Ghanaian entertainment brokers: Urban change, and Afro-cosmopolitanism, with neo-liberal reform

This article deals with entertainment in the neo-liberal age. The key aim is to describe the emerging brokering practices of certain entrepreneurs within the entertainment industry in Ghana, and to explore the effects of these practices. On the one hand these entrepreneurs receive sponsorship from major transnational corporations, in order to produce reality TV shows and major entertainment events. The shows are meant to appeal to the target market of the corporate sponsors, and in this way these entrepreneurs fill the role of a power broker. On the other hand, the entrepreneurs also fill the role of a culture broker as they try to tune into a larger market by producing entertainment that is aimed to be popular not only in Ghana, but to a larger market across Africa. In this article I refer to this shift in style of entertainment as a shift towards an Afro-cosmopolitan style of entertainment. The strategic epicentre for the fieldwork of this study is one of Ghana's major production houses, Charterhouse Productions.