Aburi | |
---|---|
Location of Aburi in Eastern region, Ghana | |
Coordinates: 5°51′N0°11′W / 5.850°N 0.183°W | |
Country | Ghana |
Region | Eastern Region |
District | Akuapim South Municipal |
Population (2013) [1] | |
• Total | 18,701 |
Time zone | GMT |
• Summer (DST) | GMT |
Aburi is a town in the Akuapim South Municipal District of the Eastern Region of south Ghana famous for the Aburi Botanical Gardens and the Odwira festival. [2] [3] [4] Aburi has a population of 18,701 people as of 2013. [1]
Aburi is north east of Accra, and the journey from Accra to Aburi is about 45 mins (it became less when the dual carriage road from Tetteh Quarshie Circle to Adenta Barrier was completed by 2014).
Due to the altitude of Aburi, the climate is a lot cooler than neighbouring Accra. The road which climbs the hillside to Aburi is a toll road, with the current toll being 0.50 Ghc for a car, 1.00 Ghc for a 4x4.
There is a higher charge for vans and lorries. From the road most of Greater Accra is visible below, although the one stopping space for pictures on this section of road has a "No Stopping" sign.
Aburi has several primary education, secondary education, higher education and further education institutions and Aburi is home to Aburi Presbyterian Technical Secondary School, which is linked to The Sixth Form College, Farnborough in Hampshire, England. Aburi is also home to Aburi Girls' Senior High School started by the Presbyterian church. Aburi also hosts the Great Adonten senior High School. For post secondary education, you can find the Presbyterian women's college of Education, formally known as PWTC Training college.
The name Aburi is the adulterated version of ABUDE by the European missionaries and traders. Because of Aburi's location in the mountains of Ghana and its proximity to the coast of Ghana, an agricultural research farm was set up near Aburi by British residents in 1891. The area of the garden originally consisted of 20 hectares, in 1901 there were 17.8 hectares and in 1902 came to more than 40 hectares of new acquisitions, which was discovered during the last expansion with considerable resistance. Ultimately, the expansion could take place only through the application of governmental authority over state expropriation. The purpose of the Botanical Garden was originally to test field-building opportunities and to develop, which contributes to greater financial independence of Ghana. The focus of the garden was primarily in culture experiments with indigenous crops such as cocoa, rubber plants and cola. In addition, there were also ornamental and fruit plants grown of various kinds and small field trials with cotton and spices, vanilla and pepper mainly on cardamom and nutmeg. An inventory, dated 21 July 1900, lists 350 different plant species grown in Aburi. In addition, there was in 1903 in the center of the garden, a sanatorium. In 1901 the expenditure was for the garden equivalent of 44,312 marks (then German marks). Especially for the cotton experiments, a cotton planter expert from the United States (Texas) named Edmund Fisher, was employed, and who was, however, unfavorable for cotton in the rain forest, which is located in Aburi, which had only a few small test plots. A larger cotton research station was built on Edmund Fisher's recommendation in the grasslands by the Volta River built, and grown where cotton is the native culture from time immemorial and the cotton were made into clothing. It is not only an experimental farm that was established, but also tries to cheer up the locals to expand their cotton production. The latter was accomplished mainly through the distribution of seeds to the chiefs in connection with a purchase guarantee for all cotton harvested in a central market in buying at (9 ' N, 0 ° 6 ' O) on the Volta, where the cotton could be accommodated easily by water. In the Volta River could then also be the removal of the cotton. The most distant of the cotton growing area in Eastern region, is the landscape area which is about 13–15 km from the Volta River. It has also been used for treatment of raw cotton and where the Ginstation was built. [a]
Today, on the grounds of the only botanical garden in Aburi, Ghana, is mainly home to many plants that were not originally native to Eastern region, but there is a collection of tropical plants that have been added.
Aburi is host to one of the finest wood markets not only in Ghana but in Africa. Aburi has been rumoured that goods manufactured at the Aburi markets have found their way to South Africa to be sold on to tourists.
Aburi Botanical Gardens is result of a well known Ghanaian tourist destination.
