Tourism options for Ghana
Ghana’s tourism potential and promise rests on a full-on sensory and emotive experience engaging the heart, mind, body and soul. An open-ended zoo, Ghana is not.
There are tourism investment ideas for Ghana’s pocketbook and piggy bank, which may supplement, and not supplant, its tried-and-true preexisting treasures – for example, Cape Coast and Elmina castles, as well as December's Detty festivities.
Ghana Akwapim range could be made into a resplendent strip of services, amenities and events for day-trippers.
Aburi could be refashioned into a pedestrian-friendly enclave centred on Aburi Gardens, coming equipped with cafes and eateries, greenways and picnicking amenities, plus other familial programming.
Larteh could function as an adult-aged short-term rental hub for weekenders, coming stocked with pubs, distilleries, breweries and restaurants, as well as pocket parks, public squares, bed and breakfasts and timeshares.
Mampong could mark up what it already is. Having already established itself as an area for health and convalescence, Mampong could supplement these health facilities by becoming a hub for healthy life-styling.
Health supplement stores, gyms and sports clubs could populate the municipality. Mampong could even host the finish line of a marathon.
Akropong could host festivals and durbars, cultural, culinary or otherwise, as it could also be the siting of a local language ‘Olympics’ or spelling Bee, as also a venue for STEM conventions, etc.
Access to this range of amenities and activities could be realised through cable cars, whether the aerial or funicular sort. A transit network, which would include coach terminals across Greater Accra, could transport patrons from valley side stations at Larteh and Peduase, replete with a non-rail trolley service between and amongst the four aforementioned destinations.
Others
A royal derby and durbar could be a tourism programming idea ripe for Kumasi.
The staging of seasonal horse and weekend greyhound events at respective racecourses, the former, which could approximate England’s Ascot races and the Kentucky Derby, could be realised for the metropolitan area.
The Asantehene could serve as the Master of ceremonies for the horse derbies staged in April, August and December. A palanquin procession of royalty could be staged in conjunction with one or all three derbies.
A maze-configured village reminiscent of the architecture of DRC’s Kasai region, the Ksour architecture of Mauritania, the Ndebele house paintings of South Africa plus the beehives of the Zulu and Swazi could be realised in Gambaga and/or Tongo.
An ornate village resplendent with shea nut mills and boutiques, Northern cuisine eateries and cooking workshops, an ancestral ‘wailing’ wall, a chapel and mosque, in addition to performative spaces for storytelling, live folk music performances and stilt walkers, alongside pocket parks, comedy clubs, a movie theatre and a library could stock this attraction.
Akosombo and the Volta Lake could be a bastion of water sports and recreation sited in waterfront resort settings.
Water slides, immense swimming facilities, an aquarium, an amphitheatre, a boardwalk, a marina, fishing piers, fish markets, plus the staging of a regatta could be programmed for the watershed.
Dodi Island would also need sprucing and livening up to better accommodate boating excursions to the island.
A club culture festival could also be held on the beaches of Anloga. Revelry, approximating Ibiza and Coachella, for which a cadre of Afrobeats and Amapiano disc jockeys and musicians could headline various stages could be realised.
Expansive outdoor spaces decorated with black-light artwork, and ornate light shows populated by revellers in flip-flops/chaley worteys, amidst a heat-beaten, water-misted atmosphere, replete with beachside camping under a night’s sky, should characterise this semi-annual music festival.
Forts
Some of Ghana's coastal forts could also be repurposed without desecrating their collective histories. A Fortified Theatre festival could be staged within these hallowed grounds wherein the pathos and ethos of the human stain of slavery, of the Diasporan experience, of subjugation, of forced migrations, of resilience and fortitude are imbued, especially per the presence of a Diasporan audience. Fort Kongenstein, Fort Goede Hope, Fort William and Fort Gross Friedrichsburg would be good candidates.
Water transport in the form of ferries and hovercrafts could ply the coast to and from these destinations, as these vehicles could also be made fit for other transport purposes.
A parading floats festival similar to Rio’s Carnival and New York City Macy Parade could ply a route from Black Star Square to Teshie-Nungua.
Twined with Kakamotobi festivities, this event could feature a parade of brass bands, Ghana’s signature decorative coffins, plus all others in the vein of Mexico’s All Saints Day/Dia de Muertos.
In Ghana’s case, in remembrance of soul survivors of the global Diasporan experience would be commemorated.
On a feeder roads circuit kyenkyema/tsentsema cars could be repurposed for a Ghana Road Rally. This rally would serve as an enterprising effort to return a world-renowned road rally to Africa.
Lastly, and not necessarily least, the continuing importance, that the “National Cathedral” should engender amongst Ghanaians, may be summed up in two words – Notre Dame, France’s top tourism earner!
The writer is Converner Buildberg, a built environment collective.
Read a fuller version of this article @www.graphic.com.gh