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Paper short abstract:

Festivals provide a focal point for borderlanders, attracting prominent guests and achieving maximum media exposure. This paper compares 2 festivals on the Ghana-Togo border, demonstrating the different registers in which communities make statements about what it means to be divided by a border.

Paper long abstract:

Festivals provide a focal point for citizens of a self-defined community, including those living far from home who play a leading role in fund-raising and planning. In Ghana they aim to attract the most prominent guests and to achieve maximum media exposure.

This paper compares two festivals on the Ghana-Togo border, with a view to demonstrating the different registers in which communities make statements about what it means to be divided by a border. The first is Agbamevoza which unites the Agotimes of Ghana and Togo in a week of cross-border celebrations. The second is Godigbe in Aflao which is confined to Ghana but references historic claims to the Togo side. The comparison shows actors using these festivals to influence how the border is managed, insisting on rights to mobility. Speeches at Agbamevoza make much of the fact that while the Agotime capital is in Ghana, two-thirds of the settlements are in Togo. Because the focal point is kente weaving, Agbemavoza actively competes with other festivals in Ghana. By contrast, Godigbe identifies Aflao as a trans-national town with close cultural and historic links to Togo and Benin. In 2022, Nana Akuffo-Addo was invited, but strikingly no Ghanaian chiefs were amongst the guests of honour. Moreover, the speeches explicitly criticized the authorities for having kept the border closed long after the COVID pandemic had receded. In different ways, the aim is to maximize the margin for manoeuvre in a context where governments have come to prefer borders being only partially open.