Ken Ofori-Atta, Ghana’s Minister of Finance
Ken Ofori-Atta, my Yale SOM classmate and friend
I appreciated the story about my Yale SOM classmate Ken Ofori-Atta, the minister of finance in Ghana, in the most recent Yale alumni news.
In an interview he describes his reasons for returning home. He’d been in the US for ages, enjoying his Wall Street career and life in New York. At one point, he says, he hadn’t been home for ten years.
“A lot changed when I returned for a visit. I remember feeling the need to connect more and the desire to make a material difference to society. This feeling led to my determination to finally move home and get something started,” he says.
With another Yale alum and a friend he started the company Databank which eventually became very successful. In 2014 he made the move to politics, and when his party won, he was appointed minister of finance.
He’s been in the position for two years and has made change. “Ghana is now seen as a much better place to do business, and there’s a renewed sense of hope,” he says. I’m proud to know him.
Bootstraps But No Boots
In my last post I wrote about the powerful two-minute response from Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King to a reporter’s question about why the Negro has not “assimilated,” as other immigrants have.
Apparently the reporter was ignorant of the fact that the Africans did not immigrate to the United States by choice; they were brought by force and enslaved!
My friend Margaret sent the audio of the piece, though there’s no video. Here is the link to the audio. There are four short segments which together add up to the 2 minutes. The second one has the bootstrap quote.
The Art Scene in Lagos
Today’s New York Times had a fascinating article about the art scene in Lagos. I had no idea!
Siddhartha Mitter MFA Art Writing
Siddhartha Mitter wrote the piece.
I just Googled the name and was surprised to find it’s a man. Somehow I assumed a woman had written the article. Mitter teaches Art Writing at the School for Visual Arts in New York City and writes for many publications.
Maybe his lovely first two sentences made me think of a woman writing: “Cars snaked out from the hideous traffic and deposited the city’s elite, dressed to impress, at the Civic Center, a concrete-and-steel edifice fronting Lagos Lagoon. Women exuding Vogue beauty and power paused on the patio to give television interviews.”
The Civic Center is hard to miss. It occupies a prominent spot along the lagoon. You can see it from the bridge connecting Victoria Island to Ikoyi.
Mitter clearly enjoys the “hustle” one finds in Lagos. He conveys the sense of the city with its myriad problems brilliantly.
The Lagos Civic Center, site of Art X, is prominent on Victoria Island
“This enormous city — with no official census, population estimates range from 13 million to 21 million — is dynamic by disposition. Yes, the roads are clogged, political corruption is rampant, and the power cuts trigger armies of generators spewing noxious fumes. But Lagosians — who are proud of their “hustle,” a mix of effort, imagination, and brash optimism — will turn any challenge into enterprise.”
Art X
Art X has, in three years, become a major modern art show and a fixture of the Lagos art scene. Tokini Peterside is the founder and director of Art X, joining other mainly women entrepreneurs encouraging art. Mitter says she “began the Lagos event as a cultural investment in the city and a business bet on Nigeria’s burgeoning collector class.”
When I left Lagos in 1986 I knew of one person who had created a private art gallery in his home. In 2008, according to the article, the first art auction house opened. Now there are many gallery owners who are working with artists and encouraging their careers.
Other artists show their work in their studios, Mitter says, and he includes some great photos of these.
The Igbo Landing
Gerald Chukwuma is an Igbo artist whose work was exhibited at Art X. His theme, Mitter says, “was Igbo Landing — the story of enslaved people from what is now Nigeria, who, upon disembarking from the Middle Passage in the Sea Islands of Georgia in 1803, walked back into the ocean in their chains rather than submit.”
Over the decades the story gained significance in local folklore among African Americans. “The mutiny and subsequent suicide by the Igbo people was called by many locals the first freedom march in the history of the United States,” I read on the BlackPast website.
Egwu Onwa (Moonlight Dance), wood relief sculpture, Courtesy of the artist and Gallery 1957
I think I’d heard of this before but forgotten. It’s an amazing story, not always believed but finally researched in the 1980’s and commemorated in 2002.
“The Igbo Landing is now part of the curriculum for coastal Georgia schools,” the article on BlackPast written by Samuel Momodu says.
Chukwuma’s work is exhibited in Lagos at Gallery 1957. I took the photo of Egwu Onwa from the website of the gallery. I love it!
