Gourd Audio · 18 min
On the last bus across Accra
A conductor, a student and a night-shift nurse tell us what the city sounds like after dark.
Listen along
Today’s Mix
New voices, considered conversations, and a little music for the road.
Listen to GourdThe Long Read · 24 min
A studio built for happy accidents
Producer Kofi Lamptey on making room for surprise in the recording booth.
A daily column on what you need to know
The Lede
The climate desk
The forests at the heart of Ghana’s cocoa story
Farmers are finding new ways to protect the shade trees that make their land thrive.
Books & culture
The small bookshops making space for big ideas
Inside the independent shops bringing readers and local writers together.
At the table
A good meal is never only about the recipe
Three cooks talk family, memory and what makes a dish feel like home.
The art of making
The designers giving old cloth a new life
A visit to the studios where hand-me-downs become something entirely new.
No stories match that search. Try another word.
The Gourd conversation
Who gets to shape the future of our cities?
Researchers, residents and builders are asking how fast-growing communities can grow with care.
Join the conversation
Good things to go out for
Goings On
04OCT
11OCT
18OCT
A close look at what we watch, read, hear, and see
The Critics
The Current Cinema
The screen between us
A new film makes the familiar feel strange—and the strange feel close to home.
Pop & Music
Room for the rhythm
An album that lets its many influences talk to one another.
The Theatre
Theatre in the round
A playful production makes a small room feel like the whole city.
Under Review
The house of small things
A first novel finds a large world inside one family’s quiet rituals.
Books, art, and the life around them
Culture & Ideas
The moving image
The filmmakers building a different kind of screen story
Fiction & poetry
A poem for the language you dream in
Humor & cartoons
The family group chat has entered the kitchen
Ideas
What we mean when we say the internet is everywhere
Recurring voices, distinct points of view
Our Columnists
Letters from City Hall
The city is in the details
What the new transport plan means for the people who take the bus every day.
Across the water
Across the water
On the ideas, families, and friendships that cross borders in both directions.
Fault Lines
The new public square
Online life is changing how we gather. The old questions still matter.
Q. & A.
How a city remembers
Architect Kwame Asare on the buildings that tell us who we have been.
A lighter look at the things around us
The Small Delights Dept.
Weather report
The first rain always has something to say
Houseplant hours
A very patient plant
The weekend away
The long way home
Reporting and essays on the questions that matter
Ideas
The future of food
What we grow next
As the seasons shift, farmers and researchers are rethinking what belongs in the fields—and on our tables.
Learning curve
The classroom after the bell
The living coast
Where the shoreline moves
Work & life
The side-hustle generation
Portraits of people changing the conversation
Profiles
In the studio
Making room for colour
At work
The chef who keeps notes
The sporting life
One more lap
A life in pictures
The work of showing up
Conversations with people worth knowing
People of Interest
The musician
The song that stayed
“I wanted it to sound like the walk home.”
The photographer
Looking twice
“The picture begins after you think you have seen it.”
The writer
The page before the first
“A story usually arrives as a question.”
A small break in your day
Puzzles & Play
Books to keep close
Page-Turner
Reading list
The books we pass along
Five readers share the novels, essays, and poems they keep giving to friends—with a note in the margin.
Read the listA few stories to return to
In Case You Missed It
The long read
The waiting room
What we learn about one another when there is nowhere else to be.
A reporter at large
When the water rises
The neighbourhoods living closest to the changing edge of the sea.
Books
What a family keeps
A new memoir follows the objects that survive every move.
Technology
The watching city
Who gets to decide where public safety ends and public space begins?
A deep look at an emerging idea
Beyond the Headlines
Infinite Scroll
The city that never logs off
A closer look at the systems quietly changing how we move through shared places.
A story for the weekend
“The Blue Gate”
On the day the old house was sold, Efua returned to find the gate painted a colour she had never seen before.
Read the storyThe story behind the story
This Week in Fiction
F
The Writer’s Voice
How Mansa Kyei found the blue gate
The novelist reads from her new short story and talks about the Accra house that inspired it.
Dispatches from the city and beyond
The Talk of the Town
The Pictures
The pictures we keep
In good company
What’s on the playlist?
The Sporting Life
Inside the courts
Short pieces with a sideways glance
Shouts & Murmurs
Currently on view
Currently on view in an art-fair booth
A short list
Some ways a machine might do it
From the living room
Your parents’ weekend preview
A new edition
Updated book titles
The quarterly journal
Gourd Magazine
GOURDThe places
we call home
we call home
Volume 01 · October 2026
Places we carry with us
Our first issue is about home: the places we leave, the ones we find, and the spaces we make together.
- Notes from a changing coastline
- Inside the makers’ rooms
- New fiction from across the region
“
A magazine for noticing what’s around us—and imagining what comes next.
THE GOURD EDITORS