Accra walking tour & city guide

Markets and old Accra

Makola Market, in the city centre, is a vast maze of stalls selling fabrics, beads, shoes, spices and produce, run mostly by women traders. A short walk south, Jamestown is Accra's oldest district, with a colonial-era lighthouse, Ussher Fort and a busy beach where fishermen land their brightly painted canoes.

Osu, to the east, is the place for cafés, bars and boutiques along Oxford Street, and the Labadi Beach area fills up with music and food stalls at weekends.

A classic walk

Start at Independence Square, with its Black Star Gate and Independence Arch, then walk to the Kwame Nkrumah Memorial Park, where the founder of modern Ghana is buried. Continue west along the coast to Jamestown for the lighthouse view over the harbour, and finish in the noise and colour of Makola Market.

Good to know

Shared minibuses called trotros run everywhere and ride-hailing apps work well. The driest and most comfortable months are November to March, though the Harmattan wind can bring haze in December and January. Cape Coast and Elmina castles, the most important sites of the transatlantic slave trade on this coast, are a long day trip west.