Fakery and Fabrications in Kumasi’s “Modern” Market

Abstract

ABSTRACT In this contribution, I trace the fake and fabrication in the production of contemporary African urban space. Reflecting on the dispossession and displacement of vendors in Kumasi, Ghana, as part of the city authorities’ “modern” market project, I argue that these narratives demonstrate a fabrication of modernity where local authorities impress Westernized design, space, and aesthetics as if this is a singular and inevitable urban future, despite vendors’ ubiquitous commercial operations otherwise. I also argue that this modernity is fabricated through material design projects like the “modern” market, built through global financing, Western imported materials, and technologies that enable local authorities to render their own narrow and aspirational vision of “modern” space as the singular urban future.