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The Definitive Story of
James Town British Accra
By Nat Nuno-Amarteifio
Post November 10, 2015
The story of Jamestown began with the erection of
James fort by the British in 1673 – 74. The British
fort was the last European trading post to be
erected in Accra. It was the smallest of the 3 forts
and was built about one and half miles from the
Dutch fort. It stood in a village called Soko owned
by the Ajumaku and Adanse clans. The site for the
fort was leased in 1672 to the Royal African Company
by the Ga Mantse Okaikoi. King James I of Great
Britain granted a royal charter to the company to
build the fort and gave permission to name it after
himself. Jamestown’s cosmopolitan mix of peoples
started literally at its birth. The British brought
slaves and labourers from the Allada kingdom in
Nigeria. Allada was a major regional market for
slaves and the word Alata, a corruption of Allada,
entered the Ga language to describe people from
Allada and survived to identify Yorubas in general.
Before the British created Ngleshie Alata there was
already in Accra an Alata community residing in Osu.
The neighborhood Osu Alata is still in existence. Ga
and Fanti workers joined the work force at James
fort beside the Alata as artisans and labourers.
A leader emerged out of this work force.
His name was Wetse Kojo. He was
an unusual man who rose from lowly beginning to
great wealth and royal status. He was to have a huge
impact on the history of his times. There is
considerable controversy about his origins.
According to the records of the Royal African
Company he was born in Allada and worked for the
company as an indentured servant. This version is
challenged by historians from Ngleshie Alata who
insists that he was an Adangme from Prampram where
he was engaged as a foreman in James fort. His
outstanding skills as a negotiator came to the
notice of his employers who entrusted him with more
responsibilities. He rose to become a makelaar or
trading agent for the company then its chief broker.
He traded both for the company and for himself and
became immensely wealthy. He owned so many slaves
that he became one of the most powerful merchants on
the coast.
The Ga Mantse Okaikoi made political decisions
between 1673 and 1677 that had profound impact on
the fortunes of Jamestown. He wanted the Ga to have
complete monopoly in Accra over the slave trade. At
the height of the trade he tried to prevent
merchants from the forest kingdoms from direct
contact with the European forts on the coast. He
decreed that all commerce between Europeans and the
inland merchants should be conducted through Ga
middlemen at a market called Abonse located several
kilometers from the coast. The decisions infuriated
the Akwamu who were the principal trading nation for
the Ga in the 17th century. They and the Akyem,
another trading nation, retaliated by mounting slave
raids on Accra territories and trying to destabilize
the kingdom. A series of wars began that ended in
the defeat of Okaikoi’s armies in 1677. The king was
captured and beheaded. The invasion succeeded with
the connivance of some of Okai Koi’s generals and
asafo leaders who considered him a tyrant and did
not forgive him or his father Mampong Okai for
allowing Europeans to establish permanent presence
on the coast. They detested him as much as they had
hated his mother, the Obutu princess and regent Dode
Akai who was killed by her generals in a bloody coup
d’etat. Another factor for the defeat was the
considerable turmoil in Accra concerning the
successor the ill fated royal family. This struggle
for succession destroyed any unity amongst the Ga.
The remnants of the Ga army led by Ofori, Okaikoi’s
son, continued fighting until 1680 when the Akwamu
succeeded in conquering the entire kingdom. By the
end of the war Ayawaso, the capital of the Ga
kingdom was in ruins, destroyed and its inhabitants
chased into exile or enslaved. The royal family
found refuge in Glidgi in present day Togo and in
Aprang (Ussher town) under the protection of the
Dutch and the other forts. The Akwamu achieved their
war aims of direct access to the European forts and
control of the trade routes into Accra. They did not
interfere much in the city’s political or trade
arrangements. They recognized and accepted the Ga as
experienced negotiators with the Europeans and
permitted them to trade as before.
