Ghana’s Akosombo Dam made the largest reservoir by area
Lake Volta, entirely inside Ghana, covers 8,502 square kilometres behind Akosombo Dam—the world’s largest artificial reservoir by surface area. From Yapei south to the dam runs about 520 kilometres along the prime meridian near six degrees north.
The dam holds back the White and Black Volta where they once met. Geologist Albert Ernest Kitson floated a hydro-aluminium scheme in 1915; Kwame Nkrumah revived it for postcolonial modernization. After Aluminium Limited withdrew at independence in 1957, Kaiser Aluminum helped finance a redesign that smelted imported bauxite and paid less heed to flooded residents.
Akosombo now generates 912 megawatts for Ghana and exports to Togo, Benin, and neighbours. Ferries and cargo boats use the warm tropical waterway; islands include Dodi, Dwarf, and Kporve, with Digya National Park on the western shore. Dodi Island itself only came into being in 1961 as the waters rose, and cruise boats have since made it one of Ghana’s leading tourist sights. Early years disrupted fishing and farming and raised disease, yet regional food output later intensified and navigation opened. Villagers largely had to adapt on their own after state modernisation schemes faltered.
In 2011 the Volta River Authority set aside 2.5 million US dollars, through its subsidiary Volta Hotels, to develop eco-tourism on Dodi. A newer venture recovers valuable tropical hardwood from the forests drowned beneath the lake, harvesting timber without felling any living trees.
Child labour is a lasting controversy: somewhere between 7,000 and 10,000 youngsters are thought to toil in the lake’s fishing fleets, a situation The Guardian and CNN have likened to slavery, while the commentator Betty Mensah and the academic Samuel Okyere dismiss that framing as sensationalist.
Source: Lake Volta
