Dr. Susan Tatah’s journey as Public Speaker, Media Personality and African Cultural Researcher began long before she formally embraced the title. With an academic background in International Marketing and Business Administration from the European School of Business, Reutlingen University of Applied Sciences, Germany, her lifelong interest has centered on understanding people, communities, identity, culture, and development.
Her dissertation, titled “How to Promote African Culture through Festivals,” became the foundation of what would later evolve into one of Germany’s longest-running African Diaspora cultural platforms.
When Dr. Susan Tatah first launched the Afrika Festival in Reutlingen, Germany, her primary goal was simple: to bring Africans together and create a sense of home away from home. Having grown up in an African village environment where community, culture, traditions, and collective identity formed the basis of everyday life, she understood the importance of creating spaces where Africans could gather, reconnect, celebrate, and preserve their heritage.
Her festivals format offered the perfect vehicle. Through music, food, dance, fashion, storytelling, and community interaction, African culture could be brought to the forefront and shared with wider German and international audiences.
What started as a small community initiative soon grew into a major International attraction. Today, there are hundreds of African festivals across Germany and Europe, many featuring similar elements such as markets, music performances, dance shows, workshops, food villages, and entertainment programs.
However, over the years, Dr. Susan Tatah began asking deeper questions:
What is truly African culture?
Is African culture merely entertainment, music, dance, and food? To her these are elements or tools of the African culture! What about its values, history, knowledge, symbols, spirituality, Institutions, philosophies, economic practices, and social structures that shape how a people live and develop?
These questions gradually transformed her role from festival founder to African culture researcher.
Through decades of practical engagement with African communities and extensive observation of German society, Dr. Susan Tatah became increasingly interested in understanding how culture influences economic development, social organization, identity formation, innovation, leadership, and nation-building.
Inspired by the similarity in some German culture that reflects African culture, a demonstration of how symbols, traditions, spirituality, values, ancestrial memories, discipline, and collective memory contribute to the long-term development and prosperity of a society.
Her current research role as African culture researcher with focus on indigenous or ancient African culture and traditions, seeks to address her understanding of her heritage such as
Apart from being a Public and Media Personality, Dr. Susan Tatah is talented in facilitating through interpersonal communication in relationships. The new phase of her life’s work as an African Culture Researcher is dedicated to exploring, documenting, preserving, and promoting African cultural knowledge clichees, random speaking and beyond entertainment.
Her work seeks to reposition African culture as a strategic asset for education, leadership, identity, innovation, economic development, and community transformation.
For Dr. Susan Tatah, culture is not simply what people wear, eat, sing, or dance but the background understanding of what they wear, eat, sing and dance and its impact to economics and development
This new chapter represents a commitment to deeper inquiry, lifelong learning, and the search for practical cultural solutions that can contribute to building a stronger Africa and a more connected global African community.
