- published: 12 Jan 2011
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Tema is a city on the Atlantic coast of Ghana, lying 25 kilometres (16 mi) east of the Ghanaian capital city, Accra, in the region of Greater Accra. As of 2012, Tema has a population of approximately 160,939, a marked decrease from its 2005 figure of 209,000. The Greenwich Meridian (00 Longitude) passes directly through the city. Tema is locally nicknamed the "Harbour City" because of its status as Ghana's largest seaport.
A planned city commissioned by Ghana's first president, Kwame Nkrumah, Tema was originally a small fishing village, and grew after the construction of a large harbour in 1961. It is now a major trading center, home to an oil refinery and many manufacturing centres, and is linked to Accra by railway and a highway. Tema is one of Ghana's two deep seaports, the other being Sekondi-Takoradi.
Before Ghana's independence, the government identified a small fishing village called Torman as the projected site for a modern sea port to serve the new Ghana. Torman residents grew the gourd plant known as Tor in the local Ga language, from which a variety of products could be obtained, including tsene (calabash), akpaki and akoji; hence the name Torman ("Gourd Town"). This name was eventually corrupted to "Tema".
The Tema Harbour is in Tema, Ghana's most industrialized city. The harbour is located in the southeastern part of Ghana, along the Gulf of Guinea. It was built 34 years after the smaller of Ghana's harbours – the Takoradi Harbour in the Western region was built. The harbour is Africa's largest manmade harbour.
The construction of the harbour was proposed by the British who ruled the Gold Coast before its independence. An old fishing village called Torman was the proposed site for the harbour's construction. The rapid industrialization that followed Ghana's independence led to the town adopting the name Tema from that of the fishing village. After independence, Ghana's first president Kwame Nkrumah, begun the construction of the harbour in the 1950s and commissioned it in 1962.
The harbour lies along the Gulf of Guinea and is 18 miles from Accra, the capital of Ghana. The harbour has a water-enclosed area of 1.7 million square metres and covers a total land area of 3.9 million square metres. The harbour lies on a 410 acres (166 hectares) of sea. The harbour has 5 kilometres of breakwaters, 12 deepwater berths, one oil-tanker berth, one dockyard, warehouses, and transit sheds. In the east of the lee breakwater is a fishing harbour with cold-storage and marketing facilities that handles fishing processing.
Mary Hopkin (born 3 May 1950), credited on some recordings as Mary Visconti, is a Welsh folk singer best known for her 1968 UK number one single "Those Were The Days". She was one of the first musicians to sign to The Beatles' Apple label.
Hopkin was born in Pontardawe, Wales into a Welsh-speaking family; her father worked as a housing officer. She took weekly singing lessons as a child and began her musical career as a folk singer with a local group called the Selby Set and Mary. She released an EP of Welsh-language songs for a local record label called Cambrian, based in her home town, before signing to The Beatles' Apple Records. The model Twiggy saw her winning the British ITV television talent show, Opportunity Knocks and recommended her to Paul McCartney. She became one of the first artists to record on the Beatles' Apple record label.
Her debut single, "Those Were the Days", produced by McCartney, was released in the UK on 30 August 1968 (catalogue number APPLE 2). Despite competition from a well-established star, Sandie Shaw, who released her version of the same song as a single that same year, Hopkin's version became a number one hit on the UK Singles Chart, and reached Number 2 in the US Billboard Hot 100. It sold over a million and a half copies in the United States alone, and was awarded a gold disc by the R.I.A.A.. Global sales topped the eight million mark.