Page 132 - Afrika Must Unite

TOWARDS ECONOMIC INDEPENDENCE 117
work of roads, and sites for the aluminium plant and subsidiary
factories. These will serve, and be served by, the large port area
with its main, lee and south breakwaters. The quays have
provision for extension, spacious sheds and warehouses, and
railway links to each point of need.
The port started to operate in 1961, and already the town
boasts almost 30,000 inhabitants. The ultimate population will
be about 250,000. A whole fishing village has been moved from
the condemned slums in which it was housed to a new one
providing modern amenities.
Tem a is G hana’s first planned city. To see its construction, and
to remember the quiet palm-fringed cove which it replaces is to
feel a sense of creation and development. More im portant, to see
our men at work and to recall their pre-independence lounging
under the palms, is to refresh our faith in our capacity to build
our country.
The harbour, one of the largest in Africa, took over seven years
to build. At peak periods during its construction, more than
3,500 men worked on it, some of them in the hills twenty miles
away, where they quarried over ten million tons of rock for the
main breakwaters. The harbour is nearly half as large again as
the one at Takoradi, 160 miles to the west, and it encloses about
400 acres of water. It has a fishing harbour, and will eventually
have five quays and fifteen berths.
Some two weeks before I opened the harbour at Tem a, I
officially launched the Volta River scheme by pressing a button
to dynamite a slice out of the hillside at Akosombo. Hundreds of
people danced, cheered, sang and fired guns into the air as the
local chief poured libation and offered a sheep in sacrifice. One
of my greatest dreams was coming true. In a few years there will
be sufficient power to serve the needs of our industrial growth for
a long time ahead.