Tema Harbour is a harbour located in

Tema Tema is a city on the Bight of Benin and Atlantic coast of Ghana. It is located east of the capital city; Accra, in the region of Greater Accra, and is the capital of the Tema Metropolitan District. As of 2013, Tema is the eleventh most p ...

in the southeastern part of

Ghana Ghana, officially the Republic of Ghana, is a country in West Africa. It is situated along the Gulf of Guinea and the Atlantic Ocean to the south, and shares borders with Côte d’Ivoire to the west, Burkina Faso to the north, and Togo to t ...

, along the

Gulf of Guinea The Gulf of Guinea (French language, French: ''Golfe de Guinée''; Spanish language, Spanish: ''Golfo de Guinea''; Portuguese language, Portuguese: ''Golfo da Guiné'') is the northeasternmost part of the tropical Atlantic Ocean from Cape Lopez i ...

.Kamal Odaymat Christabel Blay Kwame Boamah Ansong Vida Nana Appiah Ofori Where on the boat APort of Tema.
World Port Source. Tema Harbour is a member of the International Association of Ports and Harbours (IAPH).

History of the harbour

The construction of the harbour was proposed by British Colonial Officers in the Gold Coast before its independence. An old fishing village called Torman was the proposed site for the harbour's construction. The rapid industrialization that followed Ghana's independence led to the town adopting the name Tema from that of the

fishing village A fishing village is a village, usually located near a fishing ground, with an economy based on catching fish and harvesting seafood. The continents and islands around the world have coastlines totalling around 356,000 kilometres (221,000 ...

. After independence, under the leadership of Ghana's first president

Kwame Nkrumah Francis Kwame Nkrumah (, 21 September 1909 – 27 April 1972) was a Ghanaian politician, political theorist, and revolutionary. He served as Prime Minister of the Gold Coast (British colony), Gold Coast from 1952 until 1957, when it gained ...

, the construction of the harbour began in the 1950s with planning led by the award-winning city planner and the first Ghanaian architect, Theodore S. Clerk. and was commissioned in 1962. In 2014 the Meridian Rock, a monument to mark the crossing between the

Prime Meridian A prime meridian is an arbitrarily chosen meridian (geography), meridian (a line of longitude) in a geographic coordinate system at which longitude is defined to be 0°. On a spheroid, a prime meridian and its anti-meridian (the 180th meridian ...

and the

Equator The equator is the circle of latitude that divides Earth into the Northern Hemisphere, Northern and Southern Hemisphere, Southern Hemispheres of Earth, hemispheres. It is an imaginary line located at 0 degrees latitude, about in circumferen ...

, was unveiled in the harbour. As part of a visit of the Prime Minister of

Barbados Barbados, officially the Republic of Barbados, is an island country in the Atlantic Ocean. It is part of the Lesser Antilles of the West Indies and the easternmost island of the Caribbean region. It lies on the boundary of the South American ...

to Ghana in November 2019, a sister-port agreement was signed between Port Tema and the Bridgetown Port located in the Caribbean.

Area of the harbour

Tema Harbour is made up of almost four million square metres of land, with almost half of it made by closed seas.

Harbour activities

At Tema, the harbor primarily sends cacao beans. Shipments for Northern African countries are also processed at Tema. The harbour handles 80% of Ghana's national exports and imports.

Tema Harbour expansion

The Tema Harbour and Port of Tema is undergoing an expansion and investment of $115 million in infrastructural upgrading at the Tema harbour and port of Tema as part of efforts aimed at expanding facilities of Tema port to meet decreasing cargo traffic by the

Ghana Ports and Harbours Authority The Ghana Ports and Harbours Authority (GPHA) is the national port authority of Ghana. Between the 16th and 18th centuries foreign trade in the then Gold Coast was undertaken from about 40 landing points scattered around the Gold Coast. By the 19 ...

(GPHA); and in which the expansion and investment will go into the purchase and instalment of cranes, reach-stackers, ship to shore cranes, among others. The harbour upgrades will improve the cargo-handling capacity of the Tema harbour and port; and the amount of freight will continue to rise as Ghana's economy maintains its high rate of growth, with expansion tipped to come in at just under 8% in 2013.

Sister Seasports

* –

Port of Bridgetown The Port of Bridgetown (officially the Deep Water Harbour), (UN/LOCODE: BB BGI, Port Callsign: 8PB) is a seaport in Bridgetown on the southwest coast of Barbados. Situated at the North-Western end of Carlisle Bay, the harbour handles all of th ...

, Barbados (2019) * –

Port of Casablanca The Port of Casablanca ( , ) refers to the collective facilities and Dock (maritime), terminals that conduct maritime trade handling functions in Casablanca's harbours and which handle Casablanca's shipping. The port is located near Hassan II Mos ...

, Morocco (2017)

References