Five young women including a Harvard Business School graduate return to their home country of Ghana after spending years abroad. Raised in the West, some don’t know how to navigate life in Accra.
Sound familiar? This scenario isn’t necessarily real, but it could be. It’s based on the stories of diaspora returnees to Ghana in a new web series, “An African City.”
Series Executive Producer Millie Monyo spoke to NPR.org about comparisons the series is getting to “Sex And The City,” based on the lives of a group of women living, working and playing in New York City.
Monyo told NPR she welcomes the connection to Carrie Bradshaw and company. Nicole Amarteifio, creator of “An African City,” was a fan of the HBO hit, Monyo said. “These are the stories of these women who are dynamic, running around New York City, and why can’t we have that in Africa? Why can’t we have that on our continent? Why can’t we have that in Ghana, in Accra?”
Telling the stories of returnees was a goal of the series, Monyo said — stories of young women brought up outside Ghana who came home to get involved in the emerging culture of the capital city.
Actor Nana Mensah plays Sade, a Harvard Business School graduate. She’s highly educated, ambitious, and has her sights set on Accra and the men of Accra, Mensah told NPR.
Monyo said the show’s makers felt the stories in “An African City” would resonate with viewers. “You feel at home in America, but when you come back to Africa — which is your home continent — you have people who look at you and say, ‘Well, you’re not African enough.’ And we weren’t really sure how to respond to something like that.
“That has happened to all of us, where we show up…and they’re looking at us like, ‘You akata,’ which is, I guess, a slang word for someone who is African, however you were raised in the West and you may not necessarily know how to navigate life in Ghana anymore.”
Mensah, who portray Sade in “An African City,” talked to NPR about how the show depicts money and sex in romance.
“I think a lot of people have a hard time with the explicit nature of the transactional behavior between men and women,” Mensah said. “I think that is stirring the pot a little bit. And so I am interested in some of the push back from that because I don’t think that anything we are depicting isn’t true.”
Some people say the show depicts a view of Africa they didn’t know existed, Monyo told NPR. “They didn’t realize that there’s people in Africa spending money, who have money…have the means to do these kind of things. They’re not realizing that there’s places to eat out. There’s places to go and entertain yourself. And fabulous clothes! People have no idea that this actually exists on the continent and that’s what we really want to show.”
