Copenhagen Business School

Aligning Different Worlds: A Transnational Perspective on the Use of Capital by Ghanaian Returnee Entrepreneurs in the Creative Arts Industry

In the master’s thesis Aligning Different Worlds: A Transnational Perspective on the Use of Capital by Ghanaian Returnee Entrepreneurs in the Creative Arts Industry, researcher Ellen Amanda Haarman explores how Ghanaian returnee entrepreneurs navigate the realities of building creative businesses between local and global contexts.

The study looks at entrepreneurs working across fashion, cultural arts and digital media, examining how international experience, local knowledge, networks and cultural identity shape their work. Within this wider research, Elle Lokko appears as part of Accra’s emerging creative retail landscape — one of the few local spaces connecting contemporary African designers such as AAKS and Raffia to audiences in Ghana.

The thesis captures an early moment in the development of Accra’s creative economy, when independent designers, returnee entrepreneurs and new concept spaces were beginning to reshape how African fashion, design and cultural enterprise could be seen, supported and experienced.