Ghana, Understanding Water

In Ghana, Dominic Nahr has crossed swamps, followed rivers to the beaches and into the Gulf of Guinea. He portrayed the tenuous links between the inhabitants of the Ghanaian coast and their environment. “Understanding Water” highlights the current environmental and social issues surrounding water in this West African country.

On the coast, the cities of Cape Coast, Elmina, Accra have very active fishing ports. The forts of St. Georges de la Mine and St. James are a reminder of the antiquity of European settlement and the harshness of the struggles in what was one of Africa’s greatest centres of the slave trade.

Large sections of the coast are highly polluted. This has an impact on the quality of the water and, inevitably, on the inhabitants. Dominic Nahr accompanied a scientific crew in their research on foraminifera, unicellular organisms particularly relevant for studying water quality.