West Africa's beachfront capital — the Akodessewa fetish market, grilled poisson on the Gulf of Guinea, and a city that the tourist infrastructure forgot
Lomé sits directly on the Gulf of Guinea, the only West African capital with a beach in its city centre, making it a genuinely unusual urban experience — fishing pirogues launch from the sand a few hundred metres from the presidential palace. The city is the economic hub of Togo, a country of 8 million people that rarely makes travel lists but rewards those who come: the Akodessewa Fetish Market (the world's largest, a Vodou ingredient market of dried animal parts, bones, and ritual objects) is the most extraordinary market in Africa for sheer anthropological intensity. Beach bars serving bro…
The coastal strip that became Togo was divided between German and French colonial influence from the late 19th century. German Togoland (1884–1914) was one of the few German colonies considered a successful enterprise — coffee, cocoa, and cotton plantations, a rail network, and a school system that created a relatively educated population. After World War I, the colony was divided between British and French mandate territories; French Togoland became independent Togo in 1960. Lomé was declared the capital despite being at the very edge of the territory, on the border with what is now Ghana.