The Ako-Adjei Interchange is a flyover

Overpass

An overpass is a bridge, road, railway or similar structure that crosses over another road or railway...

 in Accra

Accra

Accra is the capital and largest city of Ghana, with an urban population of 1,658,937 according to the 2000 census. Accra is also the capital of the Greater Accra Region and of the Accra Metropolitan District, with which it is coterminous...

, Ghana

Ghana

Ghana , officially the Republic of Ghana, is a country located in West Africa. It is bordered by Côte d'Ivoire to the west, Burkina Faso to the north, Togo to the east, and the Gulf of Guinea to the south...

. Until 2005 it was known as the Sankara Interchange. The construction of interchange started in September 1997 and ended in December 1999. It was constructed during the Jerry Rawlings

Jerry Rawlings

Jerry John Rawlings is a former leader of the Republic of Ghana and now the African Union envoy to Somalia. Rawlings ruled Ghana as a military dictator in 1979 and from 1981 to 1992 and then as the first elected president of the Fourth Republic from 1993 to 2001...

 administration and was the first interchange to be built in Ghana.

Location

The Interchange is located between Ring Road Central and the Independence Avenue and is along the Liberation Road in Accra with links towards the 37 Military Hospital, the Police headquarters

Ghana Police Service

The Ghana Police Service is the main law enforcement agency of Ghana. The service is under the control of the Ghanaian Ministry of the Interior.-Functions:The service was established to perform the following functions:#the detection of crime;...

.

History

The site of the interchange was prior to its construction a major roundabout. The roundabout had several name changes from the Akuafo Roundabout to Redemption Circle to the Sankara Circle. The names given to the roundabout represented the identities and interests of various Ghanaian political leader in Ghana's political history. When construction of the interchange begun in 1997 it was to replace the Sankara Roundabout. Upon completion the interchange was name the Sankara Interchange. Captain Thomas Sankara

Thomas Sankara

Thomas Isidore Noël Sankara was a Burkinabé military captain, Marxist revolutionary, Pan-Africanist theorist, and President of Burkina Faso from 1983 to 1987...

 was a military ruler of Burkina Faso

Burkina Faso

Burkina Faso – also known by its short-form name Burkina – is a landlocked country in west Africa. It is surrounded by six countries: Mali to the north, Niger to the east, Benin to the southeast, Togo and Ghana to the south, and Côte d'Ivoire to the southwest.Its size is with an estimated...

.

Renaming of the Interchange

The Interchange was re-named after Dr. Ebenezer Ako Adjei, was a lawyer and founding member of the United Gold Coast Convention (UGCC). He was also a member of the The Big Six

The Big Six (Ghana)

The Big Six were six leaders of the United Gold Coast Convention , the leading political party in the British colony of the Gold Coast. They were detained by the colonial authorities in 1948 following disturbances leading to the killing of three World War II veterans...

 of Gold Coast

Gold Coast (British colony)

The Gold Coast was a British colony on the Gulf of Guinea in west Africa that became the independent nation of Ghana in 1957.-Overview:The first Europeans to arrive at the coast were the Portuguese in 1471. They encountered a variety of African kingdoms, some of which controlled substantial...

 politics who was instrumental in the struggle for Ghana's independence from the British

United Kingdom

The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...

. Dr. Ako Adjei was Ghana's first Minister for Foreign Affairs and was involved in the formulation of the country's foreign policy and level of international engagements.