China, architecture and Ghana's spaces: Concrete Signs of a soft Chinese imperium?

Lecture by Dr Lloyd G. Adu Amoah (Research Fellow, IIAS / Ashesi University)

Africa’s interaction with China is beginning to be marked tellingly by Chinese architectural inscriptions on the African landscape which need to be deconstructed. The furore in the African press and academia that has greeted the building and handing over of the African Union headquarters by China in Addis Ababa makes such an interrogation imperative. In this lecture Dr Adu Amoah will attempt to offer some understanding of this nascent phenomenon using the Accra cityscape as an explicatory point of reference. He will argue that the very visible and undisguised presence of China’s architectural signature in Accra represents in style and concrete a contemporary fortificatory expression of China’s soft power directed at two publics. The first public is the government and the people of Ghana for whom the message is growing Chinese fraternity, benevolence and influence. The other public is China’s geo- strategic political and economic competitors in Ghana and Africa: the message is that China has become a force to reckon with. In engaging in this analysis Dr Adu Amoah will highlight the subtle ways in which soft power is deployed in a postmodern world and the evolving meaning of fortifications within contemporary global and local discourses on power, architecture, symbols, interests and international relations.

The lecture draws from a paper of the same title presented at a conference on fortifications and castles at the University of Ghana, Legon, and  which is also due for publication