Now with two season complete, we at The CIHA Blog are weighing in on the Ghanaian television and web series, An African City. Dubbed as Africa’s “Sex in the City”, the show portrays the lives of five affluent, independent women who have recently resettled in Accra, Ghana after living in the west, including Ṣadé, a pastor’s daughter, NanaYaa, a talk show host, Zainab, an entrepreneur, Makena, a graduate from the University of Oxford’s Faculty of Law, and Ngozi, who moved to Ghana to work for a development agency . In today’s post, we present two separate pieces by Tina Adomako and Abena Kyere offering varying perspectives of An African City and what the show represents in a broader context.
An African City
Africa – Looking pretty for a change
A You Tube Series portrays a modern city
by Tina Adomako
Anyone who has read “Americanah”, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s bestseller, knows that for some, life in a big African city is often no different from the lives of their peers in cities like London, Paris or New York. Adiche’s novel shifts between the USA and Nigeria and portrays, among other things, the life of the successful, of those who’ve “made it” in Lagos society.
The series “An African City” is set not in Lagos, but in Accra, the capital of Ghana, and traces the adventures of five young, emancipated women in a modern metropolis. The five friends are all “returnees”, young women who’ve studied in Europe and the US and who have returned from a life abroad to join the upper crust of this West African country. They meet regularly in fancy restaurants, the gym or in beauty parlours and their conversations centre mainly on men, la mode and manicures. Viewers are let in on the (mainly amorous) adventures of the clique as narrated by the main character Nana Yaa. Nana Yaa is a journalist with her own radio station. Her father is the big shot Minister of Energy, so she’s also got the right “connections”. These are obviously an advantage not only to her, but also to her friends Ngozi, Makena, Sade and Zainab. The young ladies are always dressed in fabulous designer clothes, cruise around the country’s capital in big cars and dine out only in the best restaurants. Those who generally associate Africa with dirt, suffering and poverty may be disappointed, imagining that this totally different picture they are being shown is pure fiction. But it is not, for the series portrays the lifestyles of some of the upper crust of Ghanaian society and the “problems” they have to deal with in their daily lives.
In the first episode, Sade complains about her househelp, who she suspects has been stealing her bras. And Zainab rants about the dubious origins of medicine available in Accra. She would never buy anything in Accra as she is certain they would be of inferior quality or fake imitations from China. She has her Pepto-Bismol flown in from England or the US. If this all sounds rather decadent and unreal, it however does indeed reflect the reality of life for certain privileged members of the Ghanaian upper middle class society. These girlfriends are modern, self confident women, yet at the same time they find nothing wrong with receiving expensive jewellery, cars and apartments from married men. And any man who invites them out for dinner and does not automatically foot the bill, doesn’t stand a chance. So there’s modern female emancipation on the one side, and unchanging patriarchal gender roles on the other.
While the five friends seek a balance between old and expected, and new, complicated gender roles (for the wealthy), their adventures and escapades show a changing Ghanaian society. The film maker appears to seek to engage in social criticism. The show comments on the abysmal state of the nation’s energy supply system, on the water shortages and power outages that affect almost everyone in the country. The women complain and joke about “dumsor”, the name Ghanaians have given to a power rationing system. “Dum” means “out” and “sor” means “on” and refers to the random way in which power is switched on and off in the country. Of course in the circles in which Nana Yaa and her friends move, there is a solution for every problem, the one for “Dumsor” is to own a generator and to make sure one always has enough diesel fuel in the house. For it would be a minor catastrophe not having ice cubes in the house for a proper long drink. The friends are also very vocal in their criticism of the corruption in the country. Government officials have to be paid bribes, people are always asking for a “dash”, a cash benefit, before they do the jobs they are paid to do, while they remain uncritical of their own role in furthering this through their own relationships of privilege. While it is truly frustrating to live in a city in which little works as it’s supposed to, the friends use their own “connections” and their status to manoeuvre the system.
