If you are putting something on in Accra - a concert, a festival, a market, a meetup, a race - the hard part after booking the venue is telling people it is happening. This guide is about one free way to do that, the events calendar on this site, and the habits that get any listing seen.

— List your event now

How the calendar works

The events calendar lists what is coming up in Accra, soonest first, and drops each event by itself the day after it ends. It is read by people who live here and by visitors planning a trip, and each event can be added to a phone’s own calendar in one tap.

There is no automatic feed behind it: no public events service covers Accra well enough to build on, so every event is entered by hand or sent in by its organiser. Every event sent in is checked by a person before it is listed - the date, the venue, that it is open to the public. That is what lets a reader trust that an event on the page is actually on.

Sending yours

The form asks for:

  • The name of the event - the name people will search for.
  • What kind of event - culture, music, tech, business, sport, food, family or civic.
  • The dates, and a time if you have one.
  • The venue, and the area of Accra.
  • What it is - a few sentences.
  • The price, in words, and a link for tickets or details.
  • Who is organising it.
  • Your name and email - private, never shown, and used to tell you when it is listed. A phone number helps if something needs checking quickly.

It is free, and while you type the form shows the event as it will look on the calendar.

— List your event

What makes a listing work

Name the venue exactly. “National Theatre” or “Oxford Street car park, Osu”, not “Accra”. A reader deciding whether to cross the city needs to know where they are going.

Give a time. “From 4pm”, “Doors 6pm, music from 8”. An event with no time is an event people arrive at too early or too late.

Say what happens, then who it is for. “Forty food stalls, a DJ and craft sellers; families welcome until nine” tells a reader more than “the biggest night of the year”. The calendar does not print capitals for emphasis or exclamation marks, and the description reads better without them.

State the price plainly. “Free”, “GH₵100 at the gate”, “From GH₵150 online”. If tickets go up in tiers, say so.

Link to one page that will still work on the day - the tickets page or the event’s own page, starting with https://. The link goes in its own box; links, emails and phone numbers in the description are refused, because the description is published.

Send it as soon as the date is confirmed. The calendar is most useful to people planning ahead, and a listing that appears the day before reaches almost nobody.

What is turned down

  • Private events - weddings, private parties, members-only nights.
  • Events with no particular date - a weekly class, a standing offer.
  • Anything that cannot be confirmed as happening, or whose date has already passed.
  • Events outside Greater Accra, for now.
  • Duplicates - the same event sent twice while the first is still waiting.

If yours cannot be listed, you hear why by email, and you can send it again once something has changed.

After it is listed

  • Tell us if anything changes - the date, the venue, a cancellation - through the contact page, with the reference you were given. A wrong date sends people to an empty venue.
  • It disappears by itself the day after it ends; there is nothing to take down.
  • Annual events - a festival every August, a race every October - are listed with their next confirmed date. Until that date is announced, the calendar files them under “Every year in Accra” with a note of when they usually happen, and never a guessed date.

Everywhere else

The calendar is one channel. In Accra the others that matter are:

  • Your own pages first. Instagram is where most Accra events are announced, and where people check whether one is still on. Keep the date, the venue and the price in the first lines of the post.
  • Radio. Accra still listens to the radio, and the entertainment shows announce events and give tickets away. — Radio in Accra
  • WhatsApp groups and broadcast lists, which is how many nights out are actually organised.
  • A ticketing site that takes mobile money, because most of your audience will pay that way. — Mobile money
  • Posters where your audience already is - campuses, the venue itself, the bars nearby.

If you are starting out

— Registering a business
— Live music in Accra
— Detty December in Accra
— What is on in Accra

How what you send is handled - who sees your details and when they are erased - is set out in the terms.