Ghana Museums & Monuments Board

📢 TEMPORARY SUSPENSION OF TOURS AT CHRISTIANSBORG CASTLE (OSU CASTLE)

The Ghana Museums and Monuments Board (GMMB) wishes to inform the general public, tourists, educational institutions, and all stakeholders that guided tours at Christiansborg Castle (Osu Castle) have been temporarily suspended with immediate effect.

This suspension is to facilitate preparatory works for the High-Level Next Step Conference on Reparations, scheduled to take place at the Castle on 19th June 2026. Ongoing activities within the premises have made the site temporarily unsafe for visitors, including school groups and tourists.

🗓 Tours will resume on Monday, 22nd June 2026.

We sincerely apologize for any inconvenience this may cause and appreciate your understanding and cooperation during this period.

The Ghana Museums and Monuments Board remains committed to preserving Ghana’s rich heritage while ensuring a safe, enriching, and memorable experience for all visitors.

📞 For further information:
✉️ [email protected]
📞 0303944028

🌄A new week means new opportunities for discovery and growth. 🏛️✨ Our museums and monuments stand as guardians of our past, present, and future. Through their exhibits and artifacts, you'll find inspiration, insight, and a deeper connection to the rich cultural heritage of Ghana.

We invite you to embark on a journey of discovery and connect with the remarkable legacy that continues to influence Ghana’s present and future.

Currently ongoing at the National Museum, Accra, is an art exhibition titled “African Expressions.”

This sales exhibition features the works of Otuo Acheampong Kwesi Sarkodie, whose art draws inspiration from the vibrant colours and patterns of Kente cloth. His pieces reflect African culture, traditions, and history—blending traditional and contemporary styles to highlight the strength and resilience of African communities.

📍 Location: National Museum, Accra
🗓️ Exhibition Dates: Now until 30th June 2026
🎨 Medium: Acrylic on canvas and fabric
🖼️ Theme: Celebrating African heritage through contemporary art

Reparation business getting interesting
Thank you Mr President

On July 27th 1825, a brig called Espadarte (Swordfish) docked in Rio de Janeiro and unloaded its expensive cargo: 422 Africans forcibly shipped across the Atlantic from Angola. It was the first slave shipment known to have been organised by José Bernardino de Sá, then a clerk at a Rio trading house.

Over the following 25 years, undeterred by a law that theoretically made the slave trade illegal in 1831, Sá would be responsible for trafficking at least 19,000 Africans to Brazil – and become one of the empire’s richest men in the process. By the time of his death in 1855, Sá was a viscount who owned countless buildings in Rio, a handful of rural properties on the south-eastern coast, three ships and more shares in the Banco do Brasil than any other individual.

For a long time, the connection between Sá’s fortune, the illegal and lucrative sale of enslaved Africans, and one of Brazil’s biggest and oldest banks was not widely known even among economic historians, because of a normalisation of the 19th-century slave trade, said Thiago Campos Pessoa, whose work helped shed light on Sá’s trafficking activities.

The historian is part of a group of scholars who have extensively researched how slavery shaped Brazil and its institutions, and who are now striving to bring their findings out of academic circles and into the public debate.

Their research prompted prosecutors to launch an unprecedented inquiry into historical links between the slave trade and the Banco do Brasil, which is being asked to propose ways to make reparations.

SOURCE:

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/oct/26/brazil-slavery-reparations-slave-trade-banco-do-brasil