From Ayawaso to Accra

Before Accra became a city of busy roads, tall buildings and crowded markets, the Accra Plains stretched between the hills and the sea.

People lived there in towns, villages and family settlements. They farmed, fished, made salt, worked with iron and clay, and traded with neighbouring communities. Paths crossed the plains, carrying people and goods between the coast and the lands farther inland.

The early history of the Ga people is not told in only one way.

Some Ga oral traditions describe ancestors travelling from places farther east before settling on the Accra Plains. Other accounts tell of different groups arriving at different times. Archaeological evidence also shows that people had lived on the plains for a very long time and that new settlers met, married and formed communities with people already living there.

For this reason, historians do not describe the Ga as one group that arrived together on a single journey. The Ga people and their communities were formed over many generations through settlement, migration, family ties and alliances.

One of their most important settlements was Ayawaso.

Ayawaso stood inland, approximately twenty-one kilometres north of the central Accra coast. Early European records called it Great Accra because it was larger and more powerful than the smaller coastal settlement they called Little Accra.

Ayawaso was more than a collection of houses. It was an important political and trading centre.

Its ruler worked with elders and other office holders to govern the community. Spiritual leaders cared for sacred places and performed important rites. Different parts of society had different responsibilities, and family groups helped organise daily life.

At the markets, goods from many places changed hands. Fish and salt travelled inland from the coast. Gold and other products came from the interior. Farmers brought food, craftspeople sold the things they had made, and traders carried goods along paths connecting Ayawaso with neighbouring states and the sea.

Children grew up learning the work and responsibilities of their families. They listened to histories told by elders and learned the customs that helped hold the community together.

By the seventeenth century, Ayawaso had become the centre of an influential Ga state. It was connected to several Ga communities on the plains and along the coast.

Yet Ayawaso was not the only Ga settlement.

Along the shore were fishing villages and sacred places that had existed before the fall of the inland capital. The sea was already part of Ga life. Fishing canoes crossed the water, families lived near lagoons and beaches, and spiritual traditions connected the people with the sea and the land.

In time, these coastal settlements would become even more important.

Large ships began appearing more often along the coast.

European trading companies came looking for gold and other valuable goods. They built trading lodges and, later, stone forts. Dutch traders built Fort Crèvecœur. Danish traders established Christiansborg at Osu, and the English built James Fort.

The forts were not empty buildings standing apart from African life. They depended upon African traders, workers and leaders. Goods moved between the coast and the interior through networks that African communities had already created.

The trade brought wealth to some people, but it also brought competition, danger and violence. Gold, cloth, weapons and other goods passed through the coastal markets. Enslaved people were also bought, sold and imprisoned within the Atlantic trading system. Many were taken across the ocean and never returned home.

Meanwhile, powerful African states were competing for control of trade routes and territory.

One of these states was Akwamu.

During the late seventeenth century, the Akwamu expanded their power across the region. Fighting broke out between Akwamu and the Ga state centred at Ayawaso.

In 1677, according to the date most often used by historians, the Akwamu defeated the Ga. Some studies describe the conquest as taking place over several years, from approximately 1677 to 1680.

Ayawaso fell.

Homes were abandoned, political power was broken and families were scattered. Some people fled to other inland settlements. Others moved towards the coast.

They were not walking towards an empty shore.

Ga fishing villages and spiritual settlements were already there. The newcomers joined relatives and other residents in these existing communities. Many settled near the European forts, where the forts’ cannons appeared to offer some protection against attack.

Families carried more than their belongings with them.

They carried their names, memories and responsibilities. They carried the stories of Ayawaso. They carried customs for organising families, choosing leaders, honouring spiritual duties and caring for the land.

The movement from Ayawaso to the coast was not one neat journey made by everyone together. Different families left at different times and travelled to different places.

But the fall of Ayawaso changed the centre of Ga life.

The road of history had turned south, towards the sea.

The coastal settlements grew.

Around the Dutch fort was a town sometimes called Dutch Accra. Around James Fort, another community developed. Osu grew near Christiansborg Castle. Other Ga towns—including La, Teshie, Nungua and Tema—continued to develop along the coast and across the plains.

