Photos from Ghana's Oil City- Takoradi

This post is not going be full of wise quotes from the streets of Takoradi like the Accra one was. Takoradi is a totally different specie of animal and requires a different method of dissection.

Yesterday, I decided to go to Takoradi by public transport. Just when I was getting comfortable in the air-conditioned Yutong bus, the woman sitting across the aisle from me gently unwrapped her ball of Ga kenkey, pepper and freshly fried fish and started masticating gracefully. The bus smelled like my grandmother’s kitchen for a long time.

We were about to take off, when a preacher got onboard and decided to speak on the theme: “Marriage and the legacy of fornication”. It was quite a challenge listening to a brimstone and fire sermon. I forgot the bus smelled like kenkey a few minutes before. Now it smelled of fury.

I worked in Takoradi approximately ten years ago as a radio presenter on what was then the biggest, most vibrant news and entertainment channel of the whole western region.

Today, Skyy Power FM is just one of the eleven competing radio stations… and even the BBC has joined the race with their own channel. You wonder why the boom? Well, the answer is O (Oscar) I (India) and L (Lima)… OIL.

Takoradi is the belly of one of the Africa’s biggest oil discovery of the last ten years. When I lived here, the city was known for its music, a genre called Western Highlife, its seamen, its port and its women. Now, the only language on everybody’s lips is… oil.

These photographs are part of what will be a continuing series of attempts by me to document this fast changing landscape.

What will it be like in ten year? Twenty years? Fifty years?


I have no idea… but if God blesses us with long life and passion, we shall discover together.