementation, and local and regional land use decision-making.  Loh, an expert in urban planning and GIS, is a co-author with Prof. Hart for a related academic project on the history of trotros and the politics of urban planning in Accra.  She will provide important global context for the more practical dimensions of the project and their connections to the humanities.

Ayorkor Korsah is a professor of computer science and robotics at Ashesi University, where she works to develop humanities-centered computer science and engineering curriculum, challenging students to think about the impact of their work in addressing social, cultural, and economic problems. She is working in partnership with Prof. Frimpong and Prof. Hart to develop a study abroad course, “African Cities,” which would pair American and Ghanaian students in collaborative data collection projects that would contribute to the “Accra Wala” content.

Joshua Grace is a historian of Africa with a particular interest in cultures of technology, mobility, and development. His research examines the politics of development in Tanzania from the 1870s to the 1980s by showing how Africans transformed cars and roads from technologies of imperial power into tools for pursuing different visions of social and economic change. By focusing on the use and modification of automobiles by Africans, his work provides an alternative to narratives of technological backwardness and economic underdevelopment that dominate representations of twentieth-century Africa. His dissertation, “Modernization Bubu: Cars, Roads, and the Politics of Development in Tanzania, 1870s-1980s” (2013) examines modernization from the perspective of the mechanics, drivers, and passengers who used technology and mobility to contest hierarchies of race, class, and gender. He is a recipient of Fulbright and Andrew W. Mellon research fellowships.  Dr. Grace will provide an important perspective on the history of technology, infrastructure, and development throughout Africa and around the world.

Trevor Getz is a historian of Africa whose interests include interdisciplinary methodologies, critical theory, and popular ways of thinking about the past. Most of my work revolves around issues surrounding gender and slavery in West Africa, although I have also published in the fields of world history, heritage studies in South Africa, the scholarship of teaching and learning, and modern imperialism and colonialism.  Getz is the author of a graphic history, Abina and the Important Men, which uses the conventions of a comic book to talk to engage students in new ways with the history of slavery in Ghana.  Abina and the Important Men has also recently been developed into an app, and Getz’s experience in that process will be invaluable as we also think about how to create a mobile version of this site.

Steven Feld was appointed Professor of Anthropology and Music at the University of New Mexico in September 2003 and promoted to Distinguished Professor in 2005.  Feld’s academic research principally concerns the anthropology of senses, sound, and voice, incorporating studies in linguistics and poetics, music and aesthetics, acoustics and ecology. Over the last ten years or more, Dr. Feld has worked directly with drivers in Accra through a number of film and audio recording projects.  Feld produced Por Por: Honk Horn Music of Ghana for Smithsonian Folkways Recordings, a US government gift to Ghana for the 50th anniversary of independence in 2007.  His feature-length documentary film, A Por Por Funeral for Ashirifie, won the Prix Bartók at the 2010 International Film Festival Jean Rouch in Paris.  Feld’s expertise will provide important perspective on how best to share information and resources with communities of drivers as well as what might be useful for drivers as users of the site.  Prof. Feld also hopes to contribute some of his own video and audio recordings, photographs, and other materials to the site.

Gracia Clark is a Professor of Anthropology at Indiana University, who has a long history of work in both the academic and development worlds. Clark is a highly regarded expert on the culture and economy of market trading in Ghana, and she will provide important insights on how we might best incorporate the experiences of traders and others associated with lorry parks as spaces of movement, exchange, and commerce. She also has extensive experience collecting oral histories as part of digital humanities projects, as a participant in two different DH projects on market traders and religion in Ghana.

We are also working on collaborations with other community partners.  The Meltwater Entrepreneurial School of Technology (MEST) has become an important partner, providing a space to present regular updates on the project and receive feedback from young entrepreneurs from across the continent.  Open Street Map Ghana hopes to partner with us on community mapping initiatives that would fill in the map of the city with major landmarks used by residents (rather than the focus on tourist sites and elite restaurants and cafes that tend to dominate public maps).  The social media organization Accra We Dey will help us create content, market the site, and build a user base.

We also continue to build relationships with organizations in the US.  In particular, we hope to establish or strengthen relationships with museums like the Detroit Historical Society, the Detroit Institute of the Arts, the Detroit Public Library, the Charles H. Wright Museum, the Field Museum in Chicago, the National Museum of African American History and Culture, and the National Museum of African Art.  We plan to organize public outreach and education sessions with these museum partners to test the site and solicit feedback from users.

At the same time, we are working with educational institutions to bring students in the US and Ghana into the project, providing them with new opportunities.  This summer, I am leading a study abroad course called “African Cities:  Accra“.  Students from Wayne State University and Ashesi University will work in groups to collect data (audio, video, interviews, photographs) at major lorry parks throughout the city.  Students will also pursue their own interests through research projects that can be connected to the site.  By the end of the summer, we hope to have a core set of data, which we can use to populate the site and create the basic infrastructure for the archive.

