Five weeks before independence, the Prime Minister cut the ribbon on a shop. On 31 January 1957, Kwame Nkrumah inaugurated the new Kingsway department store in Accra, the largest in the country, on the newly developed avenue that now carries his name. Its modernist building was meant to show what a new, independent Accra could look like.
Miller Brothers
Kingsway stores were started by Miller Brothers, a British import and export company, which opened the first Kingsway in Accra around 1914. The early stores were modelled on the grand department stores of London, such as Harrods and Selfridges.
The United Africa Company
By 1929 Miller Brothers had become part of the United Africa Company, the giant trading firm owned by Unilever that dominated commerce in British West Africa. UAC ran Kingsway stores in the Gold Coast and Nigeria.
The 1957 building
The new Accra store was designed by the British architects T.P. Bennett. Its clean, modern lines matched the architecture of the late colonial and early independence period, when Accra’s centre was being rebuilt with office blocks, banks and public buildings.
Shopping like London
Kingsway sold imported goods: clothes, shoes, household items, food, toys and appliances. For many Ghanaians in the 1950s and 1960s, a trip to Kingsway was an occasion. Its window displays and wide shop floors were unlike anything else in the city.
Consumer politics
Historians have written about Kingsway as a place where Ghanaians negotiated modern consumer identity. Some saw the store as a symbol of foreign commercial power; others saw it as a sign of progress and a place to buy goods unavailable elsewhere. The store employed many Ghanaians and trained staff in retail.
Decline
From the 1970s, economic crisis, import controls and currency problems hit businesses that relied on imported goods. UAC’s Kingsway stores in Nigeria closed in the late 1980s. In Ghana, the old department store culture faded as markets, smaller shops and later supermarkets and malls took over.
Remembered
Older Accra residents still talk about shopping at Kingsway and about Christmas visits to see its displays. In January 2026, a Kingsway history exhibition opened at the Jamestown Café in Accra.
The building today
The structure on Kwame Nkrumah Avenue has changed uses over the decades, but its outline remains part of central Accra’s modernist heritage.
Today Accra shops at malls built after 2008. Kingsway was the city’s first taste of that idea, opened by the man who was about to lead it to independence.
.jpg){kind=link}