Peduase is the location of a Presidential summer residence ('Peduase Lodge') built and first used by Ghana's first President, Kwame Nkrumah.It was used in the second republic of Ghana as the official residence of the then Ceremonial President, Edward Akufo-Addo.Since then it has not been permanently resided in by any Ghanaian head-of-state. Peduase Lodge is still used as a Presidential accommodation for the state of Ghana guests. The Presidential Lodge is in Peduase, a town near Kitase on the road to Aburi.
Aburi is the birthplace of, or home to, several notable people, including:
Edward Akufo-Addo was a Ghanaian politician and lawyer. He was a member of the "Big Six" leaders of the United Gold Coast Convention (UGCC) and one of the founding fathers of Ghana who engaged in the fight for Ghana's independence. He became the Chief Justice (1966–70), and later ceremonial President (1970–72), of the Republic of Ghana. He is the father of the current (executive) President of Ghana, Nana Addo Akufo-Addo.
Joseph Kwame Kyeretwie Boakye Danquah was a Ghanaian politician, scholar, lawyer and statesman. He was a politician in pre- and post-colonial Ghana, which was formerly the Gold Coast, and is credited with giving Ghana its current name.
Ako Adjei, was a Ghanaian statesman, politician, lawyer and journalist. He was a member of the United Gold Coast Convention and one of six leaders who were detained during Ghana's struggle for political independence from Britain, a group famously called The Big Six. He has been recognized as a founding father of Ghana for his active participation in the immediate politics of Ghana's pre-independence era. Adjei became a member of parliament as a Convention People's Party candidate in 1954 and held ministerial offices until 1962 when as Minister for Foreign Affairs he was wrongfully detained for the Kulungugu bomb attack.
Articles related to Ghana include:
Presbyterian Boys' Secondary School (PRESEC) is a secondary boarding school for boys. It is located in Legon, Accra, Ghana. It was founded in 1938, under the auspices of the Presbyterian Church of the Gold Coast. The Basel missionary-theologian, Nicholas Timothy Clerk (1862–1961), who served as the first Synod Clerk of the Presbyterian Church of the Gold Coast from 1918 to 1932, used his tenure to advocate for the establishment of the secondary school. The school has ties with its sister schools, Aburi Girls' Senior High School and Krobo Girls Senior High School.
Aaron Eugene Kofi Asante Ofori-Atta, was a Ghanaian educator, lawyer and politician who served as the fourth Speaker of the Parliament of Ghana.
Akropong is a town in South Ghana and is the capital of the Akuapim North District, a district in the Eastern Region of South Ghana. This town is known for producing snails and palm oil. Akropong has a 2013 settlement population of 13,785 people.
Pokuase, also spelled Pokoasi, is a suburb of Accra, the capital city of Ghana and spans the area from Pokuase, leading off the Accra-Kumasi motorway on the right coming from Accra central; and leading off the motorway at Pokuase Junction and rising to ‘Okai Kwei Hill’, on the left coming from town. It is a mixture of lively retail shopping areas, with local stores, bars or 'drinking spots', bus/taxi stations, and a market. It also has many hotels, guest houses and rental apartments- such as the eco-chic Legassi Gardens Apartments-, and 'high-end' developing residential estates, such as Ofankor Hills Estates and Franko Estates, amongst many others; as well as the long-established executive gated community of ACP Estates.; and HFS Estates which borders the erstwhile Gua Koo Sacred Grove in Pokuase.
Ohene Djan was a Ghanaian sports administrator and politician. He was the First Director (Minister) of Sports of Ghana at the Central Organisation of Sports (COS) and was also vice-president of the Confederation of African Football.
Nicholas Timothy Clerk was a Protestant theologian, clergyman and pioneering missionary of the Basel Evangelical Missionary Society in southeast colonial Ghana. His father was the Jamaican Moravian missionary Alexander Worthy Clerk, who worked extensively on the Gold Coast with the Basel Mission and co-founded in 1843 the Salem School, a Presbyterian boarding middle school for boys. Born on the Gold Coast, N. T. Clerk was elected the first Synod Clerk of the Presbyterian Church of the Gold Coast, in effect, the chief ecclesiastical officer, equivalent to the chief administrator, leading the overall strategic operations of the national church organisation, a position he held from 1918 to 1932. A staunch advocate of secondary education, Nicholas Timothy Clerk became a founding father of the all-boys Presbyterian boarding school in Ghana, the Presbyterian Boys' Secondary School, established in 1938. As Synod Clerk, he pushed vigorously for and was instrumental in turning the original idea of a church mission high school into reality.
