How a very shy person could transform himself into becoming a huge media personality with a following, is a story that can only be told by the man himself, who is Kafui Dey, the host of the ever popular, Ghana’s ‘Who Wants To Be Rich?’.
“I was painfully shy person, that is what a lot of people don’t know about me,” he told B&FT Weekend in a chat. ‘Who Wants To Be Rich?’ is a television game show in Ghana which offers very large cash prizes for correctly answering successive multiple-choice questions of increasing difficulty. The maximum cash prize is GH¢ 50,000.
Kafui is now celebrated for the equity is brings to the show. He never loses his utterly natural charm or self-effacing people skills. Quick-witted but never showy, mocking but never cruel, warm but never maudlin. He brings a refreshing irreverence and self-mocking sparkle to an otherwise a nail biting, nerve wracking show which brings contestants, the studio audience, and even the millions of viewers at home to the edge of their seats.
Kafui has managed to take a show that was considered too intelligent for television and making it one of the most durable and popular in recent history. His style is characteristically frank, but with occasional bursts of irreverence and humor. He has a direct, non-confrontational approach.
But what a lot of people don’t know is that hosting the programme hasn’t been smooth sailing at all, not to even talk about how he managed to become the host of the show. And as to how he got the job of hosting the show, he said he had to undergone through a period of over a year of attending to strenuous auditions, interviews, and including several other selection processes which were all based on meritocracy.
“In the beginning it was very tough, I remembered in the first four episodes l looked a bit stiff, but I got a lot of encouragement from my wife, Dzifa, and from my director. People also don’t know that I go on set on empty stomach, and not until we are done with the shooting, I don’t eat. I do that for two reasons. First, I don’t want to experience tummy upset on set, and second, l tend to enjoy food only when l am done with my work.”
“Kaf” as he is fondly called, is a tall and multi talented individual was born on 6th August in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso. He had his education in Ghana, China, Ghana, Cote D’ Ivoire, England among others, bagging a BA (Hons) degree in English and French and a postgraduate diploma in Marketing.
He was moved around several continents of the world through no fault of his. His father was a career diplomat and he ensured that he travelled with the entire family anytime he had to go on a foreign posting. This situation meant that Kafui had to learn to adapt to foreign cultures and foreigners easily.
He has had to develop a flexible mindset, and also not to engage in stereotyping. “As a child moving around has opened my mind up so l am pretty much open to new situations and l can easily adapt. I don’t have prejudices and l am also not into stereotyping.
My parents instill a lot of family values in us, so all my brothers, including myself are very open-minded people, and we have learnt to respect all people no matter their backgrounds.”
Kafui is not affected a bit about being in the spotlight. He is somebody who is well-grounded, very unassuming and easy-going. He explains: “I am not into celebrity culture at all. Personality cult is not my thing. The people that come on the show are the stars, and not the host.” But the question still remains: How did he get into broadcasting?
He responded: “The broadcasting bug bit me when I was 20 years old. I am yet to recover from the resulting fever but happily I have no intention of getting cured. I was a second year student of the University of Ghana. The Student Representative Council has just set up an experimental radio station. The managers ask for volunteer presenters and disc jockeys. I thought it will be great fun to spend a few hours a week playing music that I loved and making dedications to friends. So I applied and I was selected. And I loved every bit of it.
“Nothing beat the feeling of winding down at the end of the day by putting my headphone on, selecting music that I enjoyed and sharing it with those within earshot who cared to listen. Those were the days of music being played mainly from cassette decks – CD’s were still a novelty back then. My playlist was mainly jazz because that was the music I knew.
“Growing up in the mid-seventies and early eighties, my brain was saturated with music of Bob James and Earl Klugh. My father played their music everywhere – at home on the monster cassette decks that were popular back then, in the car on our numerous drives through town, anywhere.
Jazz provided the soundtrack for my formative years. It was therefore natural for me to be attracted to this genre and use it as content for my radio show. It was music I could talk intelligently about because I knew it inside out and I could bring my enthusiasm for it into my own performance. “I often wonder what would have happened if I had not applied for the job on SRC radio. I could have merely dreamed about the idea of sitting behind the microphone and hosting a radio show and not taking the step of writing an application. I know for sure that I would not have gotten that particular volunteer DJ job.
“Which means I would not have gained the experience of presenting, which involved, among others, leaving the microphone on while having a private discussion in the studio, playing CDs that skipped for two minutes, and other exciting happenings in the life of a DJ. Which means I most likely would not have been employed at Kapital 97.1 in Kumasi, nor would l have landed a radio job at Choice 102.3 in Accra. If I had not worked for free on the campus station, I probably would not have gained the required experience to make my transition to television and end up hosting ‘Who Wants To Be Rich?’ Funny how one decision influences events twenty years down the line.”
Kafui is multi-talented. He is a presenter, producer, voiceover artist, copywriter, commercial music composer, session keyboardist and an arranger (Instruments & Vocals) Besides, he played the keyboards on the Nakorex’s most popular songs, ‘Kpanlogo Ye da’, ‘Kpanlogo Fever’, and also featured on Rocky Dawuni’s maiden album.
He has also played keyboards for guests of some of the four and five star hotels in Ghana including Labadi Beach, Novotel, Golden Tulip hotels. He was a member of a student band on campus during his student days at University of Ghana. Playing of the keyboards is an endeavour that runs through the family seamlessly. “My father taught all of his children to play the keyboards, so we are play it very well. In fact, one of my brothers is a professional jazz musician who travels around the world plying his trade. My sons also play the instrument.”
During his spare time, Kafui loves to play the keyboards in the home with his children, while he also loves to listen to his favourite jazz musician Bob James. It therefore stands to reason when he said he would one day set up a music school
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