Oualid Khelifi - Multimedia Author

Youngsters at the festival's host quarter of Jamestown playing football inside a derelict colonial building whose walls have been used over the years to showcase African-themed murals.

Deeply rooted in the community, the festival's production believes that partnering up with local workforce is central to the event's success. On the eve of live paintings, a worker brushes up the wall to provide fresh space for muralists and graffiti artists.

Faustina Ayambire is a traditional-paint muralist from Northern Ghana. She begun sketching her work on the eve of the festival with Accra-based artist Safo Kutorwu (far side), but decided to finish it live during the event. Her piece features ancestral designs from her native village where birds represent human relationships, lizards refer to friendship, and cows signal wealth.

A vistor takes a selfie with street art work featuring 'African Electronics', the theme of this year's edition of the festival. The event was extensively documented by the public on Instagram with more than 4,000 posts on #ChaleWote2015 hashtag on the closing night.

A Ghanian dance troupe throwing performances along the high street of Jamestown. The artists showcased contemporary choreography to the sound of popular Ghanian and West African pop hits in order to establish a dialectic between conceptual art and ordinary people on the streets.

Mantse Aryeequaye, festival's co-director/co-founder, also embraces the edition's theme of African Electronics. His mask was offered by Ghanian contemporary artist Serge Attukwei Clottey who produces his art pieces and installations out of ubiquitous yellow gallon containers found around Ghana.

A member of GoLokal performance collective during “Gods Must Be Crazy” procession. The piece is led and curated by Serge Attukwei Clottey, an Accra-based Ghanian visual artist and founder of GoLokal. Serge believes that “colonial rulers stole elements of African Electronics to develop their technology, and have failed to acknowledge it”. He recycles ubiquitous yellow gallon containers around 'Afrogallonism', a concept he created in his increasingly renowned art works.

A live performance by Ghanian-Togolose artist Crazinist and Italian anthropologist Natascia Silverio. Both performers advance that their piece is interactive and entirely open in interpretation. Setting their show outside a bible store is in itself a dialectical exchange with the audience. Conceived around the Christian-themed 'Pietà' sculpture of Michelangelo, this work teases the mind around Africa's lamentation towards the white colonialist in this past. On the other hand, it implies a tacit question of how and by who the continent should be enacted in the present and future.

Finished piece of Faustina Ayambire showcased on the festival's main high street. “Dignity and Respect means using three colours only: black, white and red. They are all found in raw earth material in my rural region, nothing synthetic. To me, it is African know-how and technology, it is African Electronics”

'Million Man Riot' is a mural of Ghanian artist Bright Tetteh Ackwerh. This piece is conceived as a fantasy riot of various distinctive characters who have led or influenced the discourse on African identity in today's world. The mural features, amongst many others, Libya's late leader Muammar al-Gaddafi, Burkina Faso's revolutionary assassinated president Thomas Sankara and Zimbabwe's current head of state Robert Mugabe.

Elisabeth Efua Sutherland, Ghanian conceptual dancer, co-founder and artistic director of Accra Theatre Workshop (ATW) interpreting a celebrated quote for the African Electronics theme in a live performance. “We face neither east nor west. We face forward" are the words of Kwame Nkrumah, a politician and an intellectual who led Ghana to independence and became its first president. The quote came in the context of cold war during which Nkrumah emerged as a staunch pan-Africanist.

A street seller attending a performance while carrying his goods: Chale Wotes. These two words constitute a common phrase in Ghanian lingua franca, meaning flip-flops worn by popular classes. The festival was named as such in the spirit of bringing art and providing an independent space of expression in Jamestown as one of Accra's economically-challenged neighbourhoods.

Street procession of children from Jamestown. According to Mantse Aryeequaye, Ghanian producer and festival's co-director/co-founder, the idea behind the event is to have Jamestown youthful population, not only as a proud host, but also as a major stakeholder for the success of the festival and the future of socially-engaged street art in Ghana.

Dozens of Ghanian graffiti artists – experienced or in their debut - turned out to this year's edition of Chale Wote to interpret the theme of 'African Electronics'. As the walls dedicated to murals were getting full, artists used the floors of Jamestown streets to carry live-showcase of their work.

Kenturah Davis is an African American portraiture & design artist based between Accra and Los Angeles. Her piece 'The March' is a series of flags featuring portraits of artists on large-scale prints which integrate coding technology to make them interactive. Experimental Ghanian D&B and House music DJ Steloo is one of the figures through which Kenturah explores - both digitally and in performance - narratives of characters she deems able to lead us to a better world.

Upcoming Ghanian DJ Steloo does much more than spinning a record. Honouring the festival's theme, he set up a drumming kit out of used cans. Besides his deep-house and electro influences, being a connoisseur of the local Accra scene as well as the popular backstreets gives him the extra edge to throw memorable shows in any context.

South African actress and performance artist Lindiwe Matshikiza animates an interactive electro-loop sound performance with local Jamestown children. She is a member of Johannesburg-based collective JHB Massive whose multidisciplinary work encompasses music, dance, film, visual arts, performance, theatre, design, graffiti, linguistics and archive. From adventures in experimental, interactive sound-making to pirate radio broadcasting; intergenerational, genre-busting jam sessions to live installations and imaginative murals: JHB Massive invites all to share in the results of when artists seriously play together.

