At Lake Agege Farm we want to create a learning and meeting place where international students of architecture, interior design and construction and students of the department of agriculture meet with local farmers and builders as well as Ghanaian students.
The Workshop-Review
We will soon present here a detailed review of our major DIVAGRI closing event with numerous international guest lecturers, which took place from November 4th to 14th, 2025.
The workshop evaluation will also include a 45-minute documentary film and a book on the topic, written in collaboration with various authors.
The film documentary about Lake Agege Farm and the workshop
“Fire in the rainforest"
African tradition and European technology. Ghana on the path to sustainable agriculture. An educational farm on Lake Agege.
A film by Andreas Duerst
The trailer for the documentary will be available on this website shortly.
More information about the director: www.studio-301.de
Some visual impressions from the workshop
Photos by Andreas Duerst (www.studio-301.de)
Afrika, Ghana
close to Mankessim, in the middle of the outback
… WELCOME …
Ghana Farm Project
The idea of the Lake Agege Farm is mainly influenced by Willi Bell, a Missionary’s son, professional fotographer and the first publisher in the 1950s newly independent Ghana.
After retiring from publishing business, Bell founded a very special farm near Mankessim, directly on the shore of Lake Agege. In the middle of vast bushlands, he planned to combine crop rotation with aquaculture. After breeding Tilapia-fish in artificial ponds, draining the basins of water would leave a soil manured by fish-excrements to plant first rice, then different kinds of vegetables.
The Idea could only partially be put into action: Willi Bell died too early.
We want to continue his engagement for a sustainable, regional, down-sized agriculture in our own way.
Our project is so far priorily sustained by private means and developed with the support of our local companions.
On Lake Agege Farm, we aim to create a learning- and meetingplace, where students of architecture, interior design, and construction engineering from the University of Applied Sciences Wismar convene with local farmers and builders as well as with ghanaian students for example from the Institute of Agriculture from the University of Cape Coast which is only 40 km away from our place.
“Nur hier, nur dadurch, dass sie sich auf die Besonderheiten der heimatlichen Natur eingelassen haben und das entwickelten, was an Möglichkeiten in ihr lag, ohne ihr ihre Besonderheit zu nehmen, sondern im Gegenteil, indem sie gerade die naturgegebenen Besonderheiten zu kulturellen erhöhten, entsteht wahre Kultur, der ihre Eigenart wesentlich ist, statt bloß gestaltlose Zivilisation."
Eisel 1982.