Parrot Memories Fade as Ghana’s Colonial Architecture Razed

Elizabeth Biney remembers as a little girl watching monkeys play in her yard and parrots flit above the sloping roof of her colonial house in the Ghanaian capital, Accra.

“There were birds all over the place,” Biney, now 58, recalled in an interview. “There were so many trees you couldn’t see the sky.”

Today her home in the Ridge neighborhood is one of the last century-old houses built by the British colonial administration. Developers have invaded the area, chopped down the trees and built bland three-story complexes of apartments with rents of as much as $7,000 a month set behind electric fences.

As property developers tap into high demand for residential rental space by building luxury high-rises and gated communities for expatriates, tens if not hundreds of colonial buildings are being lost without a trace.

“Development is decimating our neighborhoods,” said Joe Osae-Addo, an architect and chairman of the ArchiAfrika foundation that supports Africa-based architects and designers. “There’s pressure on these properties, on the land, and families are very eager to get rid of these colonial buildings because there’s no government policy to protect them. In cities like New York, there are tax breaks to make it worth your while to keep your building.”

Oil Exporter

Ghana, with the second-biggest economy in West Africa, became an oil exporter in 2010. Expectations that crude production would transform the economy led to the return of Ghanaians living abroad and pushed up demand for real estate in Accra and the western port city of Takoradi, where petroleum operations are based.

A lack of enforcement of building regulations, political instability in West Africa and a liberal banking system have also bolstered construction. Violence in neighboring Ivory Coast prompted companies to move offices to Accra, bringing hundreds of employees with them, while Nigerian investors prefer the relative stability of Accra to their cities of Abuja and Lagos.

Accra’s population grew 28 percent to 4 million in the decade to 2010, according to the nation’s latest census.

For most owners of colonial homes, it’s simple economics.

“When a property developer comes and offers them half a million dollars upfront for the property, plus they offer them a couple of apartments in the new apartment block, it’s a no-brainer,” said Sebastian van Leeuwen, a Ghanaian who manages a real-estate company targeting expatriates.

Construction Boom

Residential rental prices in Accra are among the highest in West Africa, triggering a construction boom that began less than a decade ago, according to Broll Ghana Ltd., the country’s largest property manager. Average annual rents that expatriates paid for three-bedroom apartments were comparable to those in Manhattan, at between $42,000 and $50,000, before sliding to about $40,000 late last year as demand fueled a 60 percent increase in supply.

The high prices have motivated property developers to hunt for land in former colonial enclaves in the city’s heart known as Cantonments and Ridge, where dilapidated, elegant mansions sit on spacious plots of land dotted with ancient trees.

“Ghanaians love to talk about history, but the idea that a house should have a special status because someone famous lived there, they think that’s just too ridiculous to contemplate,” said Nat Amarteifio, a historian and former mayor of Accra.

Two-Story Mansions

The structures range from rectangular bungalows on stilts to two-story mansions with arched windows, grand staircases and shaded verandas that allow for a cool breeze in the tropical heat. Most were built in the 1920s by the British to house white civil servants at a safe distance from African neighborhoods, which were considered dirty and disease-ridden.

“The owners often don’t have the money to maintain these houses,” Richard Mantho, chief executive officer of Orel Ghana, a brokerage company that manages and develops commercial and residential real estate, said in an interview. “These buildings stand on one or two acres. The maximum you can get is $12,000 rent a month. You tear down the old house and build 20 apartments, it’s a 120 percent profit game that developers do here.”

Muted Concern

The state-run Museums and Monuments Board protects buildings that are registered as monuments including Ghana’s famous coastal forts used in the slave trade, such as Cape Coast Castle and Elmina Castle, dating from the 17th century and 15th century, respectively. Residences for colonial civil servants and family houses for Ghana’s upper-class haven’t yet been listed despite their historical value, according to Benjamin Afagbegee, a conservator at the board.

“If there’s any public concern about the appalling rate at which they are being destroyed, it’s muted,” said Nat Amarteifio. “There have been very few attempts to integrate these buildings into any notion of a national history. These are historical monuments with little appreciation on the part of the local population.”

Five years ago, Amarteifio and Ghanaian artist Kofi Setordji began photographing different types of colonial-era buildings in Accra, including boarding schools and hospitals from the 1930s. About 80 percent of the buildings they documented have since been destroyed to make way for compounds with so-called townhouses or apartments built around a swimming pool.

Historical Architecture

“There is a certain kind of building that captures modernity and affluence, and it’s highly influenced by South African architecture,” said Joe Osae-Addo, the architect. “They have nothing to do with our climate, our context and our culture. It looks like something that’s not from here. It’s aspirational. And it’s beyond the means of 98 percent of the population.”

In the Cantonments area, on a roundabout dominated by the U.S. Embassy, Goran Colaric is blending the old with the new in what’s a first for Accra.

Colaric painstakingly restored the floors, ceilings and roof of a neglected two-story colonial mansion before adding a restaurant and transforming the vast garden into an outside bar. Kaya Design Bar opened in late 2013 and is increasingly popular with well-to-do young Ghanaians and expatriates. Colaric said he wanted to conserve the “architectural uniqueness of the building and its tropical surroundings.”

Luxury Apartments

“Most owners of properties such as these will continue to opt to sell to developers, whose profit-based calculation moves them toward luxury apartments,” he said. “It’s a pity that government has not been able to protect such houses. Historical architecture remains an important part of the nation and its history.”

As much as she cherishes her childhood memories, Biney says she feels no regret knowing that her home will disappear one day.

“It’s old and I don’t have the money to maintain it,” she said. “This land is worth between two and five million dollars.”

To contact the reporter on this story: Pauline Bax in Accra at pbax@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Nasreen Seria at nseria@bloomberg.net Karl Maier, Antony Sguazzin

Source: Bloomberg.com

By Pauline Bax