Nkyinkyim Museum

Nkyinkyim Museum in Ada Foah, Ghana, showcases sculptures by Kwame Akoto-Bamfo, honoring African ancestors and promoting cultural education.

Planning your visit

Kwame Akoto-Bamfo began making concrete heads to memorialise people taken in the transatlantic slave trade, and Nkyinkyim has grown into an open-air installation of over a thousand of them — individual faces, each different, set in the earth in ranks under trees near Ada Foah on Ghana's coast.

The effect is cumulative and difficult to describe adequately. The scale is the argument: individual portraiture applied to a trade that dealt in numbers.

Ghana was central to that trade, with the coastal forts at Elmina and Cape Coast holding people before shipment, and the country has positioned itself as a destination for African diaspora return, particularly since the Year of Return in 2019.

The name comes from an Adinkra symbol meaning initiative and dynamism, changing one's ways.

The site is a working project rather than a finished museum, and visits are guided. Allow half a day including travel from Accra. Bookable options include half-day tours. Current availability is shown below.