'Kpa kpa kpa: The creative edge of African youth

Contrary to the popular notion that unemployed youth are vulnerable to being recruited for a range of antisocial behaviours, including violent extremism and terrorism, the findings of a recent IDRC-funded Pan Africa research endeavour titled “Understanding and Addressing Youth Experiences with Violence, Exclusion and Injustice in Africa” paints a more complex picture.

This Pan-African study, which involves 12 countries, together with the UN’s study titled ‘The Missing Piece’, provides fresh insights into how the majority of Africa’s youth contribute positively to peace and security through their determination to eschew antisocial behaviour.

Their avoidance of antisocial behaviour stems from their engagement in a variety of self-engineered initiatives, predominantly in the informal sector (for example, bodaboda in Tanzania), that demonstrate their level of determination to pursue a prosocial lifestyle.

These initiatives among different cohorts of youth are occurring at a time when various reports, including those by the UN Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) and UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC), paint a grim picture of the disproportionate degree to which young people across the world are being subjected to a range of discriminatory practices, including marginalisation and exclusion from their political, social, economic and cultural rights and the shrinking of the civic and political spaces, from which they have already been largely excluded.

In essence, most youth are eschewing violence and seeking nonviolent means to live by thriving in precarious situations, predominantly in the informal sector, with little or no state support. 

It is within this context that I was struck by the Ghanaian term 'kpa kpa kpa' - because it embodies a particular genre of popular culture among young urban people (mostly) from poor communities, that encapsulates a range of entrepreneurial innovations and creativity -straddling the spectrum from, on the one hand, legal economic activities to, on the other, illegality (usually called ‘connections’).

The term is oxymoronic in the sense that, although it may sound simple, it both embodies and reflects a variety of complex phenomena of resilience among the young urban poor.

It is also so flexible that it could be broadened out to encompass a whole range of activities but, at the same time, can be shrunk to have specific meanings/connotations among different cohorts of youths from poor urban communities. 

A few years ago, a young man with a wife and children was asked on TV in Ghana about how he makes a living in these tough economic times.  

His off-the-cuff response was ‘kpa kpa kpa’. What is kpa kpa kpa?

In Ghana, some poor youth in the urban centres have mastered the art of evolving a suite of strategies as their livelihood portfolio.

They identify economic opportunities in the informal sector with eagle-eyed precision and cash in on them. At its core, these youths who are involved in kpa kpa kpa demonstrate astute entrepreneurial skills.

Let me explain this complex phenomenon in its most simple form. For instance, a person involved in kpa kpa kpa typically identifies particular needs among certain constituents in the urban centres at particular times and then finds ways to keep the buyers and sellers apart.

He (often a male) then uses their middle-person position to connect the two via an invisible link in order to meet a need and, in turn, make some quick, frequently small amount of profit. By an invisible link, I mean meeting a need by creating an illusionary space or spatiality that projects that need as something that is difficult and out of the reach of the needer – and this need cannot be met without an expert intermediary.

To unpack the philosophical sophistication of kpa kpa kpa and the use of (the market) space, I am tempted to borrow Ato Qyason’s scholarly construction, in his piece titled ‘Introduction: Postcolonial Spatialities’, in which he argues that spaces have multiple actors, relationships and needs which, in general:  point to the inextricable spatial entanglements generated from the differently intersecting flows of people, networks, financial instruments, and ideas, among other things. 

Apart from viewing it through the optics of the use of urban space, kpa kpa kpa embodies strategies that straddle the boundaries between, on the one hand, legal activities and, on the other, illegal ones (but there exist grey areas on this spectrum, with their own morality, values, norms, etc)

In its original sense, kpa kpa kpa connotes a masculine affair but also seems to draw heavily on the traditional entrepreneurial acumen of the female traders operating in the informal sector, who have demonstrated an ability to realise the huge potential of very little - mostly in difficult financial times.

I saw my mother (a trained teacher from FRANCO, Hohoe) exhibiting this genre of economic acumen during the 1983 crisis when, overnight, she turned her sewing machine (those days, you marry with one) into a money-making venture. 

Kpa kpa kpa also represents the resilience of the youths from poor urban communities who use their creativity daily as a means to provide for both themselves and their families. As the most youthful continent, Africa has focussed our attention too tightly on the fear of youths and violence, while largely ignoring the majority, who avoid antisocial behaviour and use a variety of means (often with little or no state support) to eke out a living.

The informal sector (and the distinctions between the formal and informal sectors appear increasingly redundant) holds the potential to facilitate economic growth, peace and security, so kpa kpa kpa provides nuggets for deepening our understanding of the mindset of the youth and how such entrepreneurial ingenuity can be understood/appreciated, supported and leveraged for our development.

Kpa kpa kpa not only has local and international economic value but also embodies and connotes a complex philosophical orientation of poor people living in poor urban communities who, through their creativity, challenge the negative stereotypes associated with them as people prone to antisocial behaviour. 

It is such misunderstandings that have strained the relationships between most of the youths living in poor urban communities and the police across the majority of Africa. Kpa kpa kpa has deep-seated implications for the peace, security and development of Ghana and Africa.
Moreover, Ghana could potentially register kpa kpa kpa (as communal IP) in order to depict a particular genre of young (fe)males’ creativity and resilience that enables them to eke out a living within the informal sector in difficult economic conditions.

This has been discovered in Ghana. After all, at the very least, we gave the world the terms ‘the informal economy’ and kwashiorkor, so kpa kpa kpa could definitely qualify as another addition to the lexicon of the informal economy, and the gig economy (dominated by Gen Z), that describes, using a single word, the complexity associated with young people’s resilience in the post-COVID economic predicament in which Africa finds itself. 

Emmanuel Sowatey PhD 

Writer's email:  eas96@cam.ac.uk