…Accra, Freetown set to host visitors
The last week in November this year is set to be remarkable for the African tourism and culture sectors as visitors across the continent and beyond throng two West African cities for one-of-its-kind festivities.
First, Accra, the Ghanaian capital city, is rolling out colourful drums to host visitors from across Africa in the maiden edition of the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) Forum and Festival on Tourism, Creatives & Cultural Industries.
Aptly tagged ‘Creatives Connect Afrika’, the debutant festival will run from November 24–26, 2025 in Accra, the headquarters of the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA), which is organising the event in collaboration with Black Star Experience and African Tourism Partners (ATP).
According to the organisers, the festival is a must-attend because the best of African culture, fashion, music, film and tourism will be on generous display at the first-of-its-kind gathering.
It is also an exciting development for Africa’s creative economy and creatives as the pioneering event, the first under the AfCFTA, will most importantly, offer veritable platform for the continent to engage in meaningful discussions, address barriers, and identify practical solutions to unleash the full potential of her tourism, creatives, and cultural industries.
Offering details of the upcoming festival, Emily Mburu-Ndoria, director, Trade in Services, Investment, Intellectual Property Rights, and Digital Trade, AfCFTA, noted that the programmes are exciting and are designed with ambition and purpose. “It will feature panel conversations with policymakers, creatives, and investors.
“It will include exhibitions showcasing Africa’s film, music, and fashion. It will provide training and masterclasses for young entrepreneurs, as well as business matchmaking opportunities to foster partnerships and investments.
“It will celebrate our culture through fashion shows, concerts and various cultural performances,” she disclosed.
She also explained that the focus is all-inclusive and across all the subsectors of the tourism, creative and cultural sectors of Africa, which span film, music, fashion, design, digital content, hotels and restaurants, tour guides, tour operators and other tourism services.
For Kwakye Donkor, CEO, African Tourism Partners, ATP is partnering in the festival because of its passion of bringing the continent together despite the differences of her people and countries.
“We believe that if we pull that together, there is a lot that we can achieve as a continent,” Donkor insisted.
Instead of complaining about challenges, Donkor posited that Africans should look at their pockets of excellence and celebrate, and one of the key pockets of excellence in Africa, according to him, is the creative industry, hence the reason for the November festival to further amplify the sector.
“We live, we sleep, and we live creatively. When we are happy, we dance, when we are unhappy, we still dance.
“In Ghana, funerals become a celebration of life. In Nigeria, the same. Weddings are the same.
“But when these events are taking place, there is always the cameraman. After the cameraman, we see people dressed up, particularly our own men. It is an opportunity to show our fashion, whether we are happy or unhappy,” he said.
Donkor disclosed that the festival’s three pillars of: film, music, and fashion, permeate through our life on a daily basis, not only on the screen, while the cameras keep rolling.
Rex Owusu Marfo, coordinator, The Black Star Experience, one of the three partners in the festival, disclosed that his organisation is the president of Ghana’s initiative, with a mandate to rebrand Ghana through culture, arts, and tourism.
According to Marfo, the partnership in the festival is timely as it aligns with the mandate of the Black Star Experience.
“The strategic partnership between the Black Star Experience Secretariat and the AfCFTA Secretariat represents a landmark fusion of cultural influence and economic policy,” Marfo said.
The Black Star Experience, according to him, fits into the festival because of the overall objective of empowering Africa’s creative sector.
Speaking further, he noted that the collaboration seeks to transform the continent’s vast creative potential into tangible economic prosperity, leveraging the power of African artists.
On why he thinks the festival will be successful, he noted that his organisation is the organising body for the Black Star Experience, a prestigious and impactful centre based in Ghana, centred around African music, arts, and business. It draws a global diaspora audience and serves as a powerful platform for networking, celebration, and economic engagement, hence Marfo assured that his outfit will work in collaboration with others to make the maiden edition of the festival a success.
But while the Accra festival is about to end, the visitors will get ready for the ‘One Nation Reggae Festival’ in Freetown, Sierra Leone.
For a whole week, November 25-30, 2025, there will be a global focus on the West African country for the first-ever festival dedicated to the Reggae music genre, probably, the first in the world.
The music, culture and tourism extravaganza, which will hold on the theme, “Shared roots, Shared rhythm, One Love One Vibe”, will draw global attendees to Freetown, the country’s capital city to enjoyed a well-curated programme structured to fuse Sierra Leonean and Caribbean cultural expressions, amid other excitement.
Of course, the Sierra Leonean government, through the Ministry of Tourism and Cultural Affairs, the organisers of the festival, have expressed their readiness to stage the weeklong celebration of music, culture and diaspora ties.
Speaking on the importance of the festival, Judith C. Jones, permanent secretary, at the ministry, described it as a marker of unity and national identity, and also highlighting the event’s role in showcasing Sierra Leone’s cultural heritage to a wider audience as well as elevating the country’s profile as a peaceful destination.
For Nabeela Farida Tunis, minister of Tourism and Cultural Affairs, Sierra Leone, the festival will be a platform for artists, dancers, designers and chefs to express their truth and creativity with pride.
The minister underscored the festival’s diplomatic and commercial potential, stating the event positions Sierra Leone as a welcoming hub for cultural exchange, connection and investment.
It is also aimed at connecting Sierra Leone to Africa and the Caribbean through common musical and cultural threads.
The One Nation Reggae Festival is presented as a two-phase engagement, beginning with a pre-festival teaser and launch party in early November to build national awareness, followed by the main festival week from November 25-30, 2025. The main programme will combine headline concerts, cultural showcases, craft markets and culinary experiences designed to foreground Sierra Leonean and Caribbean artistry.
The lineup brings international and local acts to Freetown, amid performances that include both marquee names and emerging talent. They include; Sizzla Kalonji and Christopher Martin, internationally acclaimed reggae artists.
The festival’s repositioning as “Sierra Leone’s Grand Homecoming” frames the event as a cultural bridge aligning reggae, Bubu and Maringa rhythms with a national drive to strengthen diaspora ties.
However, the festival follows a successful preview activation on August 1, 2025 at Family Kingdom along Aberdeen Beach Road, an event organised under the ministry’s “2025 Year of Ecotourism” initiative in partnership with Olive’s Garden and Reggae Union Sierra Leone. The preview brought together local audiences, diaspora visitors and international guests, and featured performances that illustrated the festival’s cultural and commercial ambitions.
So, all roads lead to West African cities of Accra and Freetown to end the month of November on a ‘festival’ note.
