www.cntraveler.com - In Western Ghana, Locals Are Reclaiming Their Surf Scene
Credit: David Maja
With free gear, classes, and a new community space in coastal Busua, Surf Ghana is bringing Ghanaian surfers back into the fold.
Although many give Bruce Brown's 1966 film, The Endless Summer, credit for introducing surfing to fishing communities in Ghana, Senegal, and Nigeria, the sport has been happening along the shores of Western Africa, including Ghana's 300-mile coastline, for centuries. West Africans independently developed surfing before outsiders arrived; since at least the 1640s, sea merchants knew surf patterns well and used wooden surf-canoes to fish and ride 10-foot tall waves. Yet in present-day Ghana, surfing is largely the domain of tourists.
Sandy Alibo is working to change that. The entrepreneur and self-proclaimed ”rooky rider,” is helping rebirth the legacy of African surfing as the founder of Surf Ghana, an NGO that uses the sport for education and empowerment. Most recently, she opened Surf House, a brick and mortar space for surfers to connect and grow their entrepreneurial skills in Busua, a quiet fishermen's village turned surfer’s paradise five hours outside of Accra.