About

My name is Kobby. Or rather, Kobina. It’s a name given to Akan boys born on Tuesday.

In primary school in the UK, the kids teased me, calling me ‘Ribena’ or ‘Corn on the Kob’. I took it in stride and eventually won them over.

Then my parents sent me to Ghana for the first time to learn how to be Ghanaian. On my first day in school there, I introduced myself as ‘Koh-BEE-nuh’ and had my new classmates on the floor in stitches. At the time, I didn’t understand why. To this day, when someone says my name the way I did that day, I know exactly where I know them from.

Today I hop between London and Accra, but the latter is where I have laid my hat… for now.

I’m a lecturer at Ashesi University + editor of DUST: a magazine about social change and popular culture in Ghana that strikes that rare balance between conscious and cool + a DJ on Ghana’s growing underground arts scene (and every Sunday night on YFM Ghana)

Ghanaian. Briton. Ashanti. African. Afropolitan… these are all words that accurately describe me too.

I live to add a couple more to that list.