Suame Magazine

This photo essays depicts life in Suame Magazine, a 20-mile informal industrial area in Kumasi, Ghana. Over 200,000 skilled workers fill the open-air production lines, wooden stalls, and concrete factories. Around a million dollars passes through the hands of the 12,000 small businesses based at Suame Magazine daily. The district emerged in the 1930s, around a colonial-era armory. When Ghana’s economy faltered and a series of economic reforms in the 1970s cut the stream of imported spare parts, skilled mechanics started to work for themselves, learning to make and refurbish spare parts to replace the dwindling supply of imports.