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 transport cocoa, one of Ghana's biggest exports. Each sack bore the printed names of different traders, a physical record of the hands that commodities pass through on their journey from farm to port. At Documenta 14 in 2017, he wrapped Kassel's historic gatehouse in jute, scrap metal, and locomotive leather. In 2019, he was the youngest artist featured in Ghana's first-ever national pavilion at Venice. His work lives in the collections of the Centre Pompidou, LACMA, and the National Gallery in Washington. Yet he kept returning to Tamale.

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 metres understates its reach -- the institution sprawls across more than 200 acres at three locations in and around Tamale, including Red Clay Studio and Nkrumah Voli-ni. Together, these spaces host exhibitions, film screenings, workshops, and residencies that draw artists from across the continent and beyond. Affiliated with blaxTARLINES KUMASI, the centre focuses on 20th-century art and cultural practices that continue to shape new generations of artists and thinkers in West Africa.

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 was a deliberate provocation -- a refusal to accept that culture flows only from capital cities. Mahama has spoken about wanting to create infrastructure that stays, rather than temporary installations that travel to European biennials and disappear. At SCCA, curators like Selom Kudjle and exhibitions such as Bernard Akoi-Jackson's retrospective foster critical dialogue rooted in local experience rather than imported frameworks. The centre has become a gathering point for artists who might otherwise have migrated south or abroad.

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 the south, pilots cross the Volta basin and the scattered settlements of the Northern Region before the city's grid resolves below. Tamale International Airport (DGLE) lies just east of the city. The dry season, from November to March, offers the clearest visibility, though harmattan dust can obscure the horizon. Below, Tamale's markets, mosques, and the SCCA campus form the cultural heart of a region that is increasingly impossible to overlook.