ABDUL KARIM ABDULLAH: Afrochella
it's a cultural festival.
At Afrochella, you will get equal parts
of music, equal parts food, equal parts
arts, and equal parts fashion.
My name is Abdul Karim Abdullah.
I'm the co-founder of Afrochella,
and I'm here with In the Know.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
When you come to Afrochella, it is
a one-day festival right now.
That may change.
What you're going to experience, when you walk into the space,
is you're going to see a series of art installations
by some of the best artists in Ghana right now
and some from abroad.
Midichi is one of the contemporary artists in Ghana
that I'm excited about this year.
Mo Awudu, he is a spray-paint artist.
His work has been featured on BBC, on CNN,
and various other places.
Godwin Ashong, he was the set producer
for "Beasts of No Nation."
We have about 40 vendors-- food, fashion, art vendors as well.
And, obviously, we have the music.
I can't name the top headliner, but I
can say we have Tiwa Savage.
- She's not the top?
ABDUL KARIM ABDULLAH: She is.
She is the top.
She is the top artist.
But, I mean, I would say we have Tiwa Savage.
We have Wande Coal.
We have Sarkodie, who's from Ghana.
We have Samini, who is a big reggae--
reggae-- Afro-reggae artist in Ghana as well.
And we have an old-school legend.
Ofori Amponsah is going to be performing as well.
Distruction Boyz from South Africa.
You can be sure that you're going to have a good time.
You don't really see something-- you don't
see something like a complex magazine, where
it talks about the creators.
Or you don't see, like, blogs that really
outline what some of the amazing talents
that exists on the continent.
I wanted to be able to see those stories.
I wanted to enjoy those stories.
I wanted to learn about some of those things.
When I went back to Ghana, we had an opportunity
to create Afrochella, and Afrochella will give us
an opportunity to all see it.
This year is the Year of Return.
It's the 400-year anniversary since the first slave
ships arrived from West Africa in the US.
So the president of Ghana, his honorable Nana Akufo-addo,
documented this year as the Year of Return.
There has been a calling for the diaspora to come back home,
and Ghana has been very welcoming to people
coming back to the continent.
So the themes throughout our artwork,
you'll see a lot of king, a lot of gold, a lot of celebration
of royalty.
And our hope is to be able to invite people back home
and make them feel royal in their experience
on the continent.
We know that it's difficult for people
to come to Africa for just a one-day festival,
so what we try to do is give people an experience.
And it's a full nine-day experience.
So people will definitely get to party.
They'll be able to go to amazing sites
in Accra, like the Independence Square,
the Kwame Nkrumah Museum.
And then they'll go and they'll try
a bunch of different Ghanaian foods,
like banku, fufu, gari foto.
We knew that eventually we wanted it to get this big.
But in our wildest dreams, we would
not have thought that Afrochella would be where it is right now.
I really hope that we are remembered for helping
bring more people to the continent,
that we're a conduit to getting people to come back
and invest in the talent on the continent.
Right?
I mean, we're coming from abroad.
We can party.
We can spend our money in the clubs.
Then we can spend our money investing in the people
on the ground as well.
So that's the goal.
Now, you're in the know.