Many were shocked to learn that the 2022 Afrochella would be the final one held in Ghana.
The “shattering” news was revealed by Afrochella organizers at the very end of the two-day event in December 2022. In front of the tens of thousands of spectators gathered at the El-Wak stadium in Ghana’s capital, Accra, co-founder Abdul Abdullah declared, “This is the last Afrochella.”
Afrochella co-founder Ken Agyapong Jr. recently provided an update, revealing that despite their initial announcement that the yearly exhibition would conclude in 2022, the festival would return this year, in 2023.
The event will now go by a new name and identity, marking the end of the term “Afrochella” from the previous year, according to the organizers of the annual event.
The co-founder, remarked on Daybreak Hitz, “We really came up with the concept of changing names at the beginning of last year (2022), in February, when we dedicated that the theme for the year will be Afrofuturism. Because we were intending to change the name in the long run.
Due to a lawsuit for copyright infringement against Afrochella by Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival and its producer, Goldenvoice, there were rumors that the event might not be returning. On Wednesday, October 5, the lawsuit was submitted at a federal court in California.
Coachella and Goldenvoice accuse Afrochella of “intentionally capitalizing on the goodwill of [Coachella and Goldenvoice’s] well-known COACHELLA and CHELLA festivals and trademarks” by actively advertising music events in the US and Ghana under the confusingly similar term “AFROCHELLA” and by dishonestly attempting to register Plaintiffs’ real trademarks as their own.
Mr. Agyapong refuted these allegations, saying that plans for the change from Afrochella to AfroFuture had been made months earlier. He revealed that even the names of their social media handles have been changed before the event in December 2022.
