Beyond the concert: What BHIM Festival London reveals about Ghana’s cultural diplomacy and soft power

Stonebwoy’s BHIM Festival London at OVO Arena Wembley can understandably be celebrated as another milestone in the international growth of Ghanaian music.

But beyond the performance, audience numbers and spectacle lies a more important question for Ghana: what happens when our culture successfully attracts international attention, and how do we convert that attention into lasting national value?

That is where cultural diplomacy and soft power become relevant.

Countries are experienced internationally through far more than embassies, official visits and foreign-policy statements. They are also encountered through music, film, fashion, food, sport, language, personalities, festivals and the stories people tell about them.

Increasingly, many of these encounters are created not by governments, but by artists, cultural entrepreneurs, festivals, creative businesses and diaspora communities.

BHIM Festival London offers a useful example of how this can work.

When Culture Travels, the Country Travels With It

Moving a Ghanaian-created festival into a major London arena meant more than exporting a concert.

Audiences encountered Ghana through Stonebwoy’s music, language, fashion, performance, cultural references and the wider visual environment of the production.

Among the most visible elements was a scenic interpretation inspired by Ghana’s Independence Arch.

For a Ghanaian or diaspora audience member, the reference may immediately evoke history, identity and home. For someone encountering it for the first time, it may prompt a much simpler but equally important response:

What is that structure, and what does it represent?

That curiosity is significant.

Cultural diplomacy can be powerful precisely because it often does not feel like diplomacy.

People do not necessarily enter a concert expecting to learn about another country. They come for music, community and entertainment. Yet in the process they may encounter symbols, language, stories and identities that influence how they understand that country.

A person may arrive because they enjoy Stonebwoy’s music and leave having experienced something more about Ghana.

That is a form of cultural connection which traditional diplomacy cannot always manufacture.

Soft Power Must Be Earned, Not Declared

This is also where Ghana must be careful with the language of soft power.

A successful concert does not automatically mean Ghana has gained soft power.

Neither does international visibility by itself amount to influence.

Soft power develops when repeated cultural encounters generate attraction, familiarity, credibility and relationships that can eventually shape how people perceive and engage with a country.

It is therefore better to see an event such as BHIM Festival London as part of a possible soft-power pathway, rather than proof of a soft-power outcome.

One international concert may create curiosity.

Several successful cultural encounters may build familiarity.

Over time, that familiarity can contribute to affinity with Ghana, interest in visiting the country, engagement with Ghanaian businesses and culture, stronger diaspora relationships or a more favourable perception of Ghana internationally.

The distinction matters because Ghana's challenge is not a shortage of cultural assets.

Our greater challenge is conversion.

We regularly generate cultural attention through music, festivals, food, fashion, sport and personalities. The strategic question is how that attention is connected to tourism, diaspora engagement, investment, creative-industry development and Ghana’s broader international reputation.

The Diaspora Is More Than an Audience

London makes this conversation particularly important because of its significant Ghanaian and wider African diaspora communities.

For diaspora audiences, a festival such as BHIM can perform a function beyond entertainment.

Music, language, familiar imagery and collective celebration can become mechanisms of cultural reconnection.

For a few hours, a concert venue can become a space where identity is remembered, performed and shared across generations.

From a cultural-diplomacy perspective, diaspora communities should therefore not be viewed simply as consumers of Ghanaian culture.

They can also be cultural intermediaries.

Diaspora communities introduce Ghanaian music, food, fashion, language and experiences to colleagues, friends, partners and wider communities in their countries of residence. They travel home, invest, advocate, create businesses and influence perceptions of Ghana within their own networks.

Strengthening cultural relationships with the diaspora consequently has implications that extend far beyond ticket sales.

Cultural Export Must Include the Industry Behind the Artist

There is another dimension to this conversation that Ghana should take seriously.

When African music travels, we should not limit our definition of export to the performer.

BHIM Festival London involved Ghanaian professionals working alongside their UK counterparts across production leadership, sound engineering, technical direction, lighting design and programming, and special effects.

That matters because culture has an economic and technical infrastructure.

Behind every international artist are production managers, designers, audio engineers, lighting programmers, stage managers, riggers, video specialists, stylists, content creators, logistics professionals and creative businesses.

If Ghana succeeds at exporting its music while importing almost all the professional expertise required to present that music internationally, then we are capturing only part of the economic opportunity created by our cultural influence.

The longer-term ambition should therefore be to export not only Ghanaian creativity, but also Ghanaian creative capability.

This means developing production companies, technicians, designers and creative businesses capable of operating competitively in Accra, Lagos, London, Paris, New York and other international markets.

Cultural diplomacy and the creative economy should not be treated as unrelated conversations.

The stronger Ghana's creative industries become, the greater our capacity to project culture internationally on our own terms.

Cultural Diplomacy Does Not Have to Start With Government

Perhaps one of the most important lessons from contemporary cultural diplomacy is that the state does not always have to be the initiator.

Artists and cultural platforms are already creating international networks and attracting audiences.

Stonebwoy does not need to become a diplomat for BHIM Festival to contribute to how Ghana is encountered abroad.

The festival itself can become the platform.

This does not make government irrelevant.

It changes government's role.

Rather than attempting to create or control every cultural-diplomacy platform, Ghanaian institutions can become better at identifying, supporting and amplifying credible initiatives that already possess international audiences.

The Ministry of Tourism, Culture and Creative Arts, Ghana Tourism Authority, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, diaspora institutions and Ghana’s diplomatic missions abroad can all potentially play complementary roles.

When a significant Ghanaian cultural event takes place overseas, there should be strategic thinking around how it might connect with tourism promotion, diaspora engagement, destination branding, trade, creative-industry opportunities and diplomatic outreach.

The objective should not be to politicise the cultural platform.

It should be to build intelligently around the attention that culture has already created.

From Cultural Visibility to National Advantage

Ghana possesses substantial cultural capital.

The question is whether we can convert that cultural capital into sustained national advantage.

If someone attends a Ghanaian concert in London and subsequently becomes curious about visiting Accra, listening to other Ghanaian artists, buying Ghanaian fashion, exploring Ghanaian history, doing business with Ghanaian creatives or developing a stronger affinity with the country, then culture has begun performing a function beyond entertainment.

But these outcomes do not occur simply because an event was successful.

They require consistency, quality and deliberate connections between culture, tourism, diaspora relations, the creative economy and international positioning.

BHIM Festival London should therefore be understood first as what it was: a major entertainment event built around Stonebwoy and his music.

It should not be burdened with claims that one concert has transformed Ghana’s international influence.

But it does provide a useful illustration of what is possible when a Ghanaian cultural property travels successfully: music crosses borders, cultural symbols acquire new audiences, diaspora communities reconnect, production expertise travels, international partnerships develop and attention turns towards Ghana.

That is where the opportunity lies.

The strategic question for Ghana is no longer whether our culture can travel.

It already does.

The more important question is whether we can build the institutions, industries and relationships necessary to convert that cultural reach into enduring attraction, economic opportunity and international influence.

The music is travelling.

The culture is travelling.

The expertise is beginning to travel with it.

Ghana’s next task is to ensure that the value created by that movement travels home as well.

Author’s Note: Nana Kwame Adu-Gyamfi is a live-entertainment production professional with interests in cultural diplomacy, public diplomacy and the creative economy. He served as Production Lead, Lighting Designer and LX Programmer for Stonebwoy’s BHIM Festival London at OVO Arena Wembley.