Labone

The district

Labone runs south from the Cantonments boundary toward Osu and the coast, and it has become the part of Accra where the interesting small businesses land — galleries, a handful of genuinely good restaurants in converted houses, design studios, and coffee that people cross town for.

The housing is mostly 1950s to 1970s, low-rise, with the deep verandas and terrazzo floors of the period, and a small number of very well-judged contemporary infill schemes. Plot sizes are smaller than Cantonments and the streets are narrower, which keeps the scale intimate and the through-traffic down.

It is the one district where architecture genuinely affects price. A well-kept period house on a quiet street trades at a clear premium over an equivalent-sized new build two streets away, which is unusual in a market that normally pays for newness.