Black August Twi Program Links Language Learning to Cultural Self-Determination
Black August is often marked through remembrance, political education and renewed attention to the unfinished work of Black liberation. In Ghana this weekend, that reflection is taking a linguistic form.
Abibitumi is launching eight Twi language classes with cultural orientation on Saturday, August 29 at 4:00 p.m. GMT. The program, announced by linguist and Abibitumi founder Ɔbenfo Ọbádéle Kambon, can be attended at Jamrock Restaurant at the University of Ghana or online through Zoom.
- Begins: Saturday, August 29, 2026 at 4:00 p.m. GMT
- Attend: Jamrock Restaurant at the University of Ghana or online via Zoom
- Program: Eight classes with Twi language instruction and cultural orientation
- Cost: 500 GHS or US$50
- Member offer: 50% off for members of selected organizations
Language is infrastructure
It is easy to treat indigenous language as a ceremonial symbol while conducting education, commerce and public life almost entirely through colonial languages. A conversational course pushes in the opposite direction. It treats language as infrastructure: something people use to form relationships, transmit values and understand the world around them.
The series is aimed especially at repatriates and others who have lived in Ghana without gaining conversational confidence. That audience matters. Diasporan return can reproduce distance if newcomers remain enclosed in English-speaking networks. Learning Twi creates more opportunities to listen, to ask, and to enter community life with humility.
Ɔbenfo Kambon says the instruction brings university-level linguistic grounding to an accessible short course. His academic focus includes Akan language varieties such as Asante Twi, Akuapem Twi and Fante.
No eight-class series can complete the work of language recovery. It can, however, establish a disciplined beginning—and Black August is an appropriate time to make one.
Register for the Black August Twi classes.
Source: an August 28, 2026 announcement by Ɔbenfo Ọbádéle Kambon for Abibitumi and the Decade of Our Repatriation. Watch the original announcement.