Keta, Ghana

Tuesday, June 10, 2025

By Winifred Lartey

Pictures by Nipah Dennis.

Great salty waves break daily against the ruins of Fort Prinzenstein on the Ghanaian coast, where once thick walls held thousands of enslaved Africans before their journey across the Atlantic.

For centuries, this coastline has borne the brunt of the African slave trade to the American continent.

Today, however, it is succumbing to nature and neglect, its 550 km eroded by rising sea levels and uncontrolled human activity.

Villages are disappearing, taking with them centuries-old heritage, and coastal activities essential to the Ghanaian economy (ports, fishing, oil and gas) are under threat.

A few meters from the fort, Ernestina Gavor cleans a glass behind a bar.

“I hope it survives for a few more years”, she declares, in this restaurant whose income relies essentially on the influx of tourists.

Fort Prinzenstein, a fortified colonial trading post built by the Danes in the late 18th century and now a UNESCO World Heritage Site, is one of the most endangered sites on the Ghanaian coast.

James Akorli, its janitor for 24 years, has seen the Gulf of Guinea eat away at his structure and his memories.

The coast used to be about six kilometers from the fort,” he says.

The village in which he was born, and which his family had to leave in 1984, was also swallowed up.

Today, only 10% of the original fort remains.

The dungeons that housed female slaves are still visible, but the men’s dungeons have disappeared due to coastal erosion.

“This fort had great importance,” says Mr. Akorli.

“Now we’re losing everything – our history, our homes and our livelihoods.

– Defensive wall –

Ghana’s castles and forts, particularly those at Cape Coast and Elmina, attract thousands of visitors every year, mainly African-Americans seeking to reconnect with their ancestral heritage.

According to Chris Gordon, professor and environmental specialist at the University of Ghana, the cost of the work required to protect the remnants of slavery and the dwellings is well beyond the country’s current means.

“You’d need the kind of coastal protection they have in the Netherlands,” he explains.

Samuel Yevu, 45, is one of those recently displaced, after crashing waves devastated his village of Fuvemeh last March.

“Before, we had coconut palms, fishing nets, everything. Now it’s all gone,” says Yevu, whose family has been sleeping in a school classroom ever since.

In 2000, Ghana launched a $100 million sea wall project to protect communities like Keta, home to Fort Prinzenstein. While this project saved the town, it shifted erosion eastwards, devastating villages such as Agavedzi and Aflao.

Short-term interventions, such as building dikes and walls, can exacerbate erosion by redirecting the ocean’s energy to other areas, experts warn.

According to a study by the University of Ghana, the country could lose key monuments such as Christiansborg Castle and Kwame Nkrumah’s mausoleum in the coming decades if nothing is done.

The gradual disappearance of Fort Prinzenstein is particularly striking because of its unique role in the region’s transatlantic slave trade. Slaves from several areas of West Africa were marked, sorted and shipped from this trading post, even after Britain banned the slave trade in 1807.

“This is the only fort in the Volta region. Neither Togo, Benin nor Nigeria have any,” stresses its janitor James Akorli.

– Like losing a graveyard

At Cape Coast Fort, a tour guide dreads seeing the site suffer the same fate.

“If this fort disappears, it will be like losing a graveyard of millions of people. It’s not just the history of Ghana, it’s the history of the world”, he explains, wishing to remain anonymous.

For Edmond Moukala, UNESCO’s representative in Ghana, the major problem is not erosion, but neglect.

“If there had been regular maintenance, we wouldn’t be witnessing this severe deterioration. These buildings were meant to last for centuries. But neglect, urban development and vandalism have destroyed many of them,” says Moukala.

In Keta, James Akorli makes an urgent appeal to the authorities: “They must intervene urgently, restore this fort to stimulate visits, so that our brothers in the diaspora don’t lose their roots”.

Humaniterre with AFP