Qualla: Savannah Centre for Contemporary Art

Savannah Centre for Contemporary Art: Introduction

Fri, 06 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

In 2011, Ibrahim Mahama was crossing the Ghanaian border into Burkina Faso when he stopped to watch trucks hauling jute sacks of cocoa and grain. The sacks moved freely between nations while the people who filled them waited for stamps and permissions. That observation became the raw material for installations that would wrap the walls of the Venice Biennale and the gatehouses of Documenta. But Mahama's most ambitious project was not a temporary exhibition in Europe. It was permanent, and it was home: the Savannah Centre for Contemporary Art in Tamale, the largest city in northern Ghana and Mahama's birthplace.

Savannah Centre for Contemporary Art: Jute and Justice

Fri, 06 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Mahama was born in Tamale in 1987 and studied at the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology in Kumasi. His breakthrough came at the 56th Venice Biennale in 2015, where he wrapped two prominent walls of the Arsenale in stitched jute sacks -- the same sacks used to tran...

Savannah Centre for Contemporary Art: Art in the Savannah

Fri, 06 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

SCCA-Tamale opened in March 2019 as a 900-square-metre multidisciplinary space in a city better known for its shea butter trade than its gallery scene. The centre functions as a 15-room artist residency, exhibition venue, research hub, and cultural repository. But 900 square metr...

Savannah Centre for Contemporary Art: Building Where None Was Expected

Fri, 06 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Northern Ghana has long been economically overshadowed by the cocoa-rich south and the bustling coast around Accra. Tamale sits in the Guinea savannah zone, a landscape of red laterite soil, shea trees, and dry-season haze. To build a world-class contemporary art institution here...

Savannah Centre for Contemporary Art: From Above the Volta Basin

Fri, 06 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Tamale sprawls across flat terrain at roughly 180 metres elevation, and from the air the city's low-rise architecture blends into the surrounding savannah. The centre's compound is distinguishable by its clustered buildings amid open land on the city's outskirts. Approaching from...