Search

For generations, healers sustained medical knowledge in African communities through oral communication. During the twentieth century, healers who learned to read and write used literacy as a vehicle for establishing medical authority. In particular, literate healers lobbied colonial and national governments for recognition, wrote medical guidebooks, advertised in African newspapers, and sent letters to other healers to organise their profession. This article examines the case of literate healers in colonial and postcolonial Ghana living near the twin port cities of Sekondi and Takoradi. There, an early organisation of ‘Scientific African Herbalists’ and later, the ‘Ghana Psychic and Traditional Healing Association,’ used literacy to reclaim the public's trust in their medical expertise. An examination of literacy shows historical avenues for professional formation and the continued quest for medical legitimacy and respectability. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The formative influence of colonial art education on modern art movements in Africa has not attracted a great deal of scholarly attention. Yet, European art teachers in the Gold Coast challenged colonial prejudice that Africans were incapable of mastering European aesthetic forms. This article analyses the art education provided at the Teacher Training College at Achimota School where pupils learned both to revalue African art forms and to draw and paint in European, representational art styles. Modern artists built on and reshaped what they had learned at Achimota in order to respond to changing social and political conditions. The last section of this article explores the impact of colonial art education on the work of two of the earliest modern artists in Ghana: Kofi Antubam and Vincent Kofi. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article explores the different trajectories of advertising for schnapps gin and beer in Ghana and Nigeria during the period of decolonisation and independence up to 1975. It analyses published newspaper advertisements alongside correspondence, advertising briefs, and market research reports found in business archives. Advertising that promoted a ‘modern’ life-style worked for beer, but not for gin. This study shows how advertisements became the product of negotiations between foreign companies, local businesses, and consumers. It provides insights into the development of advertising in West Africa, the differing ways in which African consumers attached meanings to specific commodities, and possibilities for the use of advertisements as sources for African history. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]