International author, speaker and Ghana-based minister Michelle McKinney Hammond says Ghana’s deep culture of worship, communal solidarity and shared identity gives the country a moral strength that many parts of the world have lost, and that Africans should reclaim pride in that heritage as a foundation for building stronger economies and societies.
Speaking on the Asaase Breakfast Show on Tuesday, March 10, McKinney-Hammond reflected on her decision more than a decade ago to leave the United States and make Ghana her permanent home, describing it as one of the most fulfilling choices of her life.
“I tell people wherever I go that Ghanaians are worshippers. They are prayers. They know how to pray,” she said. “In Ghana, when someone falls on hard times, everyone rallies around them. In many places in the West, life is more isolated.”
McKinney-Hammond, whose Ghanaian father George Hammond was originally from Ghana before he passed, has long maintained deep ties to the country. She leads Relevance, a music ministry based in Ghana that takes worship beyond church walls through a genre she describes as a fusion of rock, reggae, jazz and African percussion.
She recalled the moment she decided to relocate permanently. After years of managing obligations in both countries following her father’s death, she reached a point of spiritual clarity. “I heard God say move to Ghana,” she said. “Three weeks later everything I owned and my three dogs were on a plane.” She said she has not looked back since. “I love my life here. It’s a rich life and a good life.”
On African identity, she offered a perspective that was both historical and aspirational, arguing that Africa’s leadership traditions gave its people a psychological foundation distinct from those shaped by colonial subjugation. “We were kings before there were slaves,” she said, urging young Africans to rediscover that pride and convert it into economic action by supporting local businesses and the continent’s own resources. “Africa is actually the only continent that doesn’t need the rest of the world,” she said. “Every resource needed in the world is here.”
McKinney-Hammond also spoke about what drove her to become a writer. She said it was not ambition but attentiveness. Years of listening to women share their private struggles convinced her that their pain was not individual but widespread, and that no one was speaking to it directly.
“In advertising they say one letter equals a thousand voices,” she said, drawing on her earlier career as an award-winning advertising art director. “After hearing all these conversations, I realised there were thousands of women out there feeling the same way but no one was speaking to them.”
She began journaling her reflections, and those notes eventually became books. Her debut title sold more than 12,000 copies within three weeks, launching a career that has since produced more than 40 books with over two million copies sold worldwide. Among her best-known titles are The Power of Being a Woman and Secrets of an Irresistible Woman.
A personal loss shaped the deeper themes of her work. She described a turning point in the late 1980s following the death of her boyfriend, which forced her to confront questions of permanence and self-worth. “That was the first time I realised that nothing is permanent and no one is promised to always be in your life,” she said. “The hole in my heart was not a person-sized hole. It was a God-sized and purpose-sized hole.”
She closed with a challenge to anyone searching for direction. “Think about what people celebrate about you that you think is nothing,” she said. “That is usually your gift.”
