Crafts Tour

Ghana Crafts Tour

Date: Main tour Dates from October 2011
Duration:11/13/15 days
Includes: The Ghana craft tour includes accommodation – single rooms, breakfast and lunch, land transport, tuition,workshops, materials, site visits.

Book Ghana craft tours with the leading provider of ethical & responsible travel packages in Ghana.  Our Ghana tours have grown out of working with bead makers and artisans over twenty years. They began as a means of providing a more personal access to Ashanti crafts, organising workshops and allowing guests to work in the communities to make their own crafts.

We have extended them to provide other routes to experience the places and people of Ghana, including cycling, walking, festivals and drumming.

Book a Ghana Craft tour and make your own beads, brass and printed cloth in workshops around Ghana. Get personal tuition, getting to know the people and seeing directly how they live and work.

From Ghana’s capital Accra, we travel North to the fertile greenery of Abompe, then on to Kumasi, the ancient capital of the Ashanti kingdom. We will see sacred lake Bosomtwe, visit the weavers, carvers, Adinkra cloth printers, Kente cloth weavers and other crafts people gathered in villages around Kumasi by the Ashanti kingdom in the 18th century. Then going south and East to the Krobo region, we will visit the weekly bead markets, and enjoy savannah grasslands and scenic hills, before heading back to Accra and some time on the beach.  Our Ghana Craft tours are available at selected times throughout the year so please contact us for further details.

Ghana Crafts Tour Highlights

Arrive in Accra, the capital city, and be escorted to your hotel. The following day you will enjoy a tour of Accra. A National Museum visit will then give you essential background into the cultural and artistic history of this great country.

Making Bauxite Beads.
Next we travel to the Abombe bauxite beadmaking village. Here they dig Bauxite from shafts on the top of the mountain and cut and polish it into beads. This is an opportunity to enjoy rural village life and we will visit farmlands, gold mining pits, fruit gardens and a waterfall to give you a relaxing start to the tour. More information about bead making >

Here’s a great site about Abompe

Kumasi bead makers
In Kumasi we will work with the Dabaa recycled glass bead makers and have a chance to make both simple and then more complex powdered glass beads.

Bronze casting
There is now only one Brass casting village in Ghana, Kurofofrom near Kumasi. The craftsmen and women use lost wax casting – the same method used to create the 13th century cast brass heads of Ife in Nigeria, and the famous 16th century Benin bronzes, now in the British Museum. Here you may have a chance to make your own brass beads. More information about brass casting >

Kente cloth weavers
Kente is the traditional cloth of the Asanti and other peoples in West Africa, woven in narrow strips in a variety of designs each with symbolic meaning. Kente cloth is a prestigious garment worn for ceremonial occasions, by chiefs, Kings, and heads of state. More information about Kente Cloth Weaving >

Wood carving
Ahwiaa became and remains the traditional Ashanti centre for carving Royal sceptres and stools, fertility dolls, drums and masks. Villagers work in open workshops outdoors, each specializing in a particular type of carving. More information about Wood Carving >

Adinkra printing
You will visit the Adinkra printing villages. Adinkra is a type of cloth made by the Ashanti people of Ghana with a thick black plant dye. The dyers use stamps carved from calabash to cover cloth with patterns. There are over a hundred patterns referring to Ashanti proverbs, historic people, animals and events. More information about Adinkra Printing >

Central Market and sacred Lake Bosomtwe
There will be time to visit Kumasi’s central market, said to be West Africa’s largest market with some truly amazing specialist bead stalls, some ancient artifacts, some magic and medicine stalls, fish, meat, vegetables, cloth, and 101 things you have never seen before. Following this we have a chance to relax on the beautiful shores of the sacred lake Bosomtwe.

The group will then travel on to the eastern region to the Odumase Krobo. You will visit beadmakers in their villages and make your own beads. Shop the Koforidua bead market with a free afternoon to browse at your leisure. ;

Ghana Crafts Tour Full Itinerary

Day 1. Meet at airport and transfer to hotel.

Day 2. Orientation on health, customs, and currency: morning tour of Accra, Ghana’s capital: visit the National Museum to learn Ghana’s history and cultural pedigree. Then travel along the cost via Fort of Good Hope and the scenic Winneba fishing market to Moree Beach Resort.

Day 3. Tour Cape Coast’s spectacular seventeenth century castle, a historic evocation of the Slave Trade and visit Elima Fort and fishing harbour.

Day 4. Explore the rainforest canopy walkways of Kakum Forest reserve with guides. followed by the drive North through the famous gold-bearing region of Obuasi towards Kumasi, historic capital of the Ashanti nation, through exquisite scenery from the coast up onto the central plateau, staying overnight on the shores of sacred Lake Bosomtwe

Day 5-7. Over several days we visit different Ashanti craft villages for hands-on workshops in brass casting, bead making, Adinkra printing and Kente weaving. There is time to make your own beads and printed cloth. Brass casting in Krofrom, bead making in Dabaa, Kente weaving in Adangwomase, and Adinkra printing workshops in Ntonso. Wood carving and making pottery are also possible. We also visit the Kumasi Cultural Centre and Ashanti Museum, see a traditional Ashanti shrine, and tour the 126 alleys of Kumasi Central Market.

Day 8. South to Koforidua, capital of the Eastern Region and on the edge of Krobo country, stopping at Abompe at the foot of the Kwahu escarpment for a village tour and lunch in a tropical garden.

Day 9. Visit the Boti falls and a bead making village to make your own painted beads, with an optional scenic walk to a traditional Krobo hilltop village inaccessible by road.

Day 10. Morning in a Krobo bead market before return to Accra via Aburi Botanical Gardens.

Day 11. Visit the world famous Ga carpenters who make coffins to commemorate the life of the dead in the form of fish, beer bottles, and taxis, and the Arts Centre and Kaneshie Market for some last minute shopping or relaxing on the beach before the evening flight home.

This trip can be extended with two days travelling East to the Volta region, via the Akosombo Dam, crossing the Volta, to see the world’s largest man-made lake and Ghana’s largest waterfall, Wli Falls in the mountains bordering Togo. Staying in Ho and visiting the Tafi Atome monkey sanctuary.

You can also spend two further days on the golden beaches West of Cape Coast with a visit to Beyin and a trip in a dugout canoe to Nzulezo village, built on stilts in the lagoon for security in ancient times.

Tour Cost: from £1150 (11 days), to £1300 (13 days) to £1450 (15 days).  For further information and bookings please contact us

please note: Our tours do not include airfare.  More information about flights to Ghana

Ethical Craft Tours of Ghana

Our craft tours of Ghana are small in scale (typically six people) and are managed in partnership with the host communities. We enable guests to interact sympathetically and sensitively with the local people, by explaining customs and behaviour, local language and gestures. Our Ghana Craft tours use local guides, drivers and vehicles wherever possible.