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Akwidaa

Akwidaa Akwidaa New Town
Akwidaa
Akwidaa Location of Akwidaa in Western Region, Ghana
Coordinates: 4°45′N 2°1′W / 4.750°N 2.017°W / 4.750; -2.017
Country	Ghana
Region	Western Region
District	Ahanta West District
Population
• Demonym	Akwidan
Time zone	UTC+0 (Greenwich Mean Time)
• Summer (DST)	GMT

Akwidaa is a small town and fishing villageinAhanta West district, a district in the Western Region of south-west Ghana, and is one of the southernmost places in Ghana.^[1]

Economy[edit]

The economy is primarily based upon fishing, with many fishing boats lining the beach.

The town and fishing village has Ezile bay village and the Green Turtle Lodge with eight thatched solar powered huts facing the beach alongside a bar and dining annex. It is named after the many green turtles that lay their eggs on Akwidaa beach.

Most business is conducted in the village without legal paperwork and many of the surrounding village chiefs own the land and the coconut trees and all purchases must be transacted through them. Business deals are based on trust and spoken words. A new landowner can buy a tree from the village chiefs and has the options of felling it, or keeping the trees standing and harvesting the coconuts on a farm.

The recent oil discovery in Ghana also has made Akwidaa a new place for investment due to its oil reserved (Block) near Cape Three Point.^[1]

History[edit]

Akwidaa is a Twi word meaning old man, who during Dutch colonial times, used to ferry people across the river.

Frederick ‘Great Elector’ William was the first Brandenburg Elector who strove to remodel his territory to the image of what he had observed in the Netherlands. In the 1650s and 1660s, he negotiated an international commercial treaties to secure privileges for a merchant marine he did not yet have. In the later 1670 however with the help of the Zealandish (zeeuws) ‘interloper’ merchant Benjamin Raule, he acquired a small fleet of ships. In 1680, Raule secured for Brandenburg a share in the west African trade in gold, ivory and slaves. By establishing a small colonial undertaking on the Cape Three Point for the Kurfürstliche Afrikanische Brandenburgische Compagnie. It established three fortresses: Gross Friedrichsburg, Fort Louise (on the cape) and Fort Dorothea.^[2]

Raule sent Captain Blonk to concluded the treaty with the African chiefs Pregatte, Sophong and Apany. Who agreed, on May 16, 1681 at Akwidaa, to trade exclusively with Brandenburg. Several African notables were brought to Hamburg and Berlin where they were exhibited to the Grand Elector in superb finery. The Great Elector sent von der Gröben with two ships to repatriate the African notables and found Gross-Friedrichburg in 1683 and the Fort Dorothea at Akwidaa in 1684. After the death of the Grand Elector, embezzlement by the company's agents led to a deficit of 500,000 thalers in 1691. The company became paralyzed successively by the war of the League of Augsburg, the long trial of Raule (1698) and the War of the Spanish Succession. On December 18, 1717, the new king of Prussia ceded all of his African possessions to the Dutch West India Company for 7,200 ducats and twelve black slaves “including six tied with gold chains”. ^[3]

Originally constructed as a small triangular building it was soon taken by the Dutch , but as they did not want to upset its ally against Louis XIV France on account of a petty quarrel in a distant land, was duly given back. It was turned into a square building with two bastions pointing landwards.^[4] The Great Elector, who had acquired the colony of Gross Friedrichsburg in the hope this would open the door to an expansion of colonial commerce. Frederick I had kept up the ailing colony for sentimental reasons, but Frederick William sold it off to the Dutch in 1721, saying he had ‘always regarded this trading nonsense as a chimera.^[5]

On our visit to the site in the early 2000’s we met Nana Akulo Numa XIV (Benkumhene) of the traditional Ahanta Area. He showed us the original parchment confirming the fort was handed to his ancestors on 24 February 1778 by the Dutch (see pictures). Though they did blow up the gate before they left. We visited the ruins and found the masonry so solid much of it to be still standing, just as Albert van Dantzig had decades earlier.^[6]

In the late 17th and early 18th Century (April 1684 – 1687, 1698–1711, April 1712 – 1717) Akwidaa, then known as Fort Dorothea, was the smaller of two forts which constituted a German colony, the Brandenburger Gold Coast. It was the focus of a struggle with the Dutch, who occupied it in 1687–1698 and to whom the Brandenburgers finally sold it.^[7] The ruins of Fort Dorothea were inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List in 1979 along with several other forts and castles in Ghana because of its testimony to European colonial influence and exploitation in West Africa.^[8]

References[edit]

External links[edit]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Akwidaa.

Wikivoyage has a travel guide for Akwidaa.