The call to prayer echoes across the neighbourhood as people congregate under the sweeping domes and tall minarets of Ghana’s National Mosque in Accra. For many, it is a place of faith, community and national pride. Yet, few pause to consider that this landmark – now firmly part of Accra’s skyline – was funded and built by Turkey.
This detail points to a bigger story. Some of Ghana’s most important public buildings are shaped by global relationships as much as local needs. And those relationships are not just economic; they are deeply political.
Therefore buildings are not just functional. They are powerful expressions of political power, used to describe and project ideas about hierarchy, state authority, solidarity and modernity.
