Ask a taxi driver in Accra for Oxford Street and he will take you to Osu. Look for the name on an official map and you may not find it.
Oxford Street is the nickname for the busiest stretch of Cantonments Road in Osu, running north from the area near the Osu Castle toward the Danquah Circle. People borrowed the name of London’s famous shopping street because this was where Accra came to shop, and the name stuck so firmly that businesses print it on their signs.
What is there
The strip is lined with banks, mobile phone shops, fast food outlets, pharmacies, supermarkets, hair salons and hotels. Street vendors sell everything from phone chargers to artwork and souvenirs. At night, the bars and restaurants on and around the street fill up, and the road becomes one of the centres of Accra’s nightlife.
Foreign visitors often spend their first evening in Osu because many hotels are nearby, and the area is used to tourists. Traders selling kente strips, beads, carvings and paintings know it too.
Old Osu
Osu is one of the historic Ga towns that grew into modern Accra, alongside Ga Mashie and La. The Osu Castle, built by the Danes in the seventeenth century, sits at its southern edge on the coast. The Basel Mission’s Ebenezer Presbyterian Church, established in Osu in the nineteenth century, is one of the oldest Presbyterian congregations in Ghana. The contrast between the old town by the sea and the neon strip up the road is part of Osu’s character.
Traffic and parking
The street’s popularity is also its biggest problem. Traffic crawls at rush hour and on weekend nights, parking is scarce, and pedestrians share narrow pavements with hawkers and parked cars. The city has tried many times to clear vendors from the pavements, with mixed results.
Tips for visitors
Go in the late afternoon if you want to shop, and later in the evening for food and bars. Carry small notes for vendors and taxis. Keep an eye on phones and bags in crowds, as in any busy city street. For quieter eating, the side streets of Osu and nearby Labone and Cantonments have plenty of restaurants away from the noise.
The name that stuck
Accra has many nicknames for places: Circle for the Kwame Nkrumah Interchange and Sodom and Gomorrah for Old Fadama. Oxford Street is one of the most successful. Few people in Osu can tell you when they first heard it, only that it has always sounded right.
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