A project born from a Ghanaian basketball story has found a new audience in Europe. US-based Ghanaian musician and PhD candidate KooKusi has had his “This Ability” EP accepted into the CARE – Culture for Mental Health Project, an EU co-funded catalogue that identifies and showcases artworks engaging with health, well-being, and social inclusion for circulation across European cultural events.
CARE operates across nine European countries, bringing together stakeholders from culture, health, education, and business to advance the use of arts and cultural experiences in supporting mental health among young people, working adults, and people with disabilities.
Inclusion in its catalogue is designed to help selected works reach festivals, institutions, and audiences throughout the continent, placing “This Ability” in conversation with a body of European work built around the same themes the EP was created to explore.
KooKusi, born Nana Kofi Kusi-Boadum, released “This Ability” in September 2025, his fourth project and third solo EP. The four tracks are built around the life of Emmanuel “Clock” Ekow Amoako, a Ghanaian basketball player, coach, and entrepreneur who lives with anisomelia, a limb length discrepancy.
KooKusi, who met Amoako at university and has credited him with helping shape his own confidence, structures the EP as a full-circle narrative, opening with a choral retelling of their first encounter. The EP moves through spoken word and an interview excerpt drawn from Amoako’s own voice, and closes with a hip-hop version of the opening track told from a position of triumph.
The EP extends a yearly project KooKusi began with his 2022 debut “5foot3,” each instalment using a different lens on insecurity and mental health. Where his earlier work turned inward, “This Ability” turns to someone else’s story, treating Amoako’s perseverance as a wider statement on stigma and resilience. The approach is consistent with KooKusi’s dual identity: alongside his music career, he is a neuroscience PhD candidate who has spoken about using hip-hop as a form of science communication.
Its selection by CARE gives “This Ability” a foothold in a European mental health and arts ecosystem that reaches an estimated one million people through the project’s awareness efforts. A notable expansion for a project rooted specifically in Ghanaian sport and culture, now positioned as part of a continental conversation it wasn’t originally built for, but speaks directly to.
