Behind every name lies a story, and Accra neighbourhoods have plenty to pass around. The rise of new neighbourhoods will open doors to many new names and untold stories.
Spintex Road, Accra, Ghana, is a six-and-a-half mile stretch of semi-industrial thoroughfare that runs from the Tetteh Quarshie Interchange to the coastal port of Tema.
The name “Spintex” has been widely adopted and now describes the area along the road. This area has morphed into an Accra neighbourhood of its own.
Spintex Road is a vibrant travel destination in the colourful city of Accra, the capital of Ghana, winding down from the Tetteh Quarshie Interchange to the beach at Tema.
ACCRA'S SPINTEX ROAD; Ghana's commercial and Industrial Town
At its start it is flanked on one side by the airport and on the other, for almost its entire length, the country’s only motorway, built by Kwame Nkrumah in the 1950s.
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The road was originally planned as a small, two-lane feeder route serving a handful of factories built outside the city’s residential zones, but today the suburbs that have sprung up along its length are among the fastest-growing in West Africa, part of a new phenomenon - the “urban corridor”.
This urban corridor takes the Ibadan-Lagos-Accra-Abidjan route and is home to some 25 million inhabitants.
The entrance-exit to the Accra Mall runs directly off the Tetteh Quarshie Interchange and slap-bang into the Spintex Road.
The area generally referred to as Spintex covers East Airport, Baatsonaa, Kotobabi, Community 18 and parts of Lashibi.
Spintex boasts several middle-upper luxury homes, mixed-use developments, offices and factories. It also had good, accessible roads as well as steady water and electricity supply among others.
Read also: Exploring Accra, Ghana
Despite the apparently chaotic appearance of Spintex, particularly in the hours between 6am and 6pm, there are three very distinct zones of operation in the half-mile strip between the secured edge of the runway and the motorway that flank the road at either end.
Closest to the road and spilling into it in every conceivable direction is the retail strip, the market. Open-air, open-plan, mobile, flexible and seemingly arbitrary in its selection of goods, everything and anything you could possibly want is here - Christmas hampers, puppies, bicycles, Chinese-produced kente cloth, tombstones, second-hand books, toilet paper, the Bible and the Koran.
Adjacent to the retail strip of random goods lies the second “zone” - production. Operating out of makeshift workshops (whose power supply is generally “creatively” engineered), hundreds of cane sofas, hampers, wardrobes, desks, garden gnomes and “traditional” masks are made each day.
Finally, sandwiched behind the production zone and sometimes in its midst lies the third layer of Spintex: residential. Not, I hasten to add, the gated, security-patrolled estates that have attracted up to half a million Ghanaian expatriates who’ve returned in the past decade or so and who contribute heavily to the cursed traffic flow, but the shack-like, temporary-except-they’re-permanent structures that house many of the traders, artisans and workers who ply the roadside market.
Embedded within and along Spintex are many of the complex issues that Ghana (and, by extension, much of West Africa) faces - in terms of its relationship to modernity and the formation of a new urban culture that is neither a poor pastiche of the West nor hopelessly bogged down by the weight of its own traditions.
Read also: Accra Airport Guide
Spintex Road offers a strange, often confusing, sometimes amusing glimpse into a way of operating that is at once problematic and yet full of possibility.
The Role of Printex Limited in Shaping Spintex
The area was once solely commercial and used to house mostly warehouses and factories. In fact, the area got its name from Printex Limited, which was a popular factory on the road.
Printex, formerly Spintex Limited is a textiles manufacturing company. This was back when spinning fabric was part of its main line of activities as a textile manufacturer.
Printex Limited is a privately owned textile manufacturing company headquartered in Accra, the capital of Ghana, with over 500 employees.
The company was established in 1958 as Millet Textile Corporation (MTC), producing mainly terry towels.
In 1980 the company began operating as Spintex Limited, on a 25+ acre plot on the Spintex Road in a massive expansion program.
By 1997 when it assumed its current name, the company had entered into the African textiles market producing woven or printed cotton or polyester viscose blends.
Today the company produces all-color screen prints and African print fabric inspired by a team of textile creatives.
Printex prints are a combination of art, cultural inspirations, and interpretations of Africa’s landscape, and wildlife.
Printex African prints are a combination of art, cultural inspirations, and interpretations of Africa’s landscape, and wildlife.
We use bold shapes and patterns combined with seasonal colors to dress our customers for every occasion. From the more simple patterns for daily wear, to more intricate designs for fashion runways and glamour pages.
Our prints first start as concepts from textile designers which are later turned into decorative patterns applied to cotton fabric by synchronized rotary screen methods and tubular screens.
Print paste is distributed inside the tubular screen and applied on to the fabric which is pressed between the screen and the printing blanket.
These designs famously known under the signature Printex ‘Maaso Me She Bi’ are synonymous with quality throughout West Africa.
Our range of fabrics are exported to Nigeria, Cote D’Ivoire, Mali, Benin, Togo, Burkina Faso, Gambia, Niger, Angola and as far as South Africa and Zambia.
A view of Accra, where Spintex Road is located.
Key Milestones in the History of Printex and Spintex Road
| Year | Event |
|---|---|
| 1958 | Millet Textile Corporation (MTC) established, producing terry towels. |
| 1980 | Company begins operating as Spintex Limited, expanding operations on Spintex Road. |
| 1997 | Company assumes the name Printex Limited, entering the African textiles market. |
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