Accra

Accra began as a cluster of Ga coastal towns — Ga Mashie, Osu, La, Teshie and Nungua — whose people had moved down to the shore before the seventeenth century and lived by fishing, salt and trade with the forest interior. European companies built three forts within a few kilometres of one another: the Dutch at Fort Crèvecœur, later Ussher Fort, the English at James Fort and the Danes at Christiansborg in Osu. The towns that grew under their walls gave the modern city its oldest quarters, and the Ga states kept their own chiefs and priests alongside the traders.

The British bought out the Danish and Dutch forts in the nineteenth century, and in 1877 moved the capital of the Gold Coast colony here from Cape Coast, partly for the healthier open plain and the better anchorage. An earthquake in 1939, the worst recorded in Ghana, damaged much of the old town and pushed building inland. Accra became the colony's commercial centre, the terminus of the railway from the cocoa districts, and the place where colonial politics were argued out: in 1948 police fired on ex-servicemen marching on Christiansborg Castle, and the riots that followed hastened the end of British rule.

On 6 March 1957 Kwame Nkrumah declared independence at the old polo ground, now the Kwame Nkrumah Memorial Park, and the new state set about building a capital to match — Black Star Square, the Independence Arch, ministries, a new harbour at Tema and the university at Legon. Coups, economic collapse and recovery followed, and since the 1990s the city has spread far beyond its old limits, north and east across the plain, faster than its roads and drains have been able to follow.

Accra is Ga in origin and Ghanaian in composition. Ga is still the language of the old shore towns and of their chieftaincies, but Twi and English carry the street and the office, and every region of the country is represented in the suburbs, along with Nigerian, Lebanese, Chinese and returning diaspora communities. Homowo, the Ga harvest festival, usually falls in August and occasionally in July or September, with processions, twin celebrations and kpokpoi sprinkled for the ancestors, and the ban on drumming that precedes it is observed seriously in the old towns.

The city is a music capital. Highlife was shaped in its dance bands and clubs, and hiplife, afrobeats and gospel fill its radio stations, churches and the bars of Osu and East Legon. Jamestown has produced most of Ghana's champion boxers from small gyms near the harbour, and each August the same lanes are taken over by Chale Wote, a street art festival of murals, masquerade and performance. A contemporary art scene has grown around galleries and studios scattered through the city, and Ghanaian artists now show regularly abroad.

Christianity is highly visible — billboards, shop names, all-night services and long Sunday mornings — with a substantial Muslim population in Nima, Newtown and the zongo quarters. Funerals shape the weekend calendar, with printed posters on walls, matching cloth and brass bands. Manners are formal: greetings first, seniority respected, the right hand used for giving and receiving.

The Greater Accra Region held 5.46 million people at the 2021 census, and the built-up capital about 1.78 million, of whom 284,000 lived in the Accra Metropolitan District, the only part granted city status. The built-up area runs without a break from the old shore towns out to Tema in the east and far north along the Kumasi road, and the historic metropolitan district is now only one of many local authorities inside it. Growth has come mostly from migration from the rest of Ghana, especially the north, and much of it into unplanned neighbourhoods.

The economy is government, banking, telecoms, trade, construction and a very large informal sector. Street selling at junctions, tailoring, hairdressing, mobile-money kiosks and food stalls support a great many households, while the port at Tema and the airport tie the city to the region's trade. Rents in Cantonments and East Legon are quoted in dollars and often demanded a year or two in advance, a constant grievance.

Days start early to beat the traffic, with hawkers working the queues on the ring road, and end late in the bars and churches. Power cuts, known as dumsor, flooding in the rainy months, the cost of living after the currency's fall and recovery, and the state of the roads are the standing complaints. Old Fadama, the large settlement beside the Korle lagoon, and the polluted lagoon itself are among the city's hardest problems.

Accra eats maize and fish. Kenkey, fermented maize dough steamed in husks, is the Ga staple, eaten with fried or smoked fish, ground pepper and shito, the dark chilli, dried-fish and oil paste made in every household. Banku, the softer maize-and-cassava version, goes with grilled tilapia or okro stew. Kpokpoi, steamed maize meal with palm-nut soup, belongs to Homowo.

Waakye — rice and beans cooked with sorghum leaves until reddish-brown, served with gari, spaghetti, egg, fish or meat and shito — is the great breakfast and lunch of the city, queued for at roadside pots and wrapped in leaves. Jollof rice is the party dish and the subject of a long argument with Nigeria; red red pairs bean stew with fried plantain; tuo zaafi and koko with koose come from the north by way of Nima. Fufu in light or groundnut soup is the heavier evening meal in the chop bars.

Evening street food is its own institution: kelewele, plantain cubes fried with ginger and chilli, and khebab skewers grilled over charcoal. Sobolo, the hibiscus drink, and fresh coconuts sold from carts cool things down, while Osu and East Legon carry the widest restaurant choice in the country, from Lebanese grills to Ghanaian fine dining.