Accra’s airfield was built for war. Ghana Airports Company Limited, which runs the civil airport today, says it began as a military airfield operated by the Royal Air Force in the Second World War. It sat at the western end of a chain of airfields across Africa that the British used to move aircraft and people from the Gold Coast to Egypt; the RAF’s own assembly base for that route was along the coast at Takoradi.

In 1941 the Americans arrived. The official US Army Air Forces history records that Pan American Airways-Africa, Ltd. was organised on 12 August 1941 to take over the British trans-African transport service, and that its headquarters "was established at the main base at Accra on 8 October 1941". On 21 October a DC-3 took off on the first scheduled flight from Accra to Khartoum, and by the end of that month seven aircraft and thirty pilots were flying the route. After Pearl Harbor the service was extended to Cairo and beyond.

The military left in 1946, when the airfield was handed to the civil authority. In 1956 Kwame Nkrumah’s government launched a project to turn the base into a civil terminal; Wikipedia says the work was finished in 1958 with capacity for 500,000 passengers a year.

On 17 April 1967 a company of the army’s reconnaissance regiment from Ho tried to overthrow the National Liberation Council, the military government that had removed Nkrumah in February 1966. In the attempt, codenamed Guitar Boy, Lieutenant General Emmanuel Kwasi Kotoka, a member of the council, was killed; Lieutenants Moses Yeboah and Sam Arthur were later tried and publicly executed at Teshie, according to Wikipedia.

Where he died is told two ways. Wikipedia’s airport article says he was killed at a spot that is now the forecourt of the airport; its biography of Kotoka places his capture and killing at the army headquarters at Flagstaff House. Both are attributed here because neither could be checked against a primary source.

In 1969 the airport was renamed Kotoka International Airport. On 23 February 2026 the government restored the name Accra International Airport. MyJoyOnline reported that the Ministry of Transport cited the Ga landowners, concerns that the old name glorified an unconstitutional change of government, and a return to the airport’s former and internationally recognised name; critics, especially in Kotoka’s home Volta Region, said it erased a national hero. The ICAO and IATA codes did not change.

The Ghana Air Force station at Accra was established in early 1961, after the RAF had taken over the running of the new service from its Israeli founders. Wikipedia says it was first housed in No. 3 hangar at the airport with few aircraft, and had four wings — administration, flying, technical and equipment — plus a School of Technical Training. Towards the end of 1965 the station moved to its present site in Burma Camp.

Today Wikipedia places a squadron of C295 transports and a helicopter squadron with Z-9s and Mi-17s at the base. Ghana does not publish a squadron order of battle, and defenceWeb’s 2026 profile lists the squadrons by type without saying where each one lives. The base’s worst day on the ground was 22 January 2020, when C295 GHF552, out of service since October 2019, overran during a routine engine run at 11:10 on the apron; nobody was hurt, and the Ghana Armed Forces said the aircraft was recoverable.

The Z-9 that crashed on 6 August 2025, killing eight people including the defence minister Edward Omane Boamah and the environment minister Ibrahim Murtala Muhammed, took off from Accra at 09:12 GMT for Obuasi, according to MyJoyOnline. Seven months later the first of its replacements arrived: an Airbus H175 flown from Marignane landed at the base on 5 March 2026, to a water-cannon salute in front of the acting defence minister and the Chief of the Defence Staff.

The Ghana Air Force has wanted a light attack aircraft for more than a decade, and Accra is where the sellers come. Embraer announced a contract for five Super Tucanos in June 2015 that was never completed. On 19 February 2024 Embraer and SNC flew an A-29, registration PT-ZTU, at Air Force Base Accra alongside Ghanaian Mi-171s, Z-9s and K-8s; the then Chief of the Air Staff, Air Vice Marshal Frederick Asare Kwasi Bekoe, said he hoped it would be considered "high on our decision making for acquisition".

On 17 December 2025 it was Aero Vodochody’s turn with the L-39 Skyfox, watched by Air Vice Marshal Eric Agyen-Frempong and the base commander, Air Commodore Elvis King Arneson. defenceWeb noted that Ghana had sought approval for six L-39NGs worth €111 million in 2021 and that the plan had stalled for lack of money. As of October 2026 no order for either type had been reported.