
How Online Love Scams Created a Culture: The Power and Influences behind Sakawa

Somewhere in the world, a person is scrolling through online profiles. They already have a mission they hope to complete—at some point. This mission that takes up so much time of their day is likely to be something they heard about through a friend, acquaintance, or word of mouth.
This job will take up a lot of their time. They will at some point become an expert, if they get really good at it. It just takes that one pingback—the reply, the back-and-forth messages, and eventually, the growing familiarity—to hook someone they have never met in the flesh, and never will.
Many of them spend copious amounts of time online scrolling, clicking, and searching for a “client.” That client is likely to be a man or woman in search of a true genuine connection, who then hopes to fall in love. Yet the client does not know they are a client—or, more accurately, mark—soon to become victim to having hundreds of thousands of dollars instantly whisked away.

Internet scamming in Ghana became prominent from 2013, stemming from neighboring country Nigeria, where internet scams were very popular and prominent. Each scam involved victims forking over money based on the promise of business opportunities and romantic relationships, which turned out to be fake, a way for the scammer to make money through bank and money transfers sent from the victim.
In Ghana, the common underground term you will hear is Sakawa; the word is in Hausa, mostly spoken in the African continent, with the translation meaning “to put inside.” “Sakawa boys” are a massive network throughout the peaceful West African country, with a population of over 30 million. You’re probably thinking the term is another way of saying scam artist, fraudster, or a Ghanaian version for what Nigerians coined as ”Yahoo Boy,” after the use of Yahoo email accounts, used in a plethora of multi-million-dollar scams. It kind of is, but also includes an intensive spiritual activity, which we will explore later.

Creating a fake online personality is, shockingly, a skillset when it comes to romance scamming. Yes, a lot of people are doing it, but doing it successfully doesn’t come easy. When creating a fictional online persona, it’s not just about finding a photo of a girl next door or everyone’s typical hot blonde. Yes, looks matter, as they are the ultimate determining factor for swiping left vs. right, but that’s not the usual recipe to create an ideal online crush magnet. Several successful scammers have dumped a backlog of photos left on old hard drives deposits in e-waste sites, such as a massive one in Accra, Ghana. According to a United Nations report, around 50 million tons of electronic waste is shipped each year, often illegally, from the West to developing countries across Africa and Asia.
Although unfortunate and problematic, resulting in an increased harm to the environment and citizens, an e-waste site is also a secret moneymaker for Sakawa boys as it provides them with the raw data to engage in online romance frauds.
Music is influential throughout Africa, and some songs form a soundtrack to the lives of many young men who dabble or are engaged full time in successful scams. Randy Walker, a music, media, and marketing executive based in Ghana, shed light on how music and scams fester and become normalized in Ghana:
“Music, particularly in genres like hip-hop and dancehall and their sub-genres, could influence attitudes and culture changes towards the internet fraud lifestyle,” he said. “Some songs and artists in these genres have and continue to glorify materialism and promote the get-rich-quick-and-by-all-means mantra in their lyrics and public show of wealth, which could normalize this behaviour and desensitize fans to its harms.”
He continued, adding that in Ghana, music often serves as a source of motivation for most of the young people who engage in fraudulent activities—carrying them through the long nights and days. “Owing to this, they usually post lyrics from some of these songs to celebrate their successes and further idolize the music stars as suppliers of ‘truth’ and ‘real-life’ inspiration.”
As Randy Walker points out, people can become desensitized to this activity.

Scamming means faking another person’s identity and attempting to build a deeper relationship in order to extract money despite never meeting in person. However, when it comes to Sakawa, it also involves spiritual activities. According to a local report, in the late 2000s when Sakawa became very popular, news outlets began reporting on the cultic practices perceived to be connected with the subculture. They described participants as jobless boys or men looking for any means to make money and identified their practices with words like “bizarre” and “weird,” deepening the moral panic.

What happens in these practices? I’ve spent the past 10 years traveling Ghana and recently caught up with friend and university student, Kwame, who shares what he knows about becoming an “official” Sakawa boy, based on students he knew in high school:
“They usually travel up to the North, around the Volta region area, where you’ll find some voodoo priests. You will give these voodoo priests a small sum of money, then they will set you very specific instructions in order to succeed in the scam you want. It could be anything from a chant, to holding a charm or amulet, and repeating the chant a specific number of times. At this point, the Sakawa boy is desperately in need of money. From the moment they agree to the priest’s instructions and perform the act, there is no way back. They’ve given their spirit away. They don’t realise this straight away, because they are so engrossed in the scamming lifestyle and ‘blessings’ it brings. Suddenly, their scams are successful after performing each ‘spell.’ Their clients are under, and answer and obey every command. This is the power of juju.”

The practice results in the Sakawa boys earning tens and thousands of dollars, mostly through money transfer and PayPal. Depending on your level of spirituality and understanding, you could choose to dismiss this narrative, and base it on pure “luck,” but many areas of West Africa have practiced voodoo, or juju, for centuries.
Why choose this way of life? In Ghana, youth unemployment has been on the rise for some years now; the average youth after education struggles to find a job paying more than the equivalent of $200 a month.
Those in the diaspora know of Ghana as a rising hotspot filled with enjoyable festivals, nightlife, and gorgeous tourist attractions all around. Less than five years ago, the country’s president Nana Akuffo Addo announced an initiative called the “Year of Return,” a chance for anyone within the Black diaspora to reconnect and “come back home.”
During the Year of Return campaign, Barbara Oteng-Gyasi, Ghana’s minister for tourism, arts, and culture, reported that the sector earned $3.3B in revenue. An increase in tourism is a clear growth indicator in investments and businesses. Could this international initiative be a solution to eradicate poverty among the youth?

Despite such a strong and welcoming initiative, attracting tourists and visitors from all over the world, some Ghanaian locals have felt left out, especially economically. In many parts of Ghana, the education system has failed to equip young people with the skills needed to be successful in job roles and opportunities.
A 2022 report by the World Bank called for an increase in educational programs for youth to develop new skills required by employers, such as basic digital and soft skills, as well as networks to ensure that young people are appropriately linked to available jobs while creating greater opportunities for quality jobs.
Many Sakawa boys, and girls, who choose a path of professional online romance scams find themselves in it for a long time. It could be for one or two reasons: earning money from their successful online scams becomes a natural and normal part of their lives, or because, having chosen to do this via a ritual, they lose the freedom of autonomy to decide that they should stop. They have essentially given their soul in order to create this new life for themselves; for many, the only way out is death.

No one wakes up and decides or aspires to be a romance scammer or Sakawa boy. The structures and framework they are placed within often leave them with no choice but to pursue a lifestyle that is an obvious and offensive crime..︎
This article is part of the series Content and Its Discontents that explores what content is and who controls the containers.
Hannah Ajala is a journalist specializing in podcasts for the BBC – and has recently spent over three years traveling across West Africa working on a range of stories and broadcasting for international organizations. Hannah is passionate about shedding more light on engaging stories about marginalized communities, which has led her to reports on engaging and uplifting international stories.