While listening, I imagine the song playing by the roadside in Ghana — in Accra or Takoradi, as people gather to buy CDs or groceries. The lyrics cry for change and redirection, voicing a belief that perhaps times have moved too far in an unnatural direction. 

In stark contrast to that warmth, I write this from Aberdeen, Scotland. Outside my window stands a large tree. I don't know what kind it is, but I've lived beside it long enough to experience its silent decay. Yet the changes happen just quickly enough that my mind is still cemented in the past, when the leaves were still green, and I barely noticed the branches. Now, the wind blows carelessly through its limbs, and it sheds a mournful shower of its former self. In that moment, I wish I were more than just an onlooker and instead, a participant in its quiet transformation. However, the cold keeps me inside, where heating and other comforts create a distance from nature's changes. I realise that my emotional attachment to a particular season/a remembered past leaves me stuck in longing for what was, what could be, and sheltered from what is. 

From this space of reflection, I think about Ghana — my 'home country,' or instead, a place linked to me by heritage. A place to relax, enjoy the sun, catch a vibe, and connect to my roots. As cliché as it sounds, I often find myself having to prove that heritage and my right to speak on a country I'd readily call home, yet rarely stay in for more than a few months at a time. 

I assume Strand did not face these existential questions when producing his book Ghana: An African Portrait. His cinematic portrait of Ghana presents an image of fertile land, a thriving economy, refined architecture, and great potential for industrial development. One page reads, "None but great kings and great men trade here." Thus, environments that were once accessible to the average person have now been upgraded to replicate spatial alienation. Where the land now serves as a product, and its potential to support industrial behaviour can now be praised. 

His gaze shouts that Ghana is genuinely new and improved. Yet this polished portrayal, obsessed with grandeur, echoes imperialist framings of Africa. Development here replicates a sign of "progress" through Western standards; a spectacle to inspire envy and legitimise “civilisation.” Just like my longing for a lost season, Strands' portrait reflects an addiction to a particular framework, one rooted in the colonial values of capitalist urbanisation.

Following independence in 1957, "newness" was rebranded through the transformation of the Gold Coast into Ghana. However, to call Ghana "new" solely because of its independence is to overlook how colonial ideals have shaped its postcolonial identity. Surely, newness must emerge from paradigms beyond colonial inheritance; however, Ghana's entanglement causes me to question whether its values are aligned with a new approach to reality or, rather, the replication of inequality and limited reciprocity.

Therefore, to understand where Ghana truly fits on the scale of the new oasis that Strand portrays, I turn to two postcolonial frameworks. The first is temporal, marking independence as the end of colonial rule. The second is structural, referring to the lasting material and ideological impacts of colonialism on what was once a pre-colonial culture. 

As Audre Lorde states, "The master's tools will never dismantle the master's house." Similarly, postcolonial identity cannot be fully realised through colonial logic. Therefore I wonder if such a lens could offer space for radical modes of being, not as adaptations within a colonial world, but as a departure from it? And if it’s possible to apply this concept to the question of what Ghana is?

These questions are particularly relevant in using the spatial and urban fabric of Ghana to understand its symbolic presence, as the country increasingly fits the description of a postmetropolis. A term which captures the ongoing tension between old and new cultural landscapes shaped by globalisation and late capitalism. Ghana's cities, especially Accra, demonstrate that space is not merely a backdrop but an active participant in social change. This opens up the possibility of moving beyond the binary of colonial versus postcolonial or traditional versus modern as the sole lens through which we understand Ghana's development. However, from the framing of Ghana within Strand's masterpiece, it seems Ghana is firmly rooted in a time distant from its ancestral heritage. 

The concept of a socio-spatial dialectic, where the production of space is shaped by, and in turn shapes, social relations, is ever-present in this portrayal of spatial use as a distinguishing factor in Ghana's revival. However, the experience of space is constantly being redefined, and the way people inhabit, structure, and transform their environments cannot be fully captured through a two-system model that places colonialism at the centre. Although Strand attempts to convey the imagery and connotations that suggest otherwise, the true meaning of space is continuously negotiated through local, cultural, economic, and emotional forces.

Thus, a strictly dualistic approach (colonial vs postcolonial) proves too rigid when considering how the new design of urban space suggests a modern Ghana and how the lived reality of urban space in Ghana resists such boundaries. It calls for a more fluid and responsive framework that acknowledges both the remnants of colonial power and the creative possibilities that lie beyond it. However, to say that Ghana is not spatially a continuation of its pre-colonial design is not to deny the evident change but to question what kind of change is being measured and by whose standards. To acknowledge Ghana as a pioneer in this context should not mean polished concrete, economic statistics, or global trade appeal, but instead, the capacity to exist and develop outside of this inherited paradigm. In doing so, we can refine our understanding of the method through which we conceptualise what Ghana is now. 

On a recent visit to the Kwame Nkrumah Mausoleum, I saw a perfect example of where Ghana stands on its timeline of development. Encased in glass, the first president's car stood still. Pieces of rubbish gathered under the punctured wheels, and dust coated the windows, yet it stood proud. I don't include this to suggest that Ghana is void of holding character separate from its colonial heritage relating to cleanliness; however, that image remains with me. A monument caught between reverence and neglect, heritage and abandonment. It's as if Ghana speaks its truths through quiet contradiction.

Therefore, while I seek meaning in metaphors and frameworks, I can still acknowledge that Ghana has transformed, even if the changes may seem subtle. Changes that may not necessarily align with my approach to what a postcolonial newness would look like: open gutters, unreliable electricity, and a poor water supply — symptoms of a different kind of newness. A newness forged from resilience, adaptation, and local logic. 

So, just as I remain emotionally attached to the tree outside my window—even as I am distanced by comfort and climate, I suggest that Ghana's development is both haunted by the past and filled with moments of rupture and redefinition. There is an aesthetic of resistance in this attitude that echoes the writing from stickers stamped on local taxis, "Who Jah bless, no one cares." The future, the past, the now, the formed, and the in-process all at once. Ghana's identity may not be wholly African, wholly Western, or wholly postcolonial. It references the reality of diaspora — layered, borrowed, and invented, touched by colonialism, permanently affected, and belonging to a category yet to be defined.

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About Araba Mercer Banson

Urban design and cultural theorist with a love for Jollof.
Born in London, rooted in Takoradi.
Reimagining Ghana means understanding the past to help shape the future.