Funding

In 2015, Dr. Hart successfully applied for $5,000 in funding for summer salary from the Humanities Center at Wayne State University and $20,000 from the Research Enhancement Program at Wayne State University, which funded the preliminary stages of data collection for this project.  The Research Enhancement Program application was evaluated by three outside evaluators, including one digital humanist and two African historians.

In July 2016, we submitted an application for a National Endowment for the Humanities Digital Projects for the Public Discovery Grant.  This narrative requested nearly $30,000 in funding to convene a meeting of experts and stakeholders to design and assess the project’s user interface and create a prototype for the “Accra Wala” site.  While we did not receive that funding, we used the opportunity to revise our narrative and refine the project goals.

In January 2017, we submitted an application for a National Endowment for the Humanities Digital Humanities Advancement Grant, Level 1.  This grant was also intended to fund a meeting of advisers and stakeholders to design and assess the user interface.  We are currently waiting to hear back on the decision about that grant cycle.  In the meantime, we are planning our pursuit of other funding opportunities from government agencies and private foundations.

Prototypes

In 2015, a collaborative project called AccraMobile between the Department of Transport, Accra Metropolitan Assembly, Concordia University, and Agence Française de Développement (AFD), used smart phones and apps to collect data on Accra’s transportation system. This project aggregated two sets of data for the trotro taxi system in the area of the Accra Metropolitan Assembly. First is data for 315 trotro routes. There are shapefiles for each direction of a route. Route data includes attributes for route origin, destination, trotro operator, and fares. The second set of data is tied to stops made by the trotro, including the name of the stop, location, and the number of passengers that that got on and off of the trotro at a given stop.  This data is contained in General Transportation Feed Specification (GTFS) which AccraMobile has agreed to share with our project.

The project will ultimately make use of open source software like OpenStreetMaps, Kora, and QGIS to complete the project.  While we are still working on a functioning prototype, designer Austin Truchan has created a work sample, showing example images of the map.

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Transformations in Research and Plans for the Future

As we start to plan to build the core of the project, we also need to look forward to develop longer-term projects.  Many of those require collaboration with community partners in the US and Ghana.  They also require significant funding.  A lot of our work over the next several years will involve grant-writing through government organizations and private foundations.

This ongoing commitment to digital history has reshaped my research and teaching interests.  As the posts throughout this blog suggest, Accra Wala is the driving force behind a broader, multi-faceted research agenda that explores the politics of urban planning and the realities of urban life in 20th century Accra.  Accra Wala allows me to speak directly to/with the public and practitioners in fields of development, urban planning, architecture, and the arts.  That form of public engagement now infuses my more conventional scholarly work.  This blog and the articles I am in the process of (co-)writing on urban planning practice and infrastructural development speak directly to the practical realities of urban politics in Accra.  That work also seeks to situate the experiences of Accra residents within global conversations and processes of globalization, urbanization, precarity, development, and cosmopolitanism – not at the margins of those conversations, but rather at the center of them.  The work that comes out of Accra Wala, in other words, has the potential to redefine the concepts and practices that so profoundly shape life in contemporary Accra and in cities around the world (including Detroit).  Accra Wala highlights for us how – and how much – history matters.  Even when it’s still a work-in-progress.

The sign seems to be the gateway to a new vision of the future, ushering visitors from the the center of precolonial and colonial power to new displays of cosmopolitan prosperity in areas like Oxford Street, Cantonments, Ridge, Airport City, Airport Residential, and East Legon.  Ato Quayson’s book, Oxford Street, Accra, details some of the cosmopolitanism of this “new Accra” and historicizes the city’s long history of cosmopolitan culture.  But Quayson’s book and this new sign suggest a new series of questions about both historical and contemporary urban visions.  What, for example, is the “new Accra”?  And what does a “better Ghana” look like?  How much of this is actually new?  Who is included in the processes of change that this sign seems to herald?

As I wrote more than a year ago, reflecting on the rapid “development” of some parts of the city in the years since I first arrived in Accra, the inequality that has long been inscribed in historically cosmopolitan districts like Osu has since spread into other parts of the city.  Anchored by the development of new shopping malls and the emergence of a new cafe and bistro culture among the city’s Afropolitan middle-class, this new urban culture is both a symptom and a cause of growing social and economic inequality throughout the country.  As I experienced when I drove myself through the city in an air conditioned car for the first time last year, it is indeed increasingly possible for people of means to feel like they live in a world apart from the masses of the city, traveling between shopping malls, bistros, cafes, art museums, shops, bars, clubs, and luxury apartment complexes, insulated from the world outside by technology, glass, and air conditioning.  And those “two Accra” – new and old, for lack of better categories – does exist for some people.  And that separation is reified in various forms of international news coverage, popular culture, and social media.  That separation, as I’ve argued before, is also reified in the logics and practices of development and urban planning.

