A scene from the US Government Exchange Alumni Speaker Series
US Embassy Ghana opened its new US Government Exchange Alumni Speaker Series on Tuesday with a candid conversation on what it will take for Ghana’s creative industry to compete globally: stronger systems, authentic storytelling, smarter marketing, and a willingness to reinvent.
Held at the US Embassy in Accra, the event marked the first in a year-long series celebrating 250 years of US independence and the partnership between Ghana and the United States.
The session, titled “American Excellence in Film and the Influence of Exchange Alumni on Ghana’s Creative Industry,” brought together two of Ghana’s leading creatives, both US exchange alumni, for a practical masterclass on the business of storytelling.
Delivering welcome remarks, Donya Eldridge, Cultural Affairs Attaché at the US Embassy Ghana, said the series was designed to spotlight alumni who are “leaders, innovators and change makers who bring American excellence back to their communities and industries.
“Alumni programming is something that is very near and dear to my heart. We know that our alumni are amongst the best that Ghana has to offer, and so we love when we have an opportunity to be able to share who they are, what they’ve learned in their experiences,” Eldridge said.
She described the initiative as the start of “many conversations” that will showcase alumni impact across the country as the US marks 250 years this July.
Filmmaker and Black Star International Film Festival founder, Juliet Asante, urged Ghanaian creatives to treat marketing as a core part of production, not an afterthought.
“When you’re doing a production, you should have a marketing budget. A lot of films do not have it. It’s like after the film, then it’s like, ‘oh, okay, now what do we do?’” she said.
Ms. Asante noted that in mature markets, up to 30% of a film’s budget goes to marketing. Without it, even strong films disappear. Using a familiar analogy, she said, “Doing something without marketing is like winking in the dark to a woman. You know what you’re doing, she can’t see what you’re doing.”
She also called for a return to authentic Ghanaian storytelling. Citing the Chinese series ‘Pursuit of Jade’, which has crossed a trillion views despite being in Chinese. She argued that global audiences want cultural specificity.
Filmmaker and KOFAS Media CEO, Kofi Asamoah, shifted the focus to infrastructure, arguing that Ghana’s main gap is not creativity but systems.
“I realised that the biggest strength of the United States is not in their talent, it’s not in their storytelling. It is actually in working systems,” he stated.
In the US, he said, creativity is treated as an industry with documented intellectual property, residuals, clear distribution pipelines, and investor trust. In Ghana, it remains largely seen as entertainment or a hustle.