In 2005 the New Patriotic Party started construction of government-funded housing blocks on the border of Ayigya Zongo and Asokore Mampong known in Kumasi simply as Affordable Housing.
So competitive and reactionary is politics in this system (a multi-party democratic republic almost entirely modelled on that of their former colonial leaders, the UK) that when The National Democratic Congress got into power in 2008 they halted construction on this site and set up a new deal for even more housing elsewhere. This attempt to reserve glory for themselves collapsed, and Affordable Housing has been stood, mid-completion, on the initial site, for over 5 years.
Many complex factors have lead to people choosing to take this place as their home but the popular opinion, the one fostered by the local media, imagines the inhabitants of this sprawling stretch of skeletal structures as bands of nomadic criminals committed to midnight lootings and killings. The periphery of this area is constantly patrolled by police armed with assault rifles.
During the multiple visits that I made I met families who had set up their own schools, their own co-operative style shops and their own football team, the Affordable All Stars.
Affordable Housing Site, on the border of Ayigya Zongo and Asakore Mampong, Kumasi, Ghana.
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