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As part of my doctorate on pan-African activism in London during World War II, I was fortunate enough to undertake an archival trip to West Africa in March 2020. In the following, I will present the Public Records Administration and Archives Department in Cape Coast, Ghana, a relatively unexplored archive, which is of particular interest for historians of Western Africa, the British colonial era and the Atlantic Triangular Trade. Additionally, I will outline challenges in archival conservation in Ghanaian state archives. I conducted the majority of my archivalresearch in the Public Records and Archives Administrations Department (PRAAD)in Accra, Ghana. The PRAAD is the successor of the National Archives of Ghana,renamed in 1997.[1] Inaddition to documents on the period following the Ghanaian independence fromBritain in 1957, the PRAAD holds a rich collection of sources from the colonialera. Therefore, it is an indispensable working tool for historical research onGhana or the Gold Coast colony. The archive in Accra holds the largest body ofdocuments. However, several regional archives with supplementary material existacross Ghana, for example in Cape Coast, Sekondi, Kofaridua, Kumasi, Tamale,Sunyani, and Ho. Each of these regional sub-archives contain records andcorrespondence that primarily relate to the administration of the regionalprovinces, but also personal papers of locals, travel diaries and reports thatcannot be found in the main archival deposit in Accra. In short, the regionalarchives provide an important pool of complementary sources for any historicalresearch on Ghanaian history.Since the newspapers in the PRAAD in Accrabecame unreadable due to conservation problems for the pre-1950-period, I havebeen advised by an archivist to use the PRAAD in Cape Coast instead, as itholds a newspaper collection for the years 1930 to 1950. The PRAAD Cape Coasthas been made relatively little use of, due to its low visibility and difficultaccessibility: There is no online presence and therefore little information onits collections. Here, the sub-genre of archival literature provides firstinsights. Fortunately, in the years following independence in 1957, Africahistorians published record lists of the newly created Ghanaian archives includingthe regional sub-archives for their colleagues in peer-reviewed journals.[2]Additionally to the absence of a website, the PRAAD Cape Coast is difficult toreach: The archive has moved several times and the access road to the newlocation is now occupied by a scrap yard, so that the journey to the new sitecan only be made with navigation advice from local guides. These difficultieshelp explain why these sub-archives are untapped sources despite holding vitaldocuments for researchers on the time before, during and after Ghanaian independence.In order to reap these rich sources, one simply needs a lot of time, patienceand the help from locals. Apart from documents on regional government, the Public Records and Archives Administrations Department (PRAAD) in Cape Coast holds rich source material on the history of the Atlantic Slave Trade. © Simeon MartyThe holdings of PRAAD Cape Coast consistmainly of regional government documents. These are particularly interesting forhistorians of the colonial era, as Cape Coast was the capital of the Britishcolony Gold Coast until 1877 and a main hub for slave trade in the TriangularTrade. For historians of the early 20th century, for instance, thepersonal papers of Kobina Sekyi (1892­–1956), politician, lawyer, poet andmentor to Ghana’s first president Kwame Nkrumah, offer a valuable collection ofsources.[3]His personal documents give insight into interwar Ghana and the early post-warperiod when the fight for independence intensified. As a loyal reader of thedaily paper, Sekyi donated his personal collection of Ghanaian newspapers rangingfrom the 1920s to his death in 1956 to the regional archive, which is anespecially rich resource as because comprehensive archives of Africannewspapers are often difficult to find.However, the promising holdings of the PRAAD in Accra and in the regional archives are critically endangered due to serious conservational problems. A review of the British Library Endangered Archives Programme stated in 2012 that “over 45% of the documents examined are extremely fragile. Unless digital copies are made to preserve these materials, the surviving records will be completely destroyed within less than a decade.”[4] Additionally, the archival holdings are only partially categorised and registers are not digitised, which leads to problems when documents are re-sorted after having been read. The poor condition of Ghanaian archives has become a popular topic in the national press.