Takoradi

Sekondi is the older and larger of the pair, and it was here that the Dutch built Fort Orange, Fort Witsen and Fort Sekondi in the 17th century. British and Dutch traders held such influence that the town effectively split into "British Sekondi" and "Dutch Sekondi"; both European settlements collapsed after the Dutch formally left in 1872. The name Sekondi itself is said to derive from the word "second", after the settlement was chosen as the second site for a shallow-water harbour.

Takoradi's name is more contested. One account traces it to Ntakorase, "under the ntakor tree", blended with the Portuguese name for the settlement, Taccarada; another points to the Ahanta expression Takora-adi, "under the takore tree". The tree in question is now extinct. Before the Portuguese arrived the place was known as Amanfulkro, town of Amanful.

What changed everything was infrastructure. A railway built in 1903 carried minerals and timber from the hinterland to the coast, and in 1928 Ghana's first deepwater seaport opened at Takoradi. The two towns amalgamated on 2 December 1946. During the Second World War, RAF Takoradi was a staging point for British aircraft bound for Egypt: Spitfires arrived in crates from England, were assembled here, and flown on via Nigeria and Sudan to Libya. Some South African airmen who flew anti-submarine patrols over the Atlantic are buried in the Takoradi European Public cemetery.

Fort Orange began in 1642 as a lodge of the Dutch West India Company, became a trading post in the 1670s, and was enlarged into a full fort in 1690 to support the growing European trade and to defend against local conflicts and rival European powers. In September 1694 it was attacked by the Ahanta, and the structure was reinforced and remodelled into a full fortification by 1704. Its cannons were pointed mainly at the nearby British trading lodge.

It sits beside Fort Sekondi, the English fort built in 1682. In 1872 Fort Orange passed to British control along with the rest of the Dutch Gold Coast, and it has since served as a lighthouse and as a naval base for the Ghana Ports and Harbours Authority. It is part of the UNESCO World Heritage listing for the Forts and Castles of the Volta, Greater Accra, Central and Western Regions.

These forts were commercial instruments in a trade that included enslaved people, and the wealth they guarded was built on it. Standing at the water's edge in Sekondi, it is worth holding both facts at once: the engineering skill and the human cost. Ghana's larger castles at Cape Coast and Elmina carry that history at greater scale, and many travellers pair them with this coast.

The city's population is majority Christian, with a substantial Muslim minority, and the main peoples are Fante, followed by Ahanta, Nzema, Asante and Wassa. Fishing is the most common occupation. The Albert Bosomtwi-Sam Fishing Harbour in Sekondi is among the largest fishing ports in the region, and the Takoradi Market Circle is the commercial hub of the Western Region.

The Market Circle was planned by city engineers to form the nucleus of trade for the new town, built in a large circle with its stores arranged to shape it. It grew busy after the harbour opened and migrants arrived for work; by the late 1980s it was congested enough that a second market was planned and built at Apremodo, about 10 kilometres away.

Culturally, the Western Region's great festival is Kundum, celebrated by the Ahanta and Nzema peoples to thank God for the abundance of food at harvest. Oral tradition says it began when a hunter named Akpoley came upon dwarves dancing in a circle and brought the dance home; another version ties its start to the ripening of a palm tree's fruit, which became a calendar for the community. The festival runs for four weeks, with drumming and dancing at night on the town's outskirts for the first three weeks, then a final week of ritual: a fire lit at the chief's palace, sacrifices in the stool room, the chief entering on a palanquin, and a great feast on the final Sunday. Crucially for visitors, it moves from town to town, so missing it in one place does not mean missing it altogether.

The metropolis covers about 191.7 square kilometres, bordered by Ahanta West District to the west, Shama District to the east, Wassa East District to the north and the Gulf of Guinea to the south. Its landscape is more varied than the port skyline suggests: an eroded coastline, a low-lying central area, undulating ridges and hills, cut by the Whin and Kansawora rivers and the Essei and Butre lagoons.

That topography is why a forested hill with a resident monkey population sits within the city itself, and why the Atlantic shoreline from New Amanful to Essipon draws people out on festive occasions. The forest areas in the north-east of the metropolis also support the timber and construction trade that has long underpinned the local economy.

The climate is tropical savanna: hot all year, with an average annual high around 28°C and low around 22°C, and the hottest stretch from January to May. The dry season is short, from December to March; the wet season falls between May and June, with June the wettest month. Because the city sits near the Anankwari, Kansawura and Whin rivers, heavy rain can cause flooding, and past floods have displaced residents in neighbouring communities.