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Accepted Paper:
Paper short abstract:
This study examines how waterfront redevelopment plans in Ga Mashie, Ghana ignored local culture, leading to the loss of heritage. It argues that culturally sensitivity must be taken into account in urban planning projects in intricate African settings to preserve the heritage of communities.
Paper long abstract:
Historically, the Jamestown fishing community in the Ga-Mashie, Accra- Ghana, has played a significant role in facilitating the development of tangible and intangible indigenous artisanal fishing heritage, commerce, and a mosaic cultural community on the Accra coast. Notably, in a bid to make way for the construction of the Chinese-funded Jamestown Harbour in 2022, the Ghanaian government demolished the old canoe-landing bay in Ga Mashie and its fishing heritage. Though the fishing practices have been relocated to an undeveloped landing bay, the local stakeholders in this artisanal fishing heritage have voiced their protests concerning their lost heritage. In this paper, we rely on feedback from interviews with community members, and key stakeholders, as well as observations to interrogate the execution of such a top-down neo-colonial project that negated community heritage in the planning and construction processes. We argue that little or no effort was made to preserve the Ga-Mashie community heritage in this Chinese-influenced harbour design. This has resulted in the creation of a space that appears to exclude local culture, denial of access to local canoes and the disruption of intangible heritage practices in the ancient bay of the Ga-Mashie fishing community. The case of these neo-colonial disruptions in the Ga-Mashie canoe bay, drums home the point that legal and culturally sensitive attentions must be given prominence in the nexus between top-down urban planning, development projects, and indigenous community heritage in culturally, economically, and politically contested environments in Africa.
Keywords: Community Heritage;Ga-Mashie, neo-colonial development projects; artisanal fishing, cultural sensitivity
Contested infrastructures: How African and global actors reshape the investment boom
Session 1 Tuesday 1 October, 2024, -