In 1680 the Akwamu was the dominant military and
mercantilist power on the slave coast. They had
vanquished the Ga and were powerful enough to exact
rent from the Europeans occupying the forts. They
demonstrated this power in 1695 when they expelled
the Danes from Christiansborg and held the castle
for more than a year. The Akwamu appointed a viceroy
in Accra to oversee their interests and collect
tributes. He was Otu, a nephew of the king of Akwamu,
and lived in Accra as the resident Akwamu
ambassador. He stayed in a village called Otublohum
an enclave in the town where Akwamu and Fanti
merchants had their town residences. After the
Akwamu conquest of Accra, both Wetse Kojo and his
British masters realized the need to consolidate
their position on the volatile new political
landscape. In the absence of a substantive central
authority, they sought recognition from the
representative of the Akwamu king, his ambassador in
Otublohum. They did not need political endorsement
from Otublohum but they required closer commercial
links. They also wanted to learn the art of Akan
statecraft. Otu helped Wetse Kojo to establish an
Akan style court and today Ngleshie Alata is the
only Akutso in Accra that celebrates the Akan
festival of Odwira. Ngleshie Alatas position was
further strengthened when it was joined by the
Akutchei of Sempe and Akumayi. The three Akutchei
collectively formed Jamestown. Ngleshie Alata was
recognized as the dominant member of this coalition
due to its wealth and the power of Wetse Kojo.
The decision by Wetse Kojo and the British to
establish a special trade relationship with the
Akwamu would haunt the politics of Accra for the
next three centuries. In the chaotic aftermath
following the Akwawu conquest, the alliance was
perceived in the court of the defeated Ga king as a
betrayal. This conclusion was encouraged by allies
of the Ga king, the Dutch who understood and
anticipated the potential trade and political
advantages available to the British in this new
alliance. The two European nations were bitter
rivals. In the 18th century alone they fought 4
major wars against each other. Their enmity easily
seeped into the relationship between the two Ga
Akutsei and contaminated it for centuries. In 1884,
at the end of the 19th century it would lead them
close to civil war in the Agbutsota. In the early
colonial period and through most of the 20th century
this hostility led to innumerable confrontations in
courts of law over land and sovereignty.
The enduring hostility and misunderstanding between
the two communities was neatly summed up in an
incident that occurred in October 1892, a little
over two hunded years later. The king of the Ga,
King Tackie Tawiah took the newly crowned King Kojo
Ababio IV, king of Jamestown and two other newly
enstooled Mantsemei to Christiansborg Castle to
introduce them to the Governor. According to an
account of the meeting in the British records, and
quoted by John Parker “The Governor expressed his
pleasure at the announcement that Jamestown and
Ussher Town agreed to amalgamate and to become one
town under King Tackie. He congratulated Amoako Atta
(Kojo Ababio) upon his election as chief of one of
the quarters of Jamestown. Thereupon Amoako Atta,
drawing himself up said “I am not one of King
Tackie’s chiefs. I am the King of Jamestown.
Jamestown is a British town and Ussher Town is a
Dutch town and British people cannot serve Dutch
people.”
The Akwamu ruled Accra till 1730 when they were
overthrown by an expanding Akyem empire. The Akyem
ruled Accra for only 12 years until they were
overthrown by the even more expansionist Asante
kingdom in 1742. The years of Akyem rule were
difficult for Jamestown. The authority of the Ga
Mantse had degraded enormously during the 50 years
of Akwamu rule and the Akutsei that formed the
kingdom had become used to a lot of autonomy. Years
of competing against each other in support of the
trade interests of their European allies had left
the Ga even more divided than before. The military
and political turbulence in the region created the
unstable conditions that fueled banditry and the
slave trade. Merchants in Accra grew rich but the
settlement had its worst periods of insecurity. This
had a huge influence on the shape and form of
Accra’s neighbourhoods including Jamestown. Families
built their houses close to one another and
connected them with narrow and confusing networks of
alleys. These alleys were deliberately designed to
frustrate any kidnappers in search of victims. There
was no provision for collecting the waste that was
routinely deposited in the alleys. This resulted in
very unhealthy and filthy communities and created
grave consequences in the 19th century when the
British used the town’s lack of sanitation to extend
her grip on Accra. Pigs roamed the back streets and
scavenged the accumulated filth. Fires were frequent
on account of the low hanging and highly flammable
grass roofs. These conditions lasted until the
beginning of the 20th century when the colonial
government wrote laws to plan the layout of the town
and to regulate the materials used for urban
constructions. They were only partially successful.
