Kwesi Owusu obituary

The Guardian

02-06-2025

The author and film-maker Kwesi Owusu, who has died aged 70, wrote several notable books on Black culture in Britain, and was a founder member of the influential performance group African Dawn, which emerged from the vibrant creative scene of the Africa Centre in Covent Garden, London, in the 1980s. During that time, he also co-produced and directed the groundbreaking film Ama: An African Journey of Discovery for Channel 4, which was recently restored and included in the BFI's 2023 African Odyssey season.
After returning to his native Ghana, Owusu became an advocate for the Ghanaian and African people, both through his leadership of the African branch of Jubilee 2000, a global initiative calling for debt cancellation for the world's poorest countries, and his media production agency Creative Storm, whose documentaries on subjects such as maternal health and access to water have sparked real change.
Owusu first arrived in the UK in the 1970s, and, as a nascent poet, contributed verse to African Dawn, whose performances of music, poetry and traditional drama drew from the Ghanaian, Zimbabwean, Grenadian, Senegalese and Uruguayan heritage of its members, including Vico Mensah, Nii Noi Nortey and Merle Collins. The group released four albums.
Owusu was also involved in the Africa Centre's production of The Trial of Dedan Kimathi (1984), set at the end of British rule in Kenya, and written by Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o and Micere Githae Mugo. The Booker-winning author Ben Okri was another member of Owusu's circle.
'We were all part of this movement, magical realism, which was in literature, film and poetry,' Owusu told the BFI in 2023. 'We were trying to create a fusion of artforms and find holistic ways of telling stories to reveal all the unseen nuances of our culture and fuse them with reality as we knew it. These days they'd call it Afrofuturism.'
During this time, Owusu participated in a workshop funded by Channel 4, Cinema Action. The television channel went on to fund his first feature, Ama (1991), co-produced and directed with Nii Kwate Owoo, with whom Owusu had made the documentary Ouaga: African Cinema Now (1986).
A story of ancestral mysticism set in modern-day London, Ama starred Georgina Ackerman as the eponymous protagonist, a young girl who receives a prophecy in the form of a computer floppy disk, and has to persuade the elders of her Ghanian family to listen to her, a 12-year-old child.
'I wanted to tell a unique African story,' Owusu said. 'We also had to find a way to say that African culture is contemporary, irrespective of how old it was … The idea that our culture has to be frozen in time is something I was keen to transcend. Culture is living and evolving.'
Born in Takoradi, in what was then the Gold Coast, now Ghana, he was the son of Edwina (nee Gwira) and Joseph Owusu. He boarded at Adisadel college, an Anglican school in Cape Coast, Ghana, then, having moved to the UK, studied political science at the London School of Economics, graduating in 1983.
His first book, The Struggle for Black Arts in Britain (1986), explored the barriers in establishing an authentic Black arts tradition in the UK in the face of the limitations of western elite culture. Storms of the Heart: An Anthology of Black Arts and Culture (1988), edited by Owusu, contains a thoughtful essay by Okri on Othello. In the same year came Behind the Masquerade: The Story of Notting Hill Carnival, co-written with Jason Ross. Owusu later edited Black British Culture and Society: A Text Reader (2000), which brought together key writings on and by the Black community in Britain.
Following the release of Ama, Owusu was part of a consortium, Black Triangle, supported by the Voice and Choice FM, that bought the Electric cinema in Notting Hill in the early 90s and, as its new manager, along with Paul Bucknor, relaunched it as a film venue dedicated to Black audiences. He was on the board of Artrage, an intercultural arts magazine (1982-95), was an associate of the African Studies Centre at the University of Cambridge, and taught at universities including Sussex, Soas University of London, and Goldsmiths' College, now Goldsmiths, University of London.
Owusu launched Creative Storm in Accra in 2003. He was co-director of the Environmental Film Festival of Accra, and co-producer of the High Vibes music festival in 2009.
In 2018 he was appointed director of the school of creative arts at the African University College of Communications in Accra, and in 2022 he launched the African Dawn podcast, 'dedicated to telling untold stories from Africa'.
He is survived by his children, James, Kwame, Ama and Madison, and his siblings, Priscilla and Charles.
Kwesi Kwarteng Owusu, film-maker, author and entrepreneur, born 24 October 1954; died 22 March 2025