How to Use Ghana Airports’ Travel and Flight Information Guide

When you arrive at Accra Airport you will see a booklet which offers advice. Here’s how a tourist should best use the information to avoid losing money.

Getting the Young Diaspora to engage with Ghana, by a repat who left the country

When people hear that I moved to Ghana and then left again they often think it confirms their preconceptions about the country. I made two videos with The Only Way is Ghana about my experiences and why I chose to leave. Ghana is not easy to live in but no where is in the world.

I would hate for people to focus on reasons for leaving Ghana. My biggest decision was my motivation to move there in the first place!

I think the magic of the diaspora engagement story is not the idea of reverse migration – it isn’t in the success of repatriating and staying there – the magic is in choosing to be involved and launching that exciting adventurous experience which may mean you straddle across two or more countries.

(photo credit: Ernest Simons| Future of Ghana)

New Transport System

So I think I wrote about Accra’s Bus Rapid Transport system before. I’ve been looking forward to it since I first moved to Ghana and now that I’m not there, it has finally arrived. Everyone’s buzzing about it.  A few weeks ago I was engaged in a long conversation about the BRT system on the…

Day 116: The Beautiful Kwahu

Yesterday before I set off to  Kwahu I told my facebook community that I was heading to arguably the most beautiful mountains in Ghana. I think that’s a fair assertion since so many flock to Kwahu as a sort of pilgrimage every Easter. This is not for any real religious reason but just the fact…

Day 86: @VisaFreeGhana

Day 86: @VisaFreeGhana

So there’s this awesome campaign that I signed and joined some months back. The aim is very simple. Increase the number of tourists into the country by decreasing the number obstacles, namely the fact that getting a visa to Ghana is just so difficult.

A 30-day visa to Ghana from the UK costs £50. This is not a standardised price, so it could be more or less in the USA, Holland or Canada. It’s free to visitors from Benin, Botswana, Burkina Faso, Cape Verde, Cote d’Ivoire, Egypt, Gambia, Guinea Bissau, Guinea, Kenya, Lesotho, Liberia, Malawi, Mali, Mauritania, Niger, Nigeria, Senegal, Sierra Leone, Singapore, Swaziland, Tanzania, Togo, Trinidad and Tobago, Uganda, and Zimbabwe. That’s fine since so many of these are African countries and the Pan-African in me agrees that if anyone should be given free access to our country it’s other Africans first. BUT the reality is that other Africans do not have the disposable income to be able to visit Ghana frequently,or to spend a lot of money when they do arrive. It feels like the highest ‘taxed’ visitors come from the countries hosting the greatest number of Ghanaian expatriates. I don’t think that’s fair.

The government’s department in charge of tourism really do think that marketing Ghana as a peaceful democracy and great place to do business is the key to ranking up their tourist volume. It’s not. Millennials are the fastest growing demographic of tourists. I’m one! We want excitement, adventure, voluntourisms, cute underprivileged children to hold our hand and ask us to take them to America even after they’ve found out we’re from the UK. We want beach raves and strange food. We want a WISH YOU WERE HERE moment and none of that happens in an office or conference hall detailing the potential revenue a country seeks to earn some time 6 decades from now.

This campaign has been brought to the attention of the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Hannah Tetteh. She says she has considered the argument but her position will not change. I don’t think she has considered it enough. Help us make this campaign too big to be ignored and when we are successful, come and visit Ghana, it’s a great place to be.

This post is because I thought I should add my voice to that of my friend Christopher Scott who has admirably championed it for some time now.  If you agree, click on the link at the top of the post, join the group, sign the change.org petition. Don’t forget to share this post and the group and petition. Thank you. As you were.

I was doing some random research a while ago I can’t remember why. Here’s some stats I came across that I think supports the post: 53% of tourists in Europe are aged between 15-44 (a Millennial is anyone up to about 35). The largest age group of visitors to Singapore were 25-34 year olds and the constitute 22.7% of visitors, followed by 21.8% beging 35-44 year olds.

Day 3: Rude Awakening

Three days in a row I’ve been woken up in the rudest way possible. The Rooster. It’s true that animals have accents and the Ghanaian rooster’s accent is not as appealing as the Northern Hemisphere (I’m actually not very sure where it’s from) accent of the Kellogg’s rooster’s cock-a-doodle-doo. It’s a more strained, desperate crow…

Day 1: Language Barriers

31/10/13 Let’s count Day 1 as the first day I awake in this country. Talk about being thrown into the deep end, my mother (aka unpaid translator) left me alone with my grandmother for the entire day. Gran and I went to the market. This is me who really can’t speak much Twi and all…

Touchdown

You’ll hear this alot, especially from people coming from North America and Europe. The way the heat hits you when you step off the plane it’s both abrupt and inviting. It’s probably the only thing I like about Kotoka International. The airport isn’t “modern” enough to have hose bridges direct into the plane so you…

Ghanaian Diaspora Info website

I came across this website when I was carrying out my dissertation: http://www.ghanaiandiaspora.com/ It’s got everything from an Overview of climate, regions and other stats, through to advice about setting up bank accounts Could the website be more dynamic and exciting to encourage fence-sitters to take that leap? Yes. Like every other government-related website I’ve come…