The Evolution of Adedainkpo, Old Accra:
Accidents of History and Geography
By Akotowaa Ofori
Accra Archive Fellows Akotowaa Ofori and Lawrencia Amartey interviewed Gilbert Nii-Okai Addy - a writer, concert guitarist and indigene and former resident of Adedainkpo (in what is currently known as Old Accra). In this article, Akotowaa Ofori writes about Addy’s experiences in—and the evolution of—the area.
Gilbert Nii-Okai Addy grew up in a house in Adedainkpo which has been in his family for at least five generations— “an ancient house, by Ghanaian standards,” he says. Built around the 1870s by Gilbert’s grandmother’s grandfather, it was the first house to be constructed on the street that leads to the old post office in that area. Being from Adedainkpo himself, and having directly experienced the effects of the “accidents” that continue to transform the area, Gilbert’s personal histories and insights prove invaluable to understanding the processes behind the evolution of the district and its environs.
Adedainkpo, Old Accra
Adedainkpo is part of what is known as “Old Accra,” the part of the city which became the hub of activity once the Gold Coast capital was moved from Cape Coast to Accra. The proximity and access to colonial influence and infrastructure—including modern schools—led Old Accra to become the place where a large chunk of the local, educated population could be found.
The long history of education Old Accra’s locales is reflected in Gilbert’s own family; when he was growing up, all his relatives had been to school and could speak English fluently, including Gilbert’s great-great-grandparents. This is likely a common phenomenon in many other Old Accra families.
Gilbert has an anecdote from his time in boarding school in Cape Coast a few decades ago. His grandmother once came to visit him on campus and while there, she spoke Ga to those who understood it, and English to everyone else. Though Gilbert himself didn’t think much of her actions at the time, he discovered later that it was “big news” among his astonished peers that his grandmother could not only speak English, but do so fluently! Such surprise came from boys who saw themselves very much as part of the elite as well—and yet their grandparents were largely illiterate and knew next to nothing of English.
Gilbert is careful to point out that the levels of education attained by his family and others in Old Accra have nothing to do with inherent cleverness; it was not that his grandparents were somehow more intelligent than his classmates’. Rather, the privilege of Old Accra and its inhabitants was, in his words, “an accident of history and geography.” Such accidents presumably include the convenience of Old Accra to Europeans by virtue of proximity to the sea; the selection of the area as the colony’s capital, and the concentration of the colonial Europeans’ attention and influence in those areas.
In Gilbert’s words, Old Accra was once “the place where everything happened,” as hard as it might be to believe today just by looking at it. Up until the 1930s, a host of middle- to high-class social events took place there, including regattas on the Korle Lagoon, cricket matches, and social tea parties. The popularity and prosperity of Old Accra had already significantly declined by the 1960s and ‘70s, although it was still in a much better state than the overwhelming majority of Ghana at the time.
“A Regatta in James Town Harbour, Source: Deo Gratias,1950s-60s
The difference between what Old Accra used to be and the state it is in today is dramatic, but follows a logical pattern of evolution. In this case, the evolution hinges on the migration of people. As Gilbert profoundly points out, it is people who make places—and so, as the caliber of residents shift, the changes are reflected in the physical and cultural state of an area.
The locales of Old Accra were, and still often are, described as “Ga areas” of Accra. The reality is, however, that Ga people are largely dispersed all over the city; there no longer seems to be a particular concentration of them in Old Accra. In fact, according to Gilbert, most of the families who migrated to Old Accra once it became a hotspot were not ethnically Ga, and neither are the vast chunk of its current inhabitants.
The reasons for the migration have largely to do with the wealth of the inhabitants. On the one hand, there is tangible wealth—money, land, cars, and the like. But there is also what Gilbert refers to as “intangible wealth”—things such as literacy, education, and exposure to ideas beyond the local and the familial. The availability of all these hugely influence people’s decisions to migrate. By Gilbert’s analysis, proximity to the British led to an abundance of intangible wealth in the families of Old Accra, including his own. This privilege, in turn, allowed the educated classes to migrate out of the country during seasons of political instability. This accounts for why several members of the old Gold Coast families are now very well-integrated into British society. A large proportion of the people who left the Gold Coast in the earliest days came from Old Accra.
Higher education was another motivation for people to leave Old Accra. Again, by the “accident” of the colonial relationships in the area, the gates between Old Accra locales and prestigious UK universities could be opened with relative ease. Gilbert’s grandfather, for instance, a resident of Bukom, attained his higher education at the University of Cambridge, and according to Gilbert, such trajectories were commonplace at the time.
Yet another reason for the wealthy to migrate was the desire to establish new roots and personal achievements, independently of their ancestors. The Adabraka community was founded for such reasons by former residents of Old Accra.
By the 1960s, when Gilbert was in primary school in Accra, most of these outward migrations had already left their mark; though most of the Ghanaian pupils in his school could trace their origins to Adediankpo, he was the only one of them who physically lived there. His own continued residence in his was hometown was also an accident of circumstance: his parents were out of the country, and so he was living with his grandmother. Even his grandmother’s continued residence there was an accident of circumstance, for she had moved out years prior, but returned later for personal reasons..
Much of the inward migration to Old Accra is a direct consequence of the outward migration. That is, the vacancies left by those wealthy enough to move out are often filled by people less wealthy than they are. Those who remain in Old Accra residences, including extended family members of the original homeowners, are usually those who do not have the means to move out and follow the footsteps of their wealthier relatives. As the middle class is gradually replaced by poorer classes, a place begins to take on a totally new character, as Old Accra has taken on now.
Today, though Gilbert is currently based in the UK, his family house in Adedainkpo continues to be regularly maintained for and by its current residents, who are members of Gilbert’s extended family. The same cannot be said for many of the old family houses in the area, which are likely to be in varying states of disrepair. Not much attention is directed towards increasing the standards of living for new and current Old Accra residents. There seems, instead, to be a vague complacency in letting Old Accra transition into—to use Gilbert’s words—“living museums.”
While there are many other contributing factors to the continued transition of Old Accra into low-rent areas, one of the most interesting ones is the issue of communal ownership. Most of the people with the means to refurbish their family houses are based outside of Ghana, and preoccupied with more immediate personal needs, such as raising nuclear families of their own. Refurbishing old houses would almost certainly cost a lot of money and effort, and the prospect does not seem very attractive to people, especially if they are not the ones who will benefit from the refurbishments.
Family houses, technically, and perhaps even legally, belong to large groups of people, based on genealogy. As Gilbert explained, even if, hypothetically one person took on the responsibility of refurbishing or maintaining a house, it would nevertheless continue to belong to a large host of people besides himself. To many modern minds, including Gilbert’s, expending one’s personal resources towards communal property to which one does not have any special claim or need, does not make much financial sense.
As Gilbert has already iterated in his own writing, addressing the disrepair of Old Accra would require a multidimensional approach that takes into consideration all the aspects of living that modernity entails: the environmental and the personal, the quotidian and the infrastructural—all, of course, with local residents as key stakeholders in every part of the decision-making processes.
At any rate, a better understanding of the “accidents of history and geography” which have directed Old Accra’s evolution so far could prove instrumental in the conversation about its future evolution, and indeed, might prove relevant for the rest of the city as well.