The first quarter of the 19th century brought
political and economic changes to Jamestown and the
rest of Accra. The Danes banned the slave trade in
1803, the British in 1807 and finally the Dutch
joined the ban in 1814. Slavery was however so
embedded in the transatlantic economy that it
persisted until the 1860’s, before it began a slow
decline. The events that accompanied the
transformation of the slave trade helped to shape
Jamestown. Amongst these were the wars that
terminated Asante rule in Accra. The Asante
domination of Accra ended in 1826 when she was
defeated in the Katamanso war. An army composed of
troops from the coastal states including the Ga,
Fanti and Adangme in alliance with Akim and Akuapim
forces routed the Asante army near Dodowa. They were
joined by a small detachment of 60 marines from the
British and Danish forts. Several important
prisoners were taken including Akoa Basoa, the
favourite wife of the Asantehene Osei Yaw and two of
her daughters. They were Yaa Dom and Manuh. Akoa
Basoa was freed to go back to Kumasi as part of the
peace negotiations but her two daughters remained in
Accra and married into prominent Ga families. Manuh
married Henry Richter of Osu and Yaa Dom married
James Bannerman of Jamestown. She bore him ten
children. Two of her children, James and Edmund
would play pivotal roles in Accra’s trade and
politics in the 19th century. Their influence would
have a great impact on the city. As an Asante
princess and the wife of one of Jamestown leading
businessmen, Yaa Dom had the resources to play a
leading role in the politics of the town. In 1886
when she was in her eighties she led a delegation of
women to lobby the governor for greater African
representation on the colony’s legislative council.
The Katamanso war provided a platform for the
emergence of Euro Africans or Mulattoes as important
actors in politics and business in Accra. Several of
them played prominent roles in the conflict and that
entitled them to major positions in Accra after the
war. They were James Bannerman, John Hansen, William
Nanka Bruce and Henry Richter. All of them were
significant slave owners and two of them, James
Bannerman and Henry Richter had extensive business
interests in Asante. The two men contributed a slave
militia of 600 men to the southern forces. This was
a considerable force compared to the 60 soldiers
provided by the British and Danish forts.
Events in the second half of the 19th century
influenced modern Jamestown and took it to its apex
as a commercial center. In Europe other events began
to shape public opinion for the abolition of the
trade in human beings. Some of these were the
numerous slave revolts wherever slavery was
practiced and their bloody suppression. The French
revolution had spread the idea that all men were
created equal and entitled to be free. The start of
the industrial revolution signaled the end of forced
and unpaid labour in the increasingly mechanized
factory system. The replacement of sailing ships by
steam powered carriers drastically reduced the time
of the Atlantic crossing and changed the terms of
credit financing for transatlantic trade. Those
factors transformed the economic and political
conditions in Britain and enabled the abolitionist
movement to compel the government to end the trade.
A commission headed by Dr. Robert Madden was
dispatched to West Africa by the British parliament
in 1842 to report on conditions of slavery. In his
report he noted that the trade was deeply embedded
in the region and that the ban was routinely ignored
by both the African and European traders. He saw the
difficulty in enforcing abolition in the existing
patchwork of European jurisdictions. Between 1850
and 1872 the British overcame this difficulty by
buying out both the Dutch and the Danish interests
on the coast. In 1874 slaves in the settlement were
emancipated. The last Danish governor of
Christiansborg, Edward Carstensen had written to his
superiors in 1846 complaining of business conditions
in the Danish settlements. He emphasized the trade
advantages enjoyed by Jamestown under the patronage
of Britain and criticized the British for permitting
merchants from Jamestown to encroach upon Danish
sovereignty. He pointed out that the only enterprise
that had not been subverted by British encroachment
belonged to Henry Richter who was the brother-in-law
and business partner of James Bannerman of
Jamestown. His reports and observations contributed
to the Danish government decision to relinquish
control of the settlement after 1850.
In 1877 the Slave Coast settlement was annexed by
the British as a colony and became the Gold Coast.
The new political relationship imposed heavy and
costly responsibilities on the British. New
commodities and infrastructure were required to make
the colony productive and financially viable to the
British crown. The second half of the 19th century
witnessed the development and introduction of
products such as palm oil into international
commerce. The oil was brought to Europe as fuel for
lamps, and then it became popular for the
manufacture of soap and lubricant for machines. In
the Gold Coast, the Akuapim and Krobo were the main
oil palm producing regions. The merchants of
Jamestown and Accra, long accustomed to adapting
their businesses to new circumstances quickly
adjusted to the commodity. The large number of
slaves in Kinka and Jamestown were employed as
carriers of palm oil from the palm oil plantations
to the coast. Jamestown merchants like the
Bannermans and the Clelands became prominent in the
oil trade and Jamestown became one of the centers
for export. Palm oil was the main export commodity
for about 20 years and was replaced by rubber then
cocoa.
