Kobby Ankomah Graham

Kobby Ankomah Graham has spent over two decades shaping conversations on African subculture, music, and identity, working across cultural criticism, memoir and fiction to examine how creative practice intersects with power and belonging. His writing has appeared in The Guardian, Frieze, Aperture, Kinfolk, and The Africa Report, and he has been profiled by the BBC. 

A lecturer, cultural researcher, and DJ based in Accra, Kobby holds an LL.B in Law and an MA in International Studies & Diplomacy from the University of London. He has guest lectured at Stanford University and contributes to several initiatives shaping Ghana’s creative industries, with work grounded in how culture forms identity, sustains collective memory, and drives both civic and social engagement. He is currently a PhD candidate at the University of Ghana, researching care ethics and Ghana’s alté(rnative) music scene in the age of Afrobeats. 

A 2020 Miles Morland African Writing Scholar and former journalist whose reporting once led to the resignation of a Ghanaian minister of state, Kobby has built a career on the premise that culture is not just consumed but made, and that the people who make it shape the societies around them. 

Behind the decks, that thinking plays out in sound. Kobby began DJing in London – once playing for Erykah Badu – before returning to Accra twenty years ago, where he became one of the first DJs to champion the city’s alternative music scene. His sets move from independence-era highlife to contemporary alté, tracing African histories, identities, and futures through rhythm.