A Summary: Bukom and the Social History of Boxing in Accra: Warfare and Citizenship in Precolonial Ga Society

Summarised by Juwayn Keane

Emmanuel Akyeampong’s “Bukom and the Social History of Boxing in Accra” (2002) traces the origins of boxing in Accra to the Ga people’s precolonial martial traditions. He shows how communal fighting (asafo atwele) once served as a path to citizenship and belonging, later evolving into modern boxing under colonial influence.

© Thomas Moran. All rights reserved. Used exclusively for Boxing is Love.

Emmanuel Akyeampong traces the roots of boxing in Accra back to the martial traditions of the Ga people, particularly the practice of asafo atwele ,organized group fighting, that took place in commoner spaces such as the beach and in Bukom, a fishing neighborhood within Ussher Town. In precolonial Ga society, warfare was central to political and social life. Fighting was more than a defensive skill: it was a route to becoming a citizen of the man (the town). Migrants, slaves, or ex-slaves could gain political and social membership in Ga towns by defending them in combat, and asafo atwele acted both as a training ground and a communal ritual. Fighting provided disparate social groups with a shared sense of identity and belonging, strengthening community cohesion.

By the early 20th century, Bukom had become the symbolic and physical home of these martial traditions. Asafo atwele was highly organized by 1917, drawing the concern of the colonial government, which banned it in the mid-1930s as an “undesirable” leisure activity. Yet colonial authorities also redirected the “energies and pugilistic skills” of Ga youth into regulated boxing, introduced through contact with British sailors and soldiers. The Ga quickly adapted these imported techniques, blending them with local combat culture. It was only later, especially after Roy Ankrah’s 1951 British Empire featherweight title, that Bukom cemented its reputation as Ghana’s boxing hub and a source of national pride.

Akyeampong’s historical lens shows that, for the Ga, boxing carried forward the older social functions of warfare: affirming identity, integrating outsiders, and mobilising fighters for communal and political recognition. Fighting in asafo atwele gave socially diverse groups, migrants, ex-slaves, and commoners, a sense of shared identity and mutual obligation. This perspective mirrors Weinberg and Arond’s (1952) study of boxing in Chicago, where fighting offered disadvantaged groups a route to status and solidarity. In both contexts, combat became a form of mobilisation: in Ga towns, it meant membership and belonging; in Chicago, it offered pathways out of poverty and violence.

Yet boxing in Bukom also illustrates the tensions of hierarchy and exploitation. Colonial and postcolonial boxing industries generated profits for promoters and managers while fighters bore the physical and economic risks, a pattern that echoes Beauchez’s concept of the “exploitation of disadvantage.” At the same time, boxing gyms in Bukom offered protection, discipline, and honour, aligning with Loïc Wacquant’s notion of the gym’s “triple function.” For Ga youth, training and fighting provided dignity, structure, and status in a society where other routes to advancement were limited.

In sum, Akyeampong situates Bukom’s boxing culture within a long continuum , from precolonial asafo atwele to modern sport showing how colonial intervention reshaped but did not erase Ga martial traditions. Boxing in Bukom thus represents both continuity and transformation: a form of political mobilisation rooted in local history, yet part of global patterns where boxing mediates identity, survival, and social mobility.