We have the receipts

As a community member, you may have heard of the RDDM Project. It stands for Research, Data and Documentation Management Project. No? We’ve been emailing a number of you religiously, every quarter, with updates. Still no? Okay, I’ll tell you all about it. The RDDM Project was started in 2022 to gather and document all data relating to LGBTQ+ people in Ghana from pre to post colonial times. Imagine that. Academic writing, tweets, articles, news clippings, research papers, soundbites from radio interviews, recordings from television shows and interviews, songs about and by openly queer Ghanaians all in one large archive. That was the RDDM Project, which is now the Digital Archive Project. 

One of the many lessons I’ve learned a little too late (I process things slowly, please. Allow me) is that if you don’t tell your story, someone will tell it for you, and in their own… well, interesting way. Lately we’ve been hearing all kinds of stories about ourselves as queer people. I’m sure we’ve all heard that queerness was learned from social media and television, brought to us specifically by white people. Ha! I’ll remind you of one of my favourite fairy tales (Oh how I wish it were true): Africans are paid to identify as LGBTQ+. It’s through the ridiculousness of such claims that we were blessed with the iconic phrase “na gay dey reign”. A Nigerian queer person responded to the idea that queer people were being paid to identify as queer, with a sarcastic tweet saying indeed, they were home one day when they heard an LGBTQ+ recruiter at their door and opened it only to discover on their doorstep, a pamphlet with the text “na gay dey reign” printed boldly on the surface. We love a good pro-queer clapback, but thank heavens we also have a thick (and I mean thick) data repository to refer to when disputing outdated information, stereotypes and outright lies about LGBTQ+ people. God only knows the sources of the information relied on to create that dreadful anti-LGBTQ+ bill.

The Digital Archive Project includes carefully documented and curated data on everything LGBTQ+ in Ghana from 1960 to 2024 into 10,000+ files and 35 gigabytes worth of data. The purpose of gathering this data is for education and advocacy because really at this point the lies being told about queer Ghanaians are too many. Ebei!

The Archive has good news, bad news and just… news. We see the introduction of the law often relied on to discriminate against gay people in Ghana - a law created by British people, like most of our laws were at the time; we see the few well-known Ghanaians who were bold enough to speak against the anti-LGBTQ bill; and of course, we see politicians and popular people in Ghana whose stance on human rights changes depending on the political climate and ruling party at the moment coughs in Sam George Nartey. Isn’t it great to have a record of not only allies and true humanitarians - not “selective social justice warriors” like Lawyer Francis Xavier-Sosu - but also the dishonest people responsible for the abuse that the LGBTQ+ community in Ghana has faced over the years? I certainly think so. 

Following the data in chronological order could help you make interesting connections between what initially may have seemed like a couple of unrelated events. Remember the current American Vice-President’s visit to Freedom Skatepark in 2023, and its closure less than two months later for false and homophobic reasons? Right. The connections are just waiting to be made and I'd say more, but as they say, there's time for everything. We'll be analysing the data in the archive one blogpost at a time, so stay with me.

The archive is a great data source for political and human rights education in Ghana for all citizens including queer people and allies, and for human rights activists looking for further information on Ghana’s political climate in terms of human rights justice. The sources of the data on the website are social media platforms, blogs, websites, queer community events, newspapers and even anti-queer organisations and gatherings. In all this, of course, security measures are adopted. Not all information is available to the general public, though. Data that contains personally identifiable information is protected and must be requested with reasonable justification. We’ve got you covered. Literally. 

One of my favourite things about the website apart from all the things I’ve already said, and the fact that it’s user-friendly, is that it has a social networking section. If you visit the website on your phone, on the top right corner of the page you see a couple of options under the search bar and one of those is “DAP group”. Over there you have your Facebook or Twitter-like social network where you get to post and chat with like minded queer people and allies once you join. No bigots allowed, of course. You’re armed with ‘block’ and ‘report’ features for sneaky homophobes who may have found their way into our space. 

Unfortunately, I’m convinced certain people have made a promise to themselves to live and die homophobes regardless of the information presented to them, and honestly, that’s okay. We’ll focus on the people who care to listen. I know some of you are reading this post right now, bless you. This blog is for you; this project is for you, and if you want to stay up to date with everything Digital Archive Project-related, check out our social media pages for details on the next quarterly meeting. 

Really, you should visit the website. Check it out right after reading this. Thanks to the good work the researchers and curators are doing, you probably won’t get even halfway through all the data, and that’s okay because I’ll be bringing you stories and posts every month from now till January 2025, referring to data from the vault. One thing about the Community Archive Blog? We make learning fun. 

Welcome to the project, welcome to the blog, and see you next time!