Graveyard For Dead Computers, Agbogbloshie, Accra, Ghana

The word Accra is derived from the word Nkran meaning "ants" in Akan, a reference to the numerous anthills seen in the countryside around Accra. The city was first settled in the 1400s when the Ga people migrated there after leaving their previous settlement at Ayawaso, ten miles north of Accra. The site was advantageous as it removed the Ga people from the Akwamu people who were their rivals. Initially, Accra was not the most prominent trading center but the ports at Ada and Prampram, along with the inland centers of Dodowa and Akusa to the east. However, Accra took on more importance serving as a center for trade during the slave trade with the Europeans who had built forts nearby: James Fort and Ussher Fort. This went on until the abolition of the slave trade in 1807. Later the Portuguese, followed by the Swedish, Dutch, French, British and Danish built forts in the town by the seventeenth century.
In the 1850s, the Dutch sold Christiansborg and their other castles to the British. In 1873, after decades of an uneasy relationship between the British and the Asante people of central Ghana, the British attacked and virtually destroyed the Asante capital of Kumasi, and officially declared Ghana a crown colony. The British then captured Accra in 1874, and in 1877, at the end of the second Anglo-Asante War, Accra replaced Cape Coast as the capital of the British Gold Coast colony because Accra had a drier climate relative to Cape Coast, and was not home to the tsetse fly hence allowing the use animal transport. Until this time, the settlement of Accra was confined between the Ussher Fort to the East and the Korle Lagoon to the West.