The dawning of the colonial period brought Jamestown
to its apogee as the richest and most lucrative
Akotso in Accra. The era began with the installation
of important infrastructure in Jamestown that
enormously enhanced its position as the trading
center. A light-house was built near the James fort
in 1871. It was rebuilt in 1892 and a breakwater was
added to it at the beginning of the 20th century.
They formed the first man-made harbor on the coast
and confirmed Jamestown status as an important
export center. Potable water was brought into the
city in 1914 and is commemorated by a monument near
the James fort.
The decline of Jamestown as the principal business
center in the colony began in the 1920’s when the
British governor Sir Gordon Guggisberg built a new
harbor at Takoradi to serve the colony’s newly
established extractive industries. This brand new
harbor with its own a railway, and easy access to
the mining and timber regions of the infant colony
eclipsed Jamestown’s breakwater harbor. It drew the
nation’s export business west. The loss of business
had a huge impact on Jamestown harbor as well as the
community of businesses that serviced it. Jamestown
was finally compromised as a business center in 1962
when Tema harbor was commissioned by Kwame Nkrumah.
No new industries of any importance were introduced
to replace the lost facilities. A feeble artisanal
fishing industry has not proved robust enough to
sustain the local economy and create employment for
the youth of the town. A primitive slaughterhouse
sprang up near the lighthouse but it runs the danger
of closure by the city for hygienic reasons. The
local economy limps along as a subsistence economy
based on small scale retailing and sale of street
food.
Jamestown was shaped not only by conscious human
agency but also by natural events like earthquakes
and epidemics. In 1862, a major earthquake hit the
region and practically devastated the 2 forts and
Christiansborg castle. The quake stretched as far as
Fetteh near Winneba. Hundreds of buildings
constructed of mud and thatch collapsed and had to
be rebuilt. In 1939 another earthquake struck Accra
with even more devastating consequences. Jamestown
and Accra had grown in population and expanded. The
colonial government reacted with the same formula as
in 1862. New suburbs were founded to disperse the
population. In 1894, an equally serious disaster
happened in Jamestown and Ga Mashie. On 31st March
and 1st April fires broke out in Kinka and spread to
Jamestown. They destroyed a great number of houses
and caused a few fatalities. The causes of these
fires have been debated among historians. Critics
point out that the fires conveniently created
corridors in parts of the town marked for roads by
the government. The decision had faced stiff
resistance by the residents. The New Colonial
government took advantage of the disaster to rebuild
the African town. After the fire they laid out new
streets and widened the existing Otu street. 4 new
roads were constructed. These were Mills road, Bruce
Street, Hansen Road and Bannerman road. Burned out
houses on the proposed roadways were destroyed and
removed. Owners of partly burnt out houses outside
the roadways were given money to rebuild their
homes. The city insisted that only modern materials
like cement and aluminum roofing sheets could be
used in the reconstruction.
In 1895, the government introduced measures to ban
the Ga tradition of burying people in family
compounds. This practice was central to Ga cultural
identity and notions of family cohesion and lineage.
The law was difficult to enforce even though land
had been allocated in the town for municipal
cemeteries. These disasters gave the administration
the excuse to decongest Jamestown and Kinka by
tearing down large numbers of houses. Neither the
colonial administration nor the post independence
nationalist governments managed to tame Jamestown or
Kinka. Today they are still densely populated and
overcrowded.
Between January and August of 1908 an epidemic of
bubonic plague swept through Accra. Jamestown and
Kinka were badly affected and once more the colonial
government took steps to reduce the dense
populations and plan the communities. Homes that
were affected by the plague were identified and
marked for quarantine. A plague committee was
appointed and mandated to recommend the destruction
and removal of infected residences and propose
compensation to their owners. The government
requested the Ga Mantse, King Tackie Obili and the
Ngleshie Alata Mantse, King Kojo Ababio to settle
some of their people in quarantine camps across the
Korle lagoon. This began the first planned exodus of
people from Accra to newly created suburbs outside
Jamestown and Kinka. King Kojo Ababio moved his
people to Korlegonno. He also transferred members of
the sizable Muslim community of Jamestown to an
already existing Alata community at Lartebiokorshie.
The new community was named Sabon Zongo. Residents
from Kinka moved to Korleworko or Ripponville and
Kaneshie. Initially the relocation was resisted
principally by fisher folks from both communities.
