By Alex Ababio
Across the Volta Region, an unrestrained ocean is tearing apart coastal settlements, wiping out memories, and pushing families into displacement. This is the deeply human narrative behind Ghana’s coastal emergency.
The Atlantic Ocean did not come quietly to Daavi Afi’s doorstep. It came like a ruthless intruder. The 78-year-old woman from Fuvemeh still shivers when she remembers the violent sound that engulfed her six-bedroom house and swept away nearly everything she had built over decades. Sitting on a thin mat in the corner of her daughter’s cramped living room in Dzita, she murmurs, “When the sea took my house, it took my history too.” A short distance away, 12-year-old Dziedzorm stands by the shoreline, pointing at the waters where his old school once stood. “I don’t go to school again,” he explains quietly. “The sea ate it.”
These experiences are not isolated heartbreaks. They are signals from the frontline of an escalating battle against coastal collapse, where whole communities along Ghana’s eastern shoreline are being erased. From what used to be Fuvemeh to the crumbling edges of Dzakplagbe, a centuries-old existence rooted in fishing traditions and family networks is dissolving into the Gulf of Guinea.
A Coastline in Retreat: The Vanishing Landscape
Ghana’s 550-kilometer stretch of coast supports nearly one-quarter of the population and over 80% of national industrial activity. Yet this critical lifeline is breaking apart. While coastal erosion is a natural process, human choices have accelerated it into a crisis. The eastern belt—149 kilometers of often fragile sand from Prampram to Aflao—is now the most devastated zone.
Here, land is disappearing at an extreme pace. A major study in 2025, relying on advanced satellite technology, revealed unprecedented erosion rates, with certain areas losing more than 28 meters of coastline each year. That loss equals two commercial buses worth of land dragged into the sea annually. Between 2005 and 2017, 37% of the coastal land around Fuvemeh vanished because of erosion and flooding. Kporkporgbor fell first, and then Fuvemeh itself followed the same destructive path, almost entirely consumed by advancing waves.
The Collapse of Fuvemeh and Surrounding Communities
Fuvemeh (Most Severe Impact): Once a vibrant coastal settlement, now almost submerged. Lost 37% of its land between 2005 and 2017, with the shoreline shifting inland by over 100 meters in some zones.
Dzakplagbe: Set up as a relocation community for displaced Fuvemeh residents, but erosion is already tearing through it. Roughly 500 houses have been destroyed.
Keta Municipality: The tidal waves of 2021 displaced approximately 3,000 people. Fort Prinzenstein, a UNESCO-listed heritage site, is now 90% gone.
Senya Beraku (Central Coast): Although located elsewhere, it illustrates the national problem. Its erosion rates have reached up to 7.34 meters per year.
What is Driving the Destruction?
The waves may be the visible destroyers, but multiple human-related actions laid the foundation for the tragedy unfolding today.
Severe Loss of Natural Sediment: The building of the Akosombo Dam in 1965 and the expansion of Tema Port drastically disrupted the natural movement of sand. The dam blocked essential sediments that normally replenished beaches, while port infrastructure interfered with longshore drift. Professor Kwasi Addo Appeaning of the University of Ghana identifies this sediment shortage as a major reason for the worsening erosion.
Persistent Illegal Sand Mining: Despite its illegality, sand extraction continues widely. Weak enforcement has allowed destructive removal of dunes and beaches that once protected the coast. In Senya Beraku, sand mining was singled out as a key factor influencing shoreline changes.
Hard Engineering With Harmful Side Effects: The government has historically favored sea walls and other “hard” structures. The Keta Sea Defense Project, a $100 million construction finished in 2000, was meant to shield communities. Instead, it created serious downstream impacts. “The effect of the sea walls is acute erosion at the down-drift side,” says climate expert Joel Degue from the Centre for Natural Resources and Environmental Management. While Keta gained protection, wave energy was redirected, raising erosion along the Ghana-Togo border by more than 50%.
Climate Change as the Underlying Accelerator: Rising sea levels and increasingly powerful storms intensify all existing weaknesses. A global climate trend becomes a local disaster.
More Than Land: The Disappearance of History, Nature, and Identity
What is being lost cannot be measured solely in meters of coastline. The damage touches culture, biodiversity, livelihoods, and national memory.
A Cultural Tragedy: The sea has already taken much of Fort Prinzenstein in Keta and Fort Kongensten in Ada—structures tied to the painful history of the trans-Atlantic slave trade and colonial rule. These were irreplaceable, physical chapters of Ghana’s past, now dissolving grain by grain.
Environmental Losses: Entire mangrove ecosystems that served as natural shields and fish nurseries have been cleared. Areas that once hosted nesting turtles and migratory birds are shrinking rapidly. The coastal coconut industry, formerly an important source of income, has collapsed.
Human Suffering on a Growing Scale: More than 10,000 buildings, including homes, churches, and schools, have been destroyed across the southeastern coast. Fishermen like Sargblo in Dzakplagbe now stand in front of ruins, unsure of what comes next. “When you’ve lost everything, what’s left to fear?” he asks. Families lose not only property but also their social connections. Many become internal refugees with little or no support. Meanwhile, saltwater intrusion contaminates freshwater wells, forcing mostly women and children to walk long distances daily in search of drinkable water.
A Smarter Way Forward: Beyond Dependence on Concrete
An increasing number of scientists, environmental specialists, and local community leaders argue that walls alone will not save Ghana’s coastline. Instead, they propose solutions rooted in ecological restoration.
“We can’t fight nature; we can only work with it,” says Bright Mawunyo Adzagba, founder of the Keta Ramsar Center. His approach—and that of many experts—prioritizes Nature-based Solutions (NbS):
Rebuilding Mangroves and Dunes: Planting mangroves and restoring native dune vegetation acts as a natural barrier, calms waves, and stabilizes sand while fostering biodiversity. Pilot interventions in Anyanui and Atiteti have shown encouraging results. Global examples, such as dune restoration on Portugal’s Porto Santo Island, demonstrate that NbS can protect coasts while supporting tourism and local economies.
Soft Engineering Practices: Beach nourishment—adding sand to depleted beaches—and constructing “living shorelines” using biodegradable materials can strengthen coastal resilience. These measures must be guided by long-term sediment management, not one-off interventions.
Hybrid Protection Models: The West Africa Coastal Areas (WACA) program promotes combining engineered structures with natural buffers. A low rock groyne paired with a broadened, vegetated beach could protect communities while allowing essential ecological processes to recover.
Community-Driven Data and Planning: Research conducted in 2016 in Accra revealed that local observations often matched scientific measurements of erosion. When combined with modern tools such as drones and satellite data—as successfully tested in Elmina Bay—community involvement becomes a powerful tool for early warning and smarter planning.
Ghana at a Turning Point
The country now faces a critical moment. Participation in the WACA initiative and the creation of a Coastal Development Authority show recognition of the urgent threat. Yet as work continues on the Multisectoral Investment Plan, the waves continue advancing without pause.
What happened to Fuvemeh stands as a warning for the entire nation. It shows what unfolds when large problems are met with fragmented, reactive strategies that ignore the natural processes maintaining the coastline. For the residents of Dzita, Agavedzi, Blekusu, and numerous other towns still clinging to the land, the looming concern is not whether another destructive wave will strike, but whether Ghana will adopt a more durable, science-based, and nature-aligned approach before the ocean claims even more.
The effort to stop the advancing sea cannot rely only on walls or rock piles. The true victory depends on restoring ecosystems, valuing local knowledge, protecting heritage, and recognizing that the strongest defense is a coastline rebuilt as a living system rather than a barrier of concrete.