[6] According to Gregory Setse, Head of the Department at the PRAAD Cape Coast, interviewed about the deplorable state of the archive in 2019, the core of the problem is the lack of funding for renovations to preserve the documents from climatic influences or to provide the technical equipment to digitise the collections.[7] Deposit of the archival collections of the PRAAD Cape Coast. Finding documents once incorrectly sorted is a challenge. © Simeon MartyInitiatives to preserve Ghanaian archival collections exist,such as the British Library Endangered Archives Programme, which has begun todigitise certain holdings in the PRAAD sub-archives in Cape Coast and Tamale.[8] However,the problem is greater than a single programme could solve. The majority ofarchives in Ghana remain at risk. While no archive is ever complete, the degreeof absence and degradation in Ghanaian archives is striking. Reflecting on anarchival trip in Northern Nigeria in 2014, the US-American historian SamuelFury Childs Daly came to the conclusion that postcolonial state archivesreflect the fragmented nature of African postcolonial states and their history.[9]Parts of the personal papers of Kwame Nkrumah, covered in book lice. Copies do not exist. © Simeon Marty For historians of Ghana and Western Africa, this means in practice tomake do with less source material for their studies, even when the researchperiod is close to our own. One way of compensating this is to switch to othersources, such as sources that were written by former colonizers and can befound in archives in the Global North. But what has been recorded by theBritish colonial administration does not necessarily correspond to Ghanaianrealities, as the colonial view of the Ghanaian past differs to how Ghanaiansperceived the world. &#160;Historians thatutilize these sources have to be aware of those sensitivities when usingcolonial archives and need to be careful not to reproduce colonial perceptionsof the world in the 21st century. Another possibility is to extend the source base to non-written sources.Oral history, the interpretation of material culture or historical ethnographyare often used for the historiography of pre-colonial African history and couldalso be applied to the reconstruction of more recent periods. This brings newopportunities but also new challenges for the historiography of Africa. Thisprocess requires a greater reflection on the sources being used. In the wordsof Antoinette Burton, working with sources of African history therefore requiresa lot of “selection, interpretation and even creative innovation”[10].[1] For a brief history of the PRAAD see Iddirisu, Abdulai: The GhanaPublic Records and Archives Administration Department – Tamale: A Guide forUsers, in: History in Africa (27), 2000, pp. 449-453.[2] Henige, David P.: The National Archives of Ghana: ASynopsis of Holdings, in: The International Journal of African HistoricalStudies, Vol. 6, No. 3 (1973), pp. 475-486, Dumett, R. E.: Survey of ResearchMaterials in the National Archives of Ghana, Gmünd, 1974 or Akuassah, Harry: ACalendar of the Kwame Nkrumah Papers in the Documentation Centre of theInstitute of African Studies, University of Ghana, 1935-194”, in: History inAfrica, Vol. 21 (1994), pp. 389-402.[3] Doortmont, Michael R.: The Pen-Pictures of Modern Africans andAfrican Celebrities: A Collective Biography of Elite Society in the Gold CoastColony, Leiden, 2005, p. 394.[4] Montana,Ismael: Digitisation and preservation of historical archives in the PublicRecords and Archives Administration (PRAAD) in Tamale, Northern Ghana (EAP541),https://eap.bl.uk/project/EAP541,(accessed 19.05.2020).[5] Boateng, Caroline: Ghanalosing public records - Archival facilities in deplorable state, The Graphic,10. Octobre2018, https://www.graphic.com.gh/news/general-news/ghana-losing-public-records-archival-facilities-in-deplorable-state.html(accessed 19.05.2020)[6] Adogla-Bessa, Delali:Ghana risks losing over 28’000 historical files over preservation challenges,Citi Newsroom, 23. May 2019, https://citinewsroom.com/2019/05/c-r-ghana-risks-losing-over-28000-historical-files-over-preservation-challenges/ (accessed 19.05.2020)Appiah, Kofi: P.R.A.A.D. and other neglected andrelegated to the dustbin?, Ghanaweb, 27. January 2012, https://www.ghanaweb.com/GhanaHomePage/features/P-R-A-A-D-And-Others-Neglected-And-Relegated-To-The-Dustbin-Part-1-228620, accessed 19.05.2020)[7] Adogla-Bessa,Delali: Ghana risks losing over 28’000 historical files over preservationchallenges, Citi Newsroom, 23. May 2019, https://citinewsroom.com/2019/05/c-r-ghana-risks-losing-over-28000-historical-files-over-preservation-challenges/(accessed 19.05.2020)[8] See https://eap.bl.uk/project/EAP541 and https://eap.bl.uk/project/EAP474 (accessed 19.05.2020)[9] Fury ChildsDaly, Samuel: Research Note: Archival Research in Africa, in: African Affairs(Vol. 116), p. 313.[10] Burton, Antoinette: ArchiveStories: Facts, fictions, and the writing of history, Durham, 2005, p. 5.