Kwesi Owusu RIP

I learned a week or so ago that Kwesi Owusu had died in London in March.

According to his obituary, written by Janet Lawrence, and published in The Guardian on June 2, 2025

The author and film-maker Kwesi Owusu, who has died aged 70, wrote several notable books on Black culture in Britain, and was a founder member of the influential performance group African Dawn, which emerged from the vibrant creative scene of the Africa Centre in Covent Garden, London, in the 1980s. During that time, he also co-produced and directed the groundbreaking film Ama: An African Journey of Discovery for Channel 4, which was recently restored and included in the BFI’s 2023 African Odyssey season.
After returning to his native Ghana, Owusu became an advocate for the Ghanaian and African people, both through his leadership of the African branch of Jubilee 2000, a global initiative calling for debt cancellation for the world’s poorest countries, and his media production agency Creative Storm, whose documentaries on subjects such as maternal health and access to water have sparked real change.

I had known him since the 1980s when he published his book The Struggle for Black Arts in Britain and had been in conversation with him as recently as last year. Kwesi had agreed to take part in a series of interviews for the Miaaw podcasts about his work in Britain and in Africa, but sadly that will now never happen.