Greater Accra

What to do

Things to do in Greater Accra

1. 

   1.Jamestown: lighthouse, James Fort and the old town

   Jamestown is the historic heart of Ga Mashie, and its lighthouse — a 28-metre tower in red and white bands, built in 1932 to replace an 1871 original — is the landmark you climb for views over the harbour, the fort and the fishing beach. Below it, James Fort was built in 1673 and later served as a prison; it is a GMMB-managed heritage site currently listed as temporarily closed, so check locally. Even from outside, the district repays a slow walk: murals, canoes, and the everyday life of a working coastal community.

   Tip: Come early morning when the canoes land, and ask before photographing the fishermen at work.

2. 

   2.Ussher Fort Museum

   Ussher Fort is a seventeenth-century Dutch-built fort in James Town, and it now houses a museum devoted to the history of the slave trade in Ghana. Where James Fort tells its story through stone and silence, Ussher gives it interpretation — the trade's mechanics, its human cost, and Ghana's place in it. Pair the two in a single morning; together they are the most honest introduction to this coast's hardest history.

   Tip: Allow time to sit with what you have seen afterwards rather than rushing straight to the next stop.

3. 

   3.National Museum of Ghana

   On Barnes Road in Adabraka, the national museum opened in 1957 — the year of independence — and is run by the Ghana Museums and Monuments Board. Its collections cover archaeology, ethnography and art, and it is the natural place to put the region's forts, shrines and festivals into a national frame. If you are visiting several heritage sites, come here first.

   Tip: Combine it with a walk through Adabraka, one of central Accra's older quarters.

4. 

   4.W.E.B. Du Bois Memorial Centre for Pan-African Culture

   In Cantonments, the former home of W.E.B. Du Bois — the African-American historian and pan-Africanist who took Ghanaian citizenship in the early 1960s and died here on 27 August 1963 — opened to the public in 1985. He had come at Nkrumah's invitation to compile the Encyclopedia Africana. The centre holds a small museum with part of his library and works, and an adjoining shrine shelters his grave and the ashes of his wife, Shirley Graham Du Bois. A government agreement with the Du Bois Museum Foundation is now redeveloping the site into a larger complex.

   Tip: This is a place of pilgrimage for many diaspora visitors; allow quiet time at the mausoleum.

5. 

   5.Osu Castle (Christiansborg)

   Osu Castle, or Christiansborg, is a seventeenth-century fort at Osu run by the Ghana Museums and Monuments Board and part of the UNESCO World Heritage listing of Ghana's forts and castles. It has served as a Danish trading post, a British colonial seat and, for decades after independence, the office of Ghana's presidency. Its layered history makes it one of the most consequential buildings on the coast.

   Tip: Access arrangements change; confirm opening before travelling, and bring photo ID.

6. 

   6.Shai Hills Resource Reserve

   About 50 kilometres from Accra on the road to the Volta, Shai Hills is the closest wildlife reserve to the capital: roughly 51 square kilometres of coastal savannah and granite hills, with nearly 400 plant species and an Important Bird Area designation. Olive baboons are the headline act, often visible near the highway at dawn and dusk, alongside green monkeys, kobs, bushbucks and monitor lizards. The reserve was home to the Shai people before their expulsion in 1892, and the caves of Adwuku, Sayu and Hieweyu remain, with Adwuku offering a climb and sweeping views of the Accra Plains.

   Tip: Go early, wear closed shoes with grip, carry water, and never feed the baboons.

7. 

   7.Kane Kwei Carpentry Workshop and Teshie's design coffins

   In Teshie, Ga carpenters make design coffins — abebuu adekai, "boxes with proverbs" — carved as cocoa pods, fish, lions, bottles, even aeroplanes. The tradition is credited to Seth Kane Kwei, a Ga carpenter who worked from the 1950s; his workshop is still running, and around ten similar studios operate in Teshie and the wider Accra area. The coffins grew out of the figurative palanquins once used by chiefs, and became widespread in Ga burial rites from around 1960. Watching a coffin take shape is to watch a craft, a philosophy and a funeral tradition at once.

   Tip: These are working workshops, not showrooms — ask permission, and consider buying a small piece to support the trade.

8. 

   8.Ada Foah and the Volta River estuary

   About 120 kilometres east of Accra, Ada Foah sits where the Volta River meets the Atlantic, a town of palm-lined beaches and estuary islands. Boat trips run from the riverside harbour out among the islands, and the water is the setting for swimming, sailing, fishing and cruises. The town was once a major trading centre, and its name comes from "Fort" — a reminder of the Danish trading post established here and the fort, Kongenstein, that followed in 1783.

   Tip: Arrange boat trips locally at the riverside; the estuary is best explored by water, not from the road.

9. Attraction

   9.Songor Lagoon

   Songor is a Ramsar-listed lagoon and UNESCO Biosphere Reserve beside Ada Foah, covering some 51,000 hectares of marine, wetland and freshwater habitat. In the European winter it holds bird populations estimated at around 109,000 migratory birds — herons, egrets, cormorants, greenshanks, stilts and terns — and its beaches are nesting grounds for green, leatherback and olive ridley turtles. Communities here fish, farm and harvest salt in the dry season, and part of the lagoon is considered sacred. Birdwatching platforms at Pute and Lolanya are the main viewing points.

   Tip: Turtle walks run at night and sightings are never guaranteed; go with Wildlife Division guides and keep lights and noise low.

10. 

    10.Fort Fredensborg, Old Ningo

    At Old Ningo, Fort Fredensborg is a ruined Danish-Norwegian fort of 1734, part of the UNESCO World Heritage serial property of Ghana's forts and castles. It is one of the ten forts listed as in ruins — which is exactly why it is worth the detour. There is no polished visitor experience here, just walls, sea air and the long shadow of the trade it served, in a Ga-Dangme fishing town that carries on around it.

    Tip: Combine with the Old Ningo landing beach and the town's fishing life; bring water and expect no facilities.