By John Owoo
(Accra – Ghana)
I arrived at the famous James Town café, having passed by a number of abandoned structures predating Ghana’s independence. Standing in their own grandiose way, they remind visitors and residents alike of the rich history of Ga Mashie (Accra Central), which played a prominent role in colonial Ghana.
Entering James Twon Café, I notice a lovely garden – something conspicuously missing in Ga Mashie. It is surrounded by tables and chairs where patrons enjoy meals and drinks while flipping through art books and admiring historic photos on the walls.
That morning, my mission was to see an architectural exhibition on historic buildings titled “Shopping Emporiums of West Africa,” which focused on the influence of the Kingsway Department Stores in West Africa’s modern urban space. It also focused on their role in keeping British-American goods in the mouths of Africans, with hundreds of branches in pre- and post-colonial Ghana and Nigeria.
Curated by Prof. Iain Jackson of the Liverpool School of Architecture (United Kingdom) and Claire Tunstall, Global Head of Art, Archives, and Records Management at Unilever, the exhibition featured previously unseen archival photographs, architectural drawings, marketing materials, and brochures from the United Africa Company archive.
Kingsway Stores, a subsidiary of the United African Company (UAC), was the vehicle through which British culture and capitalism spread from the early colonial era into the post-independence era.
The first Kingsway store opened in 1915 on the Evans Atta Mills High Street in James Town, serving British expatriates and elite Africans. The second, a magnificent, large building in modernist design, was constructed in 1956 as part of the 1957 independence celebrations.
Consequently, this exhibition highlights our beloved Kingsway as an icon of nostalgia and as a neo-colonial agent within modernism. Undeniably, old Accra has several urban ruins: abandoned colonial-era buildings left to decay, some of which crumbled after the 1939 earthquake, and facades that are reminders of a vibrant Euro-African mercantile past.
Indeed, remnants of early 20th-century office buildings, warehouses, retail outlets, and trade houses now serve as custodians of the story of how Accra evolved into a commercial center from its days as a harbor city.
The exhibition is sponsored by the University of Liverpool, James Town Cafe, and the Architecture Heritage and Urbanism in West Africa organization (AHUWA), and promoted by the Center for Architecture and Arts Heritage Africa.
It ends on Friday, April 3, 2026.
Slide One is an AI reproduction by Lumii studios
