The Other Accra

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Accra, like most African cities, is a place of extremes. If you can afford it, you can live in a gated community of faux-European mansions with manicured lawns; you can shop in an upmarket air-conditioned supermarket and commute to a shiny high-rise in your Porsche Cayenne. At the other end of the scale are squatters in shacks, the ubiquitous stinking open gutters, people hustling to get by. There is poverty here, and having worked in rough neighbourhoods, in ‘zongos’, in far-flung villages I thought I had seen it. But I was unprepared for Old Fadama.

Perched on the banks of the Korle Lagoon (which has the ignominious distinction of being one of the most polluted water bodies on planet Earth), Old Fadama does not appear on any map. Yet it is home to some 80,000 Ghanaians, most of whom hail from the woefully underdeveloped north of the country, having migrated south in search of work or to escape past famine and ethnic violence.

The stereotypical perception of Old Fadama is of a hotbed of crime, violence, drugs and prostitution – hence the biblical moniker ‘Sodom and Gomorrah’ that is often seen in the press. The name is consistent, too, with the common attitude that the residents are outsiders, backward ‘strangers’ to be looked down upon. The reality, of course, is that yes, they have their troubles with crime and violence, as does any place where people live in grinding poverty. But far outweighing that is the sense of a community of ordinary people who have the same dreams and desires as any of us; who tend their small businesses, who seek to provide for their families, who manage to emerge pristine from the windowless one-room shack they share with 11 other people and set off for work.

As I understand it, the Government’s position is that the settlement is in a (largely destroyed) ecologically sensitive, flood-prone area and that the residents must be relocated. However, whenever successive governments have raised the spectre of relocation there has been an outcry from residents, who feel that plans for their resettlement have not been adequately thought through, and that there is insufficient clarity on how the relocation of those 80,000 people would be executed or funded. Fearful of losing the votes of the northern half of the country, the Government backs down. However, as the Government considers the community to be an illegal settlement, it will not legitimise it with the provision of services and infrastructure. And so the result is a kind of political inertia within which 80,000 people continue to live in the almost total absence of the most basic amenities.

I had the opportunity to see Old Fadama for myself while shooting an assignment on life inside Accra’s slums. A selection of the resulting images will be exhibited at the Alliance Française d’Accra alongside Sarah Preston’s photographic work on the resilience of urban women. Open from the middle of this week through to the end of May, I hope the show will provide a glimpse of an Accra that many of us choose not to see.


Exhibition Opening: 6:30pm, Wednesday 18 May 2011 (Admission is free)
Exhibition Dates: 18th – 31st May 2011
Venue: Alliance Française d’Accra, Liberation Link, Airport Residential Area, Accra, Ghana. (Behind Opeibea House.)
Enquiries: +233 30 277 3134/ com@afaccra.com

In addition, there will be a panel discussion at 4:00pm on Wednesday 18 May 2011 featuring women from the communities pictured.