The Old Polo Grounds–Where a country became itself.

By Kofi Sasraku

Earlier this year, a friend of mine from Norway visited Ghana for the first time. He had heard the usual things people abroad hear, the hospitality, the food, the music, but he wanted to understand the country beyond the headlines and travel guides.

So I took him around Accra.

There are many places you can show a first-time visitor, but there was one stop that felt necessary: the old Polo Grounds or, instead, what now stands in its place, the Kwame Nkrumah Memorial Park.

It is one of those spaces in Ghana where history doesn’t feel distant.
It feels close.
It feels physical.
It feels like something you can almost touch.

We stood there quietly for a moment, and I told him what every Ghanaian child learns in school, but what you only grasp emotionally when you stand on the soil itself.

Before it became a shrine to memory, it was simply a field

I explained to him that before all the symbolism, the Polo Grounds were just that grounds.
A field. A colonial-era sports space where British officers played polo, held parades, and conducted public ceremonies.

Nothing about it predicted it would host one of the defining moments of African liberation.

History is strange that way. It chooses ordinary places for extraordinary moments.

On that soil, a nation declared itself

On the night of March 6, 1957, the field transformed.

Crowds spilled in from all directions — Accra Central, High Street, the Arts Centre, James Town, Ussher Town.
People climbed trees, stood on rooftops, held lanterns, jostled for space, determined to witness a moment the continent had never seen.

And from that very ground, Kwame Nkrumah proclaimed the words that still echo across Ghanaian memory:

“At long last, the battle has ended…
Ghana, your beloved country, is free forever!”

My Norwegian friend fell silent when I said it aloud.
To him, it sounded historical.
To me, it sounded emotional.

Those words shaped the identity of my parents ‘generation and continue to shape mine.

The Polo Grounds were not just a location; they were a turning point

We often discuss independence as an event, but not as a feeling.

That night represented:

• the collapse of a colonial order
• the rise of a new African confidence
• the belief that we could define ourselves
• the sense that we were stepping into history with our own feet

Standing there decades later, with the mausoleum facing us and the fountains flowing, I realised something:

Ghana is not old enough for its history to feel distant.
We are still close enough to touch it.

Ghana’s present still wrestles with that moment

As we walked through the park, my friend asked a simple question:

“Do Ghanaians still feel connected to what happened here?”

I paused, because the answer is complicated.

The pride remains.
The symbolism remains.
The memory remains.

But the promise — the full promise — is still a work in progress.

Ghana was the first to rise.
But rising is not the same as arriving.

Independence gave us the possibility, not completion.

The ground remembers even when we forget.

Ghana tends to move on quickly, from governments, from crises, from lessons, from unfinished conversations.

But the Polo Grounds remind us that moments matter.
Decisions matter.
Leadership matters.
Identity matters.

The ground holds the memory of a young nation stepping into its destiny with confidence, perhaps too much confidence, some might argue, but confidence nonetheless.

You cannot stand there without sensing the weight of that moment.

And you cannot stand there without wondering what we have done with the freedom that was declared that night.

What I hope my Norwegian friend understood

I didn’t need him to understand every detail of our history.
I didn’t need him to memorise dates or speeches.

I only wanted him to grasp one truth:

Ghana is not a country that emerged from nowhere.
It is a country built on struggle, imagination, and the courage to dream before the continent believed it was possible.

The Polo Grounds remind us of that.
Every time.

History does not live in books. It lives in places.

Some nations place their historical landmarks behind velvet ropes.
Ours sits in the open, in the centre of Accra, breathing, welcoming, reminding.

And as we walked away from the site, my friend said something that stayed with me:

“It’s strange — this place feels peaceful, but powerful.”

That is Ghana’s history in one sentence.
Soft on the surface, but forceful underneath.

A history that still shapes us.
A history we are still learning to live up to.