The title of the show reminds of “Sex and the City”. Just as Carrie, Miranda; Samantha and Charlotte don’t live the lives or the lifestyles of the average American gal, similarly, neither do Nana Yaa and her friends. Just as most American women cannot afford to buy Manolo Blahnik shoes, similarly, most young women in Ghana cannot afford to eat a meal at Captain Hook’s, the favoured restaurant of Nana Yaa and friends for their dinner dates. A meal at this fancy restaurant easily costs more than the waiter who serves it earns in a month. This may be shocking, but as in every buzzing metropolis in the world, the gap between the haves and the have nots is huge. The rich can live fancy lives, the poor cannot. The series shows that it’s no different in Accra. And so, what can at least be said for the show is that it does away with the pictures all too often portrayed of African cities. The common pictures of Africa are marked by a poverty- stricken populace, slums, congestion, filth, backwardness. Of course, all these things do exist. And yet, there is also another side to life in an African city. There are quite a few people in Accra who can and do live in a manner no different from their upper middle class peers in Paris, London, New York or Berlin. That might come as news to a non-Ghanaian audience.
I feel credit must be given to the creator of the series for showing a different side to an African city, for showing the world that African cities are not all about snotty nosed children with flies crawling over their faces, they’re not all about slums and filth and poverty. The series shows us beautiful people wearing beautiful clothes in beautiful settings. That’s a new perspective – at least for western audiences. All episodes were shot in Accra, the locations are real and anyone familiar with the city will recognise a lot of places. The colourful façades of the Villagio highrise apartment blocks for example, or the African Regent Hotel, owned by the son of Ghana’s former President Kufour and a popular brunch location for the well-heeled clientele of Accra. In the same way that we never saw Carrie and her friends sporting outfits from Target or having dinner at KFC, we also don’t see Nana Yaa or hers dining in Abloboshie or shopping in Ashiaman. The problems faced by the average residents of Accra – the waiters, hairdressers, cab drivers or house helps, frequently looked down on or denigrated by the main characters – are mentioned merely in passing. The show isn’t about them, it’s about those on the sunny side of society with their shallow, showy lifestyles and their luxury problems such as where to find the right colour nail varnish, the perfect hairdresser or a restaurant that serves red quinoa.
One could thus criticise the series for portraying women whose main interests seem to centre on men, money and manicures. These are surely not the role models we want for our young women. However, I think what Nicole Amartefio, the producer of the show and a “returnee” herself, succeeds in doing, is both changing the popular (western) perception of what life in an African city is like, while also throwing a critical searchlight on some of Africa’s new generation of privileged young adults. And that is something new.
To date, 2 seasons of the You Tube series with 23 episodes have been produced.
https://www.youtube.com/user/AnAfricanCity
Tina Adomako is a free-lance journalist based in Düsseldorf, Germany. She is on the board of the Neue Deutsche Medienmacher, a group journalists with diverse ethnic and linguistic backgrounds and competences whose aim is to increase and strengthen diversity in the German media.
An African City: A Collision of Stereotypes?
by Abena Kyere
An African City is a series about the life of five returnees- women who have lived in the west and have returned home. Nana Yaa is a journalist who returns because her father is now the new minister and also to heal from a broken heart. Makena returns to Ghana after a divorce as an unemployed lawyer while Zainab is an entrepreneur who is involved in Shea butter export. Ngozi and Sade are the good girl and bad girl of the group respectively. Ngozi is the daughter of a rich Nigerian man, a vegetarian and a staunch Christian whereas Sade is a strong believer in sleeping with richer men to acquire what a woman wants. They wear fanciful clothes, eat in the most expensive hotels in town, own apartments in the prime areas of the city and only date a certain kind of men (educated in the West, handsome, tall, can afford to take them out and foot the bill, etc.).
While this series is meant to represent the ‘supposedly brighter’ side of life in Africa, one would have wished that the producer had been a little more critical of the lives of these young ladies and their broader implications.
The woes of these young women are quite simple: they cannot find the right men, the right services and they are just not living in the ‘right’ country. Alarmed at the prospect of living without a constant supply of electricity, original Pepto-Bismol from the UK (although it does exist in Ghana), and the men they love, these women spend their days highlighting their problems, sharing their experiences and giving each other advice on how to survive in Ghana. But why are these problems worth emphasizing? Is it because the ‘been-to’ faces them? Is the general population not equally affected? How do you complain about unemployment and still eat (breakfast, lunch, and supper) in the most expensive hotels in town, wear the most expensive clothes and bemoan a friend’s taste for cheap sunglasses from the “side of the road?”
