"Accra is Changing, Isn't It?"

The August 29, 1954 issue of the Daily Graphic contained an article entitled "Some Aspects of Gold Coast Life Fifty Years Ago." In its few pages, a local journalist, S.N. Addo, offered a retrospective on the colony's turn-of-the-century past. It was not a nostalgic piece. Instead, it characterized the early decades of the twentieth century as a period of deplorable conditions and undesirable constraints. Years ago, infrastructural "setbacks," including poor roads, lamentable housing, and a mediocre communication system, had limited the colony's political, economic, and social growth. Fortunately, Addo remarked, much had changed. In the last fifty years, extensive construction and building …