About Us
Our Mission
Supporting the Arts of Africa, Supporting Its Kids
It is the purpose and mission of the Akpe Cultural Center is to create programs, that offer free arts and cultural education, as well as meals, to local children. The cultural center is a Ghana-registered NGO associated with a newly built hotel, which will also support the cultural center as it is able to do so.
The Akpe Cultural Center is the fruition of a dream that was born when the children of Kokrobite asked Maputo Mensah to teach them what he was teaching his American students — the cultural heritage of Africa. In recent years, knowledge of that heritage has dwindled in Ghana and elsewhere in Africa.
Maputo is a Ghanaian artist who performs and teaches worldwide, while spending most of his time teaching African dance and drumming at the University of Colorado. Each summer, he takes students to Ghana to give them a six-week immersion in the culture and arts of Africa. For years he has done this in makeshift spaces in Kokrobite, but when the local kids approached him, he looked for a way to build his own cultural center. Learn more about Maputo here.
Thanks to the help of generous donors, and a teaching partnership with the renowned Akrowa Drum and Dance Ensemble , the Akpe Cultural Center opened its doors in July of 2023. Immediately, the local children began to come. Today the center teaches and provides nutritious meals to more than 50 children a week at no cost to their families, who are hard pressed to pay for even their children’s academic schooling. It also serves as a venue for free cultural education classes bused in from local schools.
Why is this important? The African performing arts are about far more than entertainment. They are rooted in the values of respect, personal responsibility, cooperation, and community, and to learn these arts is to learn those values. Maputo knows, from his own experience, how training in the traditional arts of Africa can alter a life path for the better, creating opportunity and possibility where little existed before. It has been his longtime dream to change the lives of children in Africa the way his own life was changed by these arts, and he is now doing so.
About the Center
For the children
Maputo Mensah has created a new centre for the arts in the beautiful Ghanaian coastal village of Kokrobite. This centre is a venue for teaching and preserving West Africa's traditional arts, and provides young people with a place to grow into the next generation of world-class artists. It will also give these young ones focus and direction in life as they learn the deep cultural traditions that underpin the songs, dances, and stories of Africa.
For the Art
As the now-closed Academy of African Music and Arts did, the Akpe Cultural Centre is designed to attract students of all ages from the rest of the world, including established artists wishing to infuse their own work with the sound and soul of Africa. Stevie Wonder came to AAMA; so did Rita Marley, Isaac Hayes, and Steve Coleman.
The Akpe Cultural Centre preserves and offers the best in traditional African performing arts; at the same time, it also provide space and opportunity for experimentation, fusion, and in many ways, therapy. Just as children are nurtured by the arts of Africa, adults find these arts uniquely healing to the mind, body, and spirit. They are increasingly needed in today’s world.
For the People
The Akpe Cultural Centre is a boon to the economy of the Kokrobite, offering employment opportunities and drawing even more travelers to this popular beach destination. It is a hotel, dining, and conference centre as well as a vibrant teaching venue.