Mr. Emmanuel Ankomahene

Michigan State University

Bio

I am a doctoral candidate in African History at Michigan State University in the United States. My areas of specialization include African labor, transportation, urban and public histories, the slave trade, and the African diaspora. My current research investigates how Ghana’s colonial and post-colonial railway construction and development shaped African wage-labor migration, settlements, the construction of race and gender, and the formation of industrial and ethnic identities during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
Title: Mr.

Reconstructing Railway History and Heritage: Archiving and Digitizing the History and Memory of Ghana's Trains and Tracks, 1898-1966

Abstract

Ghana’s railway project impacted the country’s transportation, strengthened colonial control, facilitated trade and labor migration, and transformed industrial and socio-cultural identities across the colonial and postcolonial eras. Using archival, photographic, and ethnographic sources, I examine how Ghana’s railways transformed transportation and shaped the nation’s history, heritage, identity, and memory. I reinterpret Ghana’s railway project as both a transportation system and a heritage site, offering new insights into the country’s colonial and postcolonial history of mobility.