Iron Roads Through the Forest: The Gold Coast Railway and the Making of Modern Ghana (1898-1957)

By the late 19th century, the Gold Coast colony faced a fundamental logistical crisis. The interior was rich in gold, timber, rubber, and the newly introduced cocoa crop, but there were no navigable rivers connecting the mining districts and forest farms to the coast. Everything moved on human heads. Carriers, typically men and women from the northern territories, balanced loads of up to 60 pounds along narrow forest paths, a journey from the Ashanti gold fields to the coast taking two weeks or more. The cost was staggering: transporting a ton of goods from Kumasi to the coast cost more than shipping it from Liverpool to Accra.

Governor William Maxwell (1895 to 1897) first proposed a railway to link the coast with the interior, commissioning surveys for two possible routes: Apam to Kumasi and Accra to Kumasi. Maxwell died before reaching London for the planned conference to discuss the proposals. His successor, Governor Frederick Hodgson, favoured an Accra line to Kpong on the Volta River to boost palm oil and cotton production. But it was the discovery of rich gold deposits at Tarkwa and the Ashanti Goldfields concession at Obuasi that ultimately determined the route.

The Colonial Office in London approved the construction of a western railway from the port of Sekondi, and work began in 1898 under the direction of the Gold Coast Civil Service. The initial workforce consisted of labourers recruited from Sierra Leone, Lagos, and the Gold Coast itself. Conditions were brutal: the line had to be cut through dense tropical forest, across rivers, and over laterite ridges. Malaria, sleeping sickness, and blackwater fever decimated the workforce. The Science Museum Group notes that "protests to the Colonial Office, a shortage of labour and the breakout of the final Ashanti war meant progress was slow until 1900."