The oldest central parts of Accra became known collectively as Ga Mashie. Today, Ga Mashie includes the historic communities of Jamestown and Ussher Town.

Life there was shaped by both opportunity and struggle.

Fishermen launched their canoes into the Atlantic. Traders carried goods through the markets. Craftspeople built homes, repaired nets and made tools. Women played important roles in commerce, families and community life.

The European forts remained powerful places. They served as trading posts, prisons and centres of foreign influence. European companies competed with one another, while African rulers and merchants negotiated, resisted and formed alliances according to their own interests.

Ga communities did not simply disappear beneath these outside powers.

They maintained their family houses, quarters, leaders and sacred responsibilities. They welcomed and incorporated people from other places, making Accra a diverse trading town long before it became a colonial capital.

In 1877, the British colonial government moved the capital of the Gold Coast from Cape Coast to Accra.

Accra expanded rapidly after that. Government offices, businesses and new neighbourhoods appeared. People arrived from across the Gold Coast and from other parts of the world.

The city became increasingly crowded and cosmopolitan.

But beneath the growing colonial city remained the older Ga landscape: family lands, fishing beaches, lagoons, sacred places, historic quarters and the memory of Ayawaso.

Today, Accra is the capital of Ghana and home to people from many backgrounds. It belongs to a modern nation, but it is also situated within the ancestral homeland of the Ga people.

Ga history can still be heard in the language spoken in homes and neighbourhoods. It can be seen in the old quarters of Ga Mashie, in fishing communities along the coast and in ceremonies that connect families with their ancestors.

It lives in Homowo, the annual festival through which Ga communities remember hardship, survival and abundance. It lives in family names, traditional offices, songs and stories. It also lives in the work of historians, elders and archaeologists who continue to study the past.

Modern Accra did not begin when the British made it a capital.

Its foundations reach farther back—to the settlements of the Accra Plains, to the communities beside the sea and to the inland town once known as Great Accra.

Ayawaso fell, but the Ga people endured.

They carried their history forward and continued building the city now known throughout the world as Accra.

Accra PlainsThe broad area of land around present-day Accra, lying between the coast and the hills farther inland.

ArchaeologyThe study of past societies through objects, buildings, settlements and other physical remains.

AkwamuA powerful Akan state that expanded during the seventeenth century and defeated the Ga state centred at Ayawaso.

AyawasoThe former inland capital of an important Ga state. Early European records called it Great Accra.

FortA strongly built structure intended for defence. European trading companies built forts along the coast for commerce and military protection. Some were also used to imprison enslaved people.

Ga MashieThe historic heart of central Accra, including the old communities now known as Jamestown and Ussher Town.

HomowoAn important Ga festival that remembers a period of hunger and celebrates survival, harvest and community.

MantseA Ga title for a chief or town ruler.

Oral traditionHistory and knowledge passed from one generation to another through speech, storytelling, songs and ceremonies.

Transatlantic slave tradeThe system through which millions of African people were captured, sold, transported across the Atlantic Ocean and forced into slavery.

WulomoA Ga spiritual leader responsible for sacred duties and the relationship between a community and its deities. The plural is wulomei.

Bredwa-Mensah, Yaw. An Archaeological Investigation Conducted at Okai Koi Hill (Ayawaso) and Its Significance for Iron Age Archaeology in Ghana. MPhil thesis, University of Ghana, 1990.

Field, M. J. Social Organization of the Ga People. London: Crown Agents for the Colonies, 1940.

Odotei, Irene Quaye. The Ga and Their Neighbours, 1600–1742. University of Ghana.

Parker, John. Making the Town: Ga State and Society in Early Colonial Accra. Portsmouth, New Hampshire: Heinemann, 2000.

Wilks, Ivor. Akwamu 1650–1750: A Study of the Rise and Fall of a West African Empire. University of Ghana, 1958.

UNESCO World Heritage Centre. Forts and Castles, Volta, Greater Accra, Central and Western Regions.

University of Ghana. Archaeological and historical research concerning Ayawaso, Ga Mashie and the development of Accra.