Dean Hutton (right) is a South African photograpgher, multimedia artist and performer. Along with Ghanian-Togolose artist Crazinist and Italian anthropologist Natascia Silveri, Dean improvises a live street performance around the theme of transgender people in the continent, daringly exploring shackles shackles and prejudice inherited from colonial morality and religion.

In its fifth edition, Chale Wote festival has become a magnetic showcase for aspiring Ghanian and West African musicians who take the opportunity to present their talent freely to a keen and an engaging audience.

Local girls playing 'Hampe' by Jamestown lighthouse, a very popular kids' game in Ghana. Throughout the weekend of the festival, roads are blocked off for vehicles, allowing only pedestrians and bikers. Despite the very vital location of Jamestown as a main axis in central Accra, local authorities, administrations as well as businesses have been collaborative to let locals fully enjoy and take over the space one weekend per year.

Throughout the event, hundreds of local Jamestown kids take out to the streets. Feeling a sweeping pride as children of festival's host community, some have picked up basic graffiti skills to print in chalk 'Chale Wote' all over the place.

Two university students came to check out the urban exhibition of hanging metal tins. They remember their childhood when they used to make little cars and toys out of trash milk cans, “but this work is much more than a piece of contemporary art, it must have built a whole community to gather all this material, then engage its members to recycle. It's the conceptual art which matters, and we are very proud that some of Young Ghanians are doing this”, said one of the students.

Member of Accra-based AfroDistrict collective posing at a vintage performance stall conceived as an installation space to display old fashion and archive elements. The piece is aimed to give Ghanian vintage an identity within the global context of the trend.

“We let the outfit do the talking”, says Ghanian fashion designer Enkasa Apparel (middle) about the showcase parade he staged with his models. The alternative suitmaker believes that meaningful fashion in today's Africa should be rooted in the inherited touch and design “so that it is more telling of who we are … of our personalities as Africans. It's not only what we wear and how we look like”, he added.

A young member of Flat Land Boys, an Accra-based BMX crew founded by internationally acclaimed bike-stunting performer Martin Kwaku Abrokwah, showcasing his skills. He is wearing Abrokwah's t-shirt, known in Jamestown and Ghana's street art scene as 'Bike Lord'.

Ghanian, African and international turnout for Chale Wote festival has been exponentially on the rise since the event's first edition in 2011. This year, an estimate of over 15,000 people descended onto the streets of Jamestown. The Festival has become a landmark in West Africa's artistic calendar, attracting diaspora-based Ghanian and African artists as much as street art enthusiasts.

“We've been to the festival before, but we've never really gone deep into the backstreets of Jamestown. Looking at it from here, it is so impressive how such an economically-challenged quarter is able and secure such an event”, exclaimed one of the two students.

Palm wine has been receding from urban centres around West Africa. Associated to rural life and working class farmers, most city dwellers snub this alcoholic beverage. The trend has made it even less relevant in the drinking culture, especially following decades of colonial restrictions to promote beer, gin and whiskey on one hand, and ban traditional drinks on the other. Chale Wote is calling for its return.

Subscribing to the edition's theme of 'African Electronics', Jamestown locals see in their makeshift houses a resilient know-how and creative technology to adapt and thrive forward despite harsh urban settings.

Artists and organisers change and wrap up as night falls and festival approaches its end. This court belongs to a Jamestown building named 'Brazil House', a memorial celebration of African returnees who were forcibly taken to Brazil as salves, then returned centuries later as free men and women to today's Ghana.

View of the festival's location from the top of Jamestown lighthouse, situated at the heart of the colonial quarter.

Crowds gather up early afternoon on the main street of Jamestown for the opening of the festival.

Multidisciplinary Ghanian artist Benard Akoi Jackson acting a silent moving piece. In his internationally acclaimed work, he interprets hybrid post-colonial African identities through performative rituals.

Ghanian-Jamaican artist Yinka Esi Graves performing an alternative flamenco set with local dancers.

Members of Circus Ghana throwing a moving performance around the street of James Town, the hosting quarter of the festival.

Young ladies from another Accra neighbourhood heading to the street party to join friends.

Local Teenage bicycle acrobats showcasing their skills during breaks between performances.

Artist Adjoa Amoah drags a moving exposition as part of 'Exit Frames' installation which she conceived and showcased with other Ghanian artists.

Young actors of Accra Theatre Workshop (ATW) preparing for a community street piece under the curious looks of the neighbourhood’s children.

Members of Afro District fashion collective on a photo shoot at different urban sites of the festival's location.

A group of Jamestown youngsters greet playfully passers-by.

A young man paints his face to join a street parade of disguised artists and dancers.

A Guinean-Senegalese young lady posing with local community members who dressed up for the occasion. Hawa Eva has lived and run a business in Accra for several years, but it was her first time attending Chale Wote street festival.

Members of Accra-based Rolla Wondaland collective jumping in turns over a colleague of theirs. Some visitors watching the show from the top of James Town lighthouse.

Burkinabe graphic artist El Marto taking a break. He came down from Ouagadougou to showcase his satirical prints evoking contemporary pop tendencies in Burkina Faso and Ghana.

Christian and muslim kids of James Town play about up and down the streets of Jamestown.

A collective of muralists prepare to improvise a large painting on the ground right at the heart of the festival's location.

Siaka Diarra Burkinabe kora player performs with other musicians from Burkina Faso at Chale Wote live music stage.

Participants amongst artists and street performers change their outfits in a court of an old colonial house.

Local children dancing to at the main stage to a DJ mix of West African popular hits on the event's closing night.