They objected to the distance of the new suburbs
from the sea, the source of their livelihood.
The first decades of the 20th century saw the
introduction of racially segregated neighbourhoods
in Accra. The recent establishment of the Gold Coast
colony and the choice of Accra as its capital
brought more Europeans to the town. Improvements in
medicine made it possible for many of them to
survive the diseases of the tropics. Several moved
into stone houses in Jamestown. Colonialism and the
European imperialism that flourished at the end of
the 19th century however invented toxic and
repressive racial attitudes. The colonial
administration made laws to remove the Europeans
from the Ga communities and justified the decision
on the grounds of reducing their appalling mortality
rate. They built communities at the Ridge then
Cantonment for the use of whites.
The Europeans were not the only group to leave
Jamestown in the first 2 decades of the 20th
century. Western education and new opportunities in
the expanding economy increased the number of young,
literate Africans. They were educated and were
increasingly detached from traditional beliefs and
lifestyles. Systematic western education and
Christian churches were introduced into Osu and
Jamestown in the 1830’s and 1840’s. The Basel
Mission Society of Switzerland established the first
school and vocational training center at Osu in
1845. Both institutions had tremendous influence in
Accra. The education and training revolutionized the
construction industry and changed the life styles
and social structures of a significant portion of
Accra’s population. Young artisans were taught new
methods of construction and technology. They began
to construct stone and wooden houses of one and two
storeys. These buildings became identified with the
upwardly mobile and increasingly Christianized urban
population. They also joined the exodus out of
Jamestown to settle in suburbs like Adabraka and
Asylum Down. When British journalist Henry Stanley
and explorer Mary Kingsley visited Accra at the end
of the 19th century they both stayed at the Sea View
Hotel. They wrote about Accra’s changing urban
landscape and mixture of mud huts and stone houses.
The Wesleyan Missionary Society established a boy’s
school in Jamestown in the 1840’s. It was located at
Sempe and still exists as a junior secondary school.
Its distinguished alumnae included the late Ga
Mantse Tackie Yaoboi, Thomas Hutton-Mills, a noted
lawyer and politician in the late 19th century,
Arthur Quartey Papafio, a lawyer and counselor to
the Ga Mantse, Francisco Ribero and Akilakpa Sawyer,
renowned lawyers and politicians, Tawia Adamafio,
lawyer and politician in the government of Kwame
Nkrumah, General Joseph Ankrah, first Ghanaian army
commander and the first military Head of State in
the 1960’s. The Wesleyan Boys School was the only
school in Jamestown until 1886 when a government
subsidized school was built there. In 1915 the first
privately funded school, the Accra Royal School was
opened in Jamestown. Its alumnae includes the
present king of Jamestown Kodjo Ababio V,
Rear-Admiral Hansen, the first Admiral in the
Ghanaian navy and Mr. Saka Addo, a former governor
of the bank of Ghana.
This year 2015 marks three and half centuries since
Jamestown was founded. In 2011 it was elevated to a
paramountcy with jurisdiction over 90 towns and
villages. These settlements are concentrated on the
western portion of the greater Accra region and
scattered from Ajumako and Adanse, the site of the
original Ngleshie to Weija, Bortianor and Kokrobite
at the northern end of the region.
Jamestown’s long and episodic history has left many
monuments and architectural masterpieces. These can
contribute handsomely to a tourist industry. The sad
recent fate of the Sea View Hotel demonstrates how
easy it will be to lose this irreplaceable
collection. The revenues that will be generated from
tourism will help to maintain the structures and
monuments. The Sea View Hotel is just the latest
piece of Jamestown lost to history. Others are the
Temple House, home of one of Jamestown more
renounced families, the Hutton Mills and the
stunning Adawso House, home to the family of
Addo-Vanderpuye.
I humbly propose to Nii Ngleshie to mandate his
advisors to identify these heritage sites and
suggest methods of preserving them for future
generations. These sites remind us of our history
and our past. A people without a past are a people
without a future. We owe it to our children to
assure them of this future.
Endnote
I put together this essay on the history of
Jamestown with the help of several people. I wish to
acknowledge and thank all those who contributed
either directly with their knowledge or who
encouraged me and helped to shape this essay. I have
endeavored as much as possible to tell the complex
story of Jamestown in a manner that will make it
accessible to a broad audience. I hope I have
achieved this goal without patronizing my listeners.