So, what is the “new Accra”?

The “new Accra” emerges out of theories of development, new urbanism, and the creative class, which have reshaped urban planning and development practice in Ghana. According to the Congress on New Urbanism, “New Urbanism is a planning and development approach based on the principles of how cities and towns had been built for the last several centuries: walkable blocks and streets, housing and shopping in close proximity, and accessible public spaces. In other words: New Urbanism focuses on human-scaled urban design.”  The charter of the new urbanism lays out these principles in more detail and at different scales – the region, the neighborhood, and the block.  While, in theory, new urbanism’s focus on creating walking, sustainable development is modeled on the inclusiveness of the village, in practice, new urbanism’s focus on sustainable development and walkable communities has created a sort of omnibus of planning models. Some of those models have become hegemonic in themselves. The focus on bus rapid transit in urban plans to the exclusion of both local mobility systems/solutions and  other possible technological alternatives, for example, has been a waste of resources in many cities like Accra, which can ill afford the loss, and diverts attention from the central issues facing mobile urban residents. Driven by the interests of private corporations and western urban planners, these models take on imperialistic overtones.  In a sort of parallel to critiques of gentrification, the preference for more expensive Western models marginalizes the majority of urban residents who are unable to afford access to new housing developments, transit systems, and other amenities.

In Accra, much of that community building has focused on the interests of an Afropolitan middle- and upper-class. Highly educated, entrepreneurial, and cosmopolitan, this urban elite constitutes Accra’s version of the “creative class”.  Richard Florida, who originated the term, acknowledges that this creative class constitutes only about 30% of the average population.  However, he argues that they have outsized importance as the drivers of innovation and economic development/growth.  Corporations follow these populations and create new business opportunities, which he predicts will ultimately improve the economic welfare of the broader urban community.  Florida argues that cities should create an ambiance that seeks to attract and retain members of this creative class, developing “cool” neighborhoods with “vibrant street culture”, “authenticity”, and, above all, “quality of place” (Florida’s phrase to refer to the aesthetics or beauty of place).  New urbanism and Florida’s theory of the creative class converge in this concern for “quality of place”, with its emphasis on mixed use neighborhoods, defined by walkable communities, accessible public transportation, investment in diverse arts and cultures, sustainable development, and heritage-based construction techniques.

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In so far as this Afropolitan class constitutes a “creative class” and much of the recent urban development has been shaped by their interests, they seem to fit Florida’s narrative well.  However, the growth of “Afropolitanism” in Accra has not attracted corporations and generated large-scale development so much as it has encouraged new forms of entrepreneurialism in the city.  The kinds of “cool” that Florida associates with the creative class are relative innovations in Accra – cafes, tea shops, cupcake stores, bistros, boutiques, and wine bars were difficult to find in Accra only 10 years ago.  Thus, Afropolitans simultaneously attract this culture and create it.  African Americans and second generation immigrants, who are now returning to Ghana from the US and Europe to escape increasing racial tensions in the West and to seize the new possibilities for growth in “developing” economies like Ghana, have taken up jobs in the expanding oil economy.  But some have also used their connections and cosmopolitan sensibilities to create new forms of urban culture that make Accra a more “comfortable” (i.e. Western) place to live and create new space for innovation, experimentation, creativity, and socialization.  Co-working spaces, tech/entrepreneurial hubs, media consulting firms, and social media outlets interact and overlap with new culinary spaces, arts venues, and fashion houses.  If this sounds a lot like the “new Detroit”, that’s because it is remarkably similar, complete with accusations of gentrification, exclusion, and inaccessibility.

If urban planning and development policies are aimed at addressing concerns about precarity, these recent developments seem to be an awkward and inadequate solution.  Cupcake stores, boutiques, art galleries, bistros, cafes and wine bars certainly attract the attention of the New York Times. And they do form the core of a growing and increasingly visible urban elite that are interconnected in exciting ways. And I would not deny that their presence makes Accra more comfortable for foreigners like myself who find familiarity in these institutions.  These spaces are certainly beautiful.  And the energy surrounding these activities is infectious.  But they are also inaccessible for the vast majority of Accra’s population.  The cost alone is often prohibitive – impossible, really – for many Accra residents.  But the cosmopolitanism of these spaces also makes them sites of dislocation and alienation for some, requiring new regimes of behavior and rules of engagement and dress.  Meanwhile, economic opportunities seem to be shrinking for the vast majority of Accra’s residents.  As the tech demands for wage labor employment increase, even those with college educations are finding it difficult to obtain good-paying full-time jobs.  Meanwhile, city’s population continues to increase due to natural population growth and rural-urban migration.  The “informal economy” continues to absorb many of these underemployed workers.  But, as my book illustrates, these forms of entrepreneurial economic activity no longer provide the same sorts of paths to prosperity that they did for a previous generation.  Oversaturated markets mean smaller profit margins for everyone.  People have long lived precarious lives and often not only survived but thrived through their ability to manage precarity and risk.  Today, however, their ability to “manage” seems undermined.

