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This introductory chapter addresses the ownership and intellectual property protection of adinkra and kente fabrics. It asks: what are the opposing principles of authorship and alienability in the production of these fabrics? What are the legal implications when these conflicting principles meet? What appropriation practices are found around adinkra and kente, and what are their implications in Ghana’s copyright protections of folklore? Adinkra and kente are among arts that became an important part of Asante culture from the eighteenth to nineteenth centuries, specifically for the social and economic significance of cloth in Ghana.

This chapter discusses the authorship and ownership practices of Asante cloth makers that the intellectual property law opposed. Asante’s design of adinkra and kente became their ownership claims. These claims encompass cloth production as a whole; therefore, distinguishing it from claims over individual designs, which is an intellectual property right. The chapter also explains the generational teaching of producing these fabrics. Those with strongest access in learning to produce these fabrics are cloth makers’ immediate family members who are familiar with the cloth production process.

This chapter discusses the gender discrimination in the production of adinkra and kente. Males are privileged in the cloth-producing communities since the women’s cloth designs and production are not patronized in local communities. This gendering of indigenous and local cultural production and design became more debatable because of the intellectual property law. Gendering around cloth production occurs not only according to the identity of those who produce it but also according to the sphere in which cloth production occurs.

This chapter discusses how both adinkra and kente makers and musicians fight for the copyright protection of their products. Ghanaian recording artists and producers began to press for more effective copyright protection of their work in the late 1970s after cassette recording technology became widely available in Ghana. Ghanaian cloth producers, however, did not ask the government for the protection of their product. A lobbying group of musicians were instrumental in shaping various aspects of the country’s intellectual property law since Ghana’s independence in 1957. They demonstrate that the ownership claims around different kinds of cultural production are dependent on the capacity to relate to the state as a citizen and legal subject.

This chapter examines ethnic, diasporic, and national identities as the basis for ownership claims of adinkra and kente. Adinkra and kente producers consider their communities, ethnic group, or the Asantehene, as the owners of these fabrics. Ethnic ownership claims become citizen ownership claims when these fabric producers offer their cloth design to Ghanaian artists. The design, however, does not become an endorsement of state ownership. Cloth-producing communities often challenge the ownership of state for their design. As citizens claim these designs as Ghanaian rather than ethnic, they confirm the legitimacy and success of the state’s ongoing project of cultural nationalism.

This chapter addresses the circulation of adinkra and kente in global markets. Asante cloth producers are part of the global economy since the tourism industry markets these fabrics to foreigners. This circulation is considered as cultural flow that brings different parts of the world into closer contact with each other. However, the global cultural flows of their products are uneven. Asians rather than Africans became the most effective producers of “African” cloth for global markets. Ghana should restore the link between Ghanaian production sources and global markets or intervene in those markets in ways that reduce some of the losses caused by consumption practices that undermine the importance of adinkra and kente producers.