I want to thank with special warmth my sister Korkor
Amarteifio who shares with me a profound love of
history and encouraged me to explore the subject of
Jamestown.
I wish to extend a deep offer of gratitude to Ms
Yemokai Laryea. I could not have written this
history without her constant encouragement and
intelligent scrutiny.
I wish to thank the following people who in diverse
ways helped me to tell this story. Professor Irene
Odotei, who many years ago convinced me that I had a
responsibility to contribute to the scholarship of
the history of Accra; Professor Kofi Baku of the
Department of History at Legon who guided me to
research this history; Professor Akosua Perbi whose
seminal work on domestic slavery was invaluable to
the understanding of the enduring impact of slavery
on our society; Mr. John Parker, whose very
contemporary book on modern history of Accra opened
my mind and convinced me that the history of the Ga
people is a living testament and worthy of study;
Professor Osei Tutu of the Department of History at
Legon has made the quotidian history of Accra his
specialty. I am grateful for the illumination he has
cast on the everyday activities that feed into our
tribal memory; I owe a special debt of gratitude to
Herman Von Hesse. I enrolled him at the beginning of
this project as my research assistant. He soon
proved that he was more than my assistant and now I
describe him as my research partner. He recently
acquired his Masters degree in history and is about
to leave for the U. S. to pursue his doctorate in
history. I wish him luck and look forward to the
contributions he will make to our story. Finally I
wish to thank Mr. S. W. Baddoo. He is a master of
the oral history of Accra’s neighbourhoods and
without his input, this work will be drained of the
city’s personality.
SOURCES AND SUGGESTED READING LIST
Akyeampong, Emmanuel. “Christianity, Modernity and
the Weight of Tradition in the Life of "Asantehene"
Agyeman Prempeh I, c. 1888-1931.” Journal of the
International African Institute, 69, No. 2 (1999):
279-311.
Boahen, Adu. Ghana: Evolution and Change in the
Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries. London: Longman,
1975.
Kea, Ray. “‘But I know what I shall do’: Agency,
Belief & the Social Imaginary in Eighteenth-Century
Gold Coast Towns” in Africa’s Urban Past, edited by
David M. Anderson and Richard Rathbone, 163-188.
Oxford and Portsmouth: James Currey/ Heinemann,
2000.
Parker, John. Making the Town: Ga State and Society
in Early Colonial Accra. Portsmouth/ Oxford/Cape
Town: Heinemann/ James Currey/David Philip, 2000.
____________.“The Cultural Politics of Death and
Burial in Early Colonial Accra,” in Africa’s Urban
Past, edited by David M. Anderson and Richard
Rathbone, 205-220. Portsmouth/ Oxford/Cape Town:
Heinemann/ James Currey/David Philip, 2000.
___________. “Mankraloi, Merchants and Mulattos─
Carl Reindorf and the Politics of “Race” in Early
Colonial Accra” in The Recovery of the West African
Past: African Pastors and African History in the
Nineteenth Century; C.C Reindorf and Samuel Johnson,
edited by Paul Jenkins,32-47. Basel: Basler Afrika
Bibliographien, 2000.
Reindorf, Carl Christian. History of the Gold Coast
and Asante [1895], 3rd ed. Accra: Ghana Universities
Press, 2007.
Shumway, Rebecca. The Fante and the Transatlantic
Slave Trade. Rochester: University of Rochester
Press, 2011.
McCaskie T. C. “Asante and Ga: The History of a
Relationship” in The Recovery of the West African
Past: African Pastors and African History in the
Nineteenth Century; C.C Reindorf and Samuel Johnson,
edited by Paul Jenkins, 137-142.Basel: Basler Afrika
Bibliographien, 2000.
Von Hesse, Hermann W. “Wɔ ‘ya Adabraka wɔ ya mɔ gbɛ”
(‘We‘re going to Adabraka to secure a space’): Gă
Architectural and Urban Authenticity and Colonial
Urban Planning in Accra, c.1877-1908.” In
Replenishing History: New Directions to Historical
Research in the 21st Century in Ghana, ed. by Nana
Yaw B. Sapong and J. Otto Pohl, Banbury: Ayebia,
2014.
Nat Nuno-Amarteifio is an architectural historian,
writer and the former Mayor of Accra, Ghana. He has
worked in the US, Canada and Ghana as an architect
and consultant and lectures on urban management and
contemporary Ghanaian
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