People in Ghana notice these disjunctures.  In 2007, when Ghanaians endured extensive load-shedding amid electricity shortages in the lead-up to the celebration of Ghana’s 50th anniversary of independence, Ghanaians were simultaneously proud of their nation and critical of its leaders and their visions of the future.  In the midst of one blackout, we heard the students of Commonwealth Hall at the University of Ghana join in an ironic chant of “Ghana at 50” as a form of critique of the tone-deaf nature of national celebrations.  Many pointed to Malaysia, which achieved independence from British colonial rule in the same year and yet experienced much greater economic prosperity at its 50th anniversary.

This year, Ghanaians approach the 60th anniversary of independence in the immediate aftermath of a contentious presidential election in which debates about economic inequalities and inadequate development featured prominently.  The electricity problems have, in some ways, worsened.  Particularly in cities like Accra, economic development and expanded prosperity for some have resulted in increased demands on the electrical grid.  Frequent blackouts and load-shedding – nicknamed dumsor – provoked widespread protest in the city and inspired criticism of the former president, John Mahama.  The new president, Nana Akuffo Addo, has been criticized as a member of the national elite, disconnected from the concerns of the masses, too willing to embrace neoliberalism.  And, while the international media has been quick to pick up stories lauding Accra’s Afropolitan culture, local media has devoted much less attention and space/time to covering the changes.  Instead, the conversation has developed on social media, where individuals create community by connecting through events, experiences, and entrepreneurialism.  The Accra Goods Market creates pop-up markets for local culinary and fashion entrepreneurs, but the location shifts, requiring attention to the organization’s Facebook or Instagram accounts.  New designers create invitation-only sales and showings.  New people have emerged as “trend-makers” and “influencers”, using their social media following and marketing skills to direct new members of the community to targeted events, brands, and spaces.

In the midst of these processes that seem to exacerbate income inequalities, there also seems to be a new creative working class emerging in the city, who move between these seemingly disconnected spheres.  They ride trotros and walk across a busy street to visit the ultra modern West Hills Mall.  They spend hours nursing relatively affordable iced teas, coffees, and smoothies, using their computers and charging their cell phones in generator-fueled air conditioned comfort.  Their modern style is crafted from carefully curated second-hand clothing/shoe/accessory purchases and locally-produced fashion.  They access the internet through ubiquitous mobile phones, carefully curating social media personas, which they seek to transform into careers or start-ups.  They create art and build cultural centers that provide new opportunities for young people in the poorest areas of the city.  They seek to address social and economic problems using local knowledge, appreciating local culture and economy.  They are often college educated, but they do not have the same kinds of economic resources and family connections as the city’s most elite populations.  They aspire to more and they make do with less.  They use their connections and communities and technologies to “make things happen”.

In October, some of my students were speaking with the founders of the Tumblr site/social media/podcast community Accra We Dey. Students were struck by the similarities between Joey and Nii’s concerns and the expressed concerns among American millennials – uncertain job markets and uncertain futures mean that young people have been forced to create their own paths to prosperity, using new technologies to invent jobs and create demand for their unique skills in social media marketing, computer programming, and global communications.  And yet, I noted, they seemed excited about the untapped potential and opportunity that this new and untested sphere provided – the same opportunity that seems to have generated well-documented anxiety among American millennials.  When I mentioned my surprise, Joey astutely observed that, when precarity has always been your reality, it doesn’t seem new; there’s nothing to be anxious about.  It just is.

These young people, it seems to me, sit at the intersection of these 2 seemingly contrasting understandings of urban life in the city – the city as precarious and the city as the site of luxury and creativity.  Their experiences highlight the history of precarity in Accra, as well as the real transformations of the urban present.  They imagine a possible future that bridges the gaps.

Will this make for a better Ghana?  I have no idea.  As app developers and entrepreneurial incubators in Accra will readily tell you, there have been lots of ideas, but few of them have taken off at any significant scale.  It’s easy to be critical and we should be rightly skeptical, but we should also be mindful of the ways in which young Ghanaians are reinterpreting and redeploying frameworks and theories like “new urbanism”, “the creative class” and “precarity” to create new visions that might yet defy our expectations.