The Clerk family is a Ghanaian historic family that produced a number of pioneering scholars and clergy on the Gold Coast. Predominantly based in the Ghanaian capital, Accra, the Clerks were traditionally Protestant Christian and affiliated to the Presbyterian Church. The Clerk family is primarily a member of the Ga coastal people of Accra and in addition, has Euro-Afro-Caribbean heritage, descending from Jamaican, German and Danish ancestry.
MatildaJohannaClerk was a medical pioneer and a science educator on the Gold Coast and later in Ghana as well as the second Ghanaian woman to become an orthodox medicine-trained physician. The first woman in Ghana and West Africa to attend graduate school and earn a postgraduate diploma, Clerk was also the first Ghanaian woman in any field to be awarded an academic merit scholarship for university education abroad. M. J. Clerk was the fourth West African woman to become a physician after Nigerians, Agnes Yewande Savage (1929), the first West African woman medical doctor and Elizabeth Abimbola Awoliyi (1938) in addition to Susan de Graft-Johnson, née Ofori-Atta (1947), Ghana's first woman physician. These pioneering physicians were all early advocates of maternal health, paediatric care and public health in the sub-region. For a long time after independence in 1957, Clerk and Ofori-Atta were the only two women doctors in Ghana. By breaking the glass ceiling in medicine and other institutional barriers to healthcare delivery, they were an inspiration to a generation of post-colonial Ghanaian and West African female doctors at a time the field was still a male monopoly and when the vast majority of women worldwide had very limited access to biomedicine and higher education. Pundits in the male-dominated medical community in that era described Matilda J. Clerk as "the beacon of emancipation of Ghanaian womanhood."
Nathan Anang Quao, was a Ghanaian statesman and educationist who served as Secretary (Minister) at the PNDC Secretariat from 1984 to 1993 and Special Assistant to President Jerry Rawlings from 1993 to 2001. A career diplomat and civil servant, he retired as Cabinet Secretary and Head of the Civil Service in 1973. Quao was the founding headmaster of Keta Secondary School in 1953 and was appointed the first chairman of the Ghana Education Service Council in 1974.
The Presbyterian College of Education, Akropong, is a co-educational teacher-training college in Akropong in the Akwapim North district of the Eastern Region of Ghana. It has gone through a series of previous names, including the Presbyterian Training College, the Scottish Mission Teacher Training College, and the Basel Mission Seminary. The college is accredited by the National Accreditation Board of the Ministry of Education, Ghana as a Degree Research Institution affiliated to the University of Education, Winneba.
Jane Elizabeth Clerk was a Gold Coast schoolteacher and a public education administrator. During the colonial era, she was among an early generation of pioneer women educators who eventually became principals of major government schools. In that period, Jane Clerk was the Headmistress of the Government Girls’ Middle School in Kumasi.
Adeline Sylvia Eugenia Ama Yeboakua Akufo-Addo was a First Lady of the second republic of Ghana as the wife of president Edward Akufo-Addo. She was the mother of president Nana Akufo-Addo.
The Christ Presbyterian Church, formerly known as the Basel Mission Church, Akropong, is a historic Protestant church located in Akropong–Akuapem, Ghana. It is the first Presbyterian Church to be established in Ghana. It was founded in 1835 by Andreas Riis, a Danish minister and missionary of the Basel Mission who was the only congregant at the time. After years of dormancy, the church began to flourish after the arrival of the Moravian missionaries from the West Indies in 1843. The Basel missionary, Johann Georg Widmann was appointed the minister-in-charge of the Akropong church in 1845. The Jamaican missionary, John Hall, who had served as an elder in his home church in Irwin Hill, Montego Bay, became the first Presbyter of the church while Alexander Worthy Clerk became the first Deacon. Liturgical services are conducted in English and the Twi language.
Peduase is a town in the Akuapim South Municipal District of the Eastern Region of south Ghana and known for the Peduase Lodge. It shares borders with Ayi Mensa which is one of the entry points from Accra to Akuapem.
Germany–Ghana relations are good and Ghana is one of the priority countries for German development aid. Official Diplomatic Relations between the two countries were established in the 1950s, but contacts between the two societies go back much further and can be traced back to the 17th century.