While the claim is that life in Ghana and Africa is hell, could these young women afford to live the luxurious lifestyles they live in the west? Interestingly, all these women run to the continent for solace, acceptance or jobs. The very west that trained them and developed their expensive taste buds does not accommodate them. They lament their struggles to fit into Ghanaian society, but they make no effort or rather we are not shown an episode where any of them try to integrate themselves into society. Apart from their small clique of five there are no other Ghanaian friends. Surely, anyone willing to integrate would move beyond their familiar group to more diverse connections.
It is always frustrating when privileged people (educated, rich, etc.) complain, especially about how things do not work. This takes me back to last year when I attended a programme on Africa’s development with a group of friends. One of them, a ‘been-to’ himself, complained bitterly about the poor state of affairs in the country. He was frustrated with Ghana, pure and simple; nothing worked according to him. Institutions are swamped with political cronies, systems have broken down and policies are pipelines which seem perpetually choked. But his greatest complaint was how Ghanaians had become nonchalant about the state of affairs. Politicians, according to him, were the worst culprits because they travelled to the west where they basked in all the glories of development and yet they remained indifferent to the decay at home. How was anyone supposed to survive in this rot? The answer of one of the panelists was short but succinct: let us learn to be charitable to ourselves sometimes.
Let me indulge myself by employing the almost cliché ‘do not ask what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country’. In my view, returnees always have one unacknowledged problem: their obliviousness to their lack of contribution in building the motherland. While Ghana might be and indeed is beset by in a myriad of problems, citizens, and ordinary ones at that, contribute in ways that are meaningful and real, and should not be disparaged. While these citizens were building the country, the returnees were contributing to other countries, countries that in most cases are not ready to host them permanently, hence the need for them to come home. In returning, however, they expect to have the best things and be treated in ways they think they deserve, and indeed they sometimes get the best jobs and treatment. This is why many are suspicious of returnees who parrot the “we came back to help build the motherland” anthem. In the end, everyone goes home. This is the reason why they should learn to be accepting of current conditions, and figure out how they can best contribute to better conditions for all.
It is amazing that at the end of the 10 episodes, there is no concrete resolve on the part of any of the characters to change things or try and make things better. Indeed, there is the uneasy feeling throughout that these young women consistently exploit the system, without any ramifications for their actions in perpetuating its eventual breakdown.
Another distressing aspect of the series is how returnees, especially women, are stereotyped. The portrayal is problematic because these are not ordinary young women ‘been-tos’. They are lawyers, journalists, etc., with some of the best education money can afford, yet their self-worth is grossly tied to whom they are sleeping with. After watching the 10 episodes, one still struggles with what Sade does for a living, except sleep with men for survival! Sadly, the story does not change the narrative for women. They do not want to cook or be the ‘conventional African woman’ and yet they want to be in conventional African relationships- man buys, women eats. In so doing, they perpetuate dangerous femininities. A friend of mine discouraged me from watching this because according to her it did nothing for younger women and the feminist cause. I now understand why. In a time when the country is struggling with a wave of foreign Telenovelas, such series — produced by a Ghanaian –does not help the narrative for women and youth.
Apart from the women themselves, what the series succeeds in doing is highlighting stereotypes about Ghanaians and by extension Africans. The belief that all rich and educated people have condescending attitudes towards the ignorant gateman, the expectant house girl (expecting shoes from Aunty-just-come) or the ever-forgetful waiter who cannot seem to remember the “no lemon in my coke” order, or the house help who steals the mistresses’ underwear (in Sade’s case her bras).
This seemingly innocuous portrayal of the problems returnees face has far-reaching consequences for ways in which Ghanaians, especially women, are portrayed. The producer’s agenda is to change the stereotype about Africans and African cities, but she has actually succeeded best in reinforcing it while creating another exaggerated one. Such stereotypes have repercussions, feeding people’s perceptions of who Ghanaians (and by extension, ‘Africans’) are, and what they need in terms of policies and aid.
Abena Kyere is a PhD student at the University of Ghana–Legon.