Until the Accra Mall was built in 2007 in Ghana’s capital, only people privileged to travel outside the country to Europe, the Americas and other places had the chance to visit and see such huge edifices that acted as a one-stop shopping area with lots of shops trading in various consumables under one roof.
The UTCs, Kingsways, GNTCs and later the Swanzy Shopping Arcade in Accra, Chellarams, Chandirams, White Chapel, UAC and Lava departmental shops could be said to be shopping malls in their own right but would not compete in size with what we now have in the Accra, Junction, Achimota, Marina and West Hills malls, among others.
Growing up, the mention of the then very known prestigious shops in the country always lit up the face of a child.
If you behaved well you could be taken on a shopping spree by your parents.
When parents who had saved up wanted to spoil their children either on their birthdays or during global celebrations such as Christmas, those shops were the places to go.
Especially during Christmas, we were always certain to see Father Christmas (Santa) who always had some goodies for children, not to talk about toys, new clothing and shoes.
And didn’t we just love it!
Those ecstatic days may be gone for good with only the nostalgia of those days lingering on but perhaps they have been replaced by something better – the malls.
But let’s look at The Kingsway Shopping Stores
Ghana’s early indoor mall prototype was the Kingsway Departmental Store, which was built in 1929 by the United Africa Company, located on Accra High Street, and named after the company’s headquarters in Africa House on the Kingsway in London.
On January 31, 1957, about five weeks before the Gold Coast gained political independence from Britain, Ghana’s first Prime Minister Kwame Nkrumah inaugurated the opening of Kingsway, Accra, the country’s first largest department store. (The 1st Mall prototype in Ghana)
The two-storey building with a full basement originally had shops located on all three levels, apparently in response to those seeking weather-protected, all-under-one-roof shopping.
Significantly, it offered a link with overseas economies in the distribution and consumption of foreign products.
Yes! The Ghanaian appetite for foreign stuff was growing!
Indeed, during the Structural Adjustment Programme from the early 1980s and on through to 2000, some of the old malls, including Kingsway and GNTC, had to be remodelled into open-air shopping centres.
Some studies indicate that some ‘dead mall’ estates had re-emerged by 2001, and there is now enough evidence to suggest a continued trend of re-emergence in the early twenty-first century.
