🇬🇭 Accra

Accra uses the Muslim World League method (method 3 in our calculator), an 18-degree Fajr and 17-degree Isha convention adopted as the default reference for the Ghana National Mosque at Kanda and most major mosques in the Ghanaian capital. The Office of the National Chief Imam, based in Accra, coordinates broadly with this standard, and the printed timetables circulated through Madina Central Mosque and the older Abossey Okai mosque follow the same calibration without significant divergence. The 18-degree Fajr angle behaves well at Accra's near-equatorial 5.6°N latitude, where twilight is short and predictable. Apps configured to Egyptian or Karachi will show Fajr and Isha drift by a few minutes from local mosque boards, while Dhuhr, Asr and Maghrib are unchanged because they depend on the sun's altitude rather than a twilight angle. Ghana's three major Muslim-majority northern regions — centred on Tamale — generally follow the same MWL convention.

Prayer times in Accra shift very little across the year because the city sits at 5.6°N, less than six degrees from the equator. Fajr typically falls within a fifteen-minute band centred on 04:30 across the calendar, and Isha within a similar band centred on 19:50. Sunrise and sunset both vary by less than thirty minutes between solstices, and the entire prayer cycle stays in a narrow daily window all year. The two rainy seasons — the major one from April to July and the minor one from September to November — bring heavy cloud cover that makes adhan-by-eye difficult, but the calculated times remain stable. The harmattan dust from the Sahara reaches Accra briefly in December and January, hazing the eastern horizon and softening the visible Fajr without changing the calculated dawn.

Accra has a substantial and long-established Muslim community, part of a national Muslim population that makes up roughly twenty percent of Ghana's thirty-three-million people. Ghanaian Muslims are concentrated in the northern regions — Tamale, Wa and Bolgatanga — but Accra hosts the largest urban Muslim community, rooted in the historic Hausa, Zabarima and Fulani trading communities that settled in the Nima and Mamobi neighbourhoods in the early twentieth century. The Office of the National Chief Imam, based in Accra, is the country's most prominent religious office and a recognised national figure in interfaith life. The Muslim community follows predominantly Sunni Maliki practice, with significant Tijani and Qadiri Sufi orders and a sizeable Ahmadi community, the latter visible at the Ahmadiyya Mosque in Accra. Friday gatherings draw worshippers from across the diaspora communities of the central capital.

Ghana National Mosque on Kanda Highway, opened to worshippers in 2021 with a five-thousand-person capacity and a Turkish-Islamic neo-classical exterior, is the principal Friday gathering point in Accra and the largest mosque in West Africa outside Nigeria. The mosque was funded by Turkey's Diyanet İşleri Vakfı and includes a large central dome, four minarets, and a complex of community facilities including offices, teaching rooms and welfare services. Friday congregations regularly fill the main hall and overflow into the surrounding plaza, with attendance from across the Hausa-speaking, Zabarima and Fulani communities of Nima and Mamobi. The older Nima Central Mosque and Abossey Okai Central Mosque host the second-largest Friday gatherings, anchoring the city's historic Muslim quarters dating back to early-twentieth-century settlement. Khutbas at the National Mosque are typically delivered in Hausa, Arabic and English summary; Friday prayer usually begins between 13:00 and 13:30.

Prayer times differ between cities because they are calculated from the apparent position of the sun, which depends on a city's latitude, longitude and the date. Accra sits at 5.6°N, 0.19°W in the Africa/Accra time zone, almost on the Greenwich meridian and just five degrees from the equator, so its solar noon falls very close to clock noon all year and its day length stays close to twelve hours regardless of season. Two cities at very different latitudes — say London at 51°N and Accra at 5.6°N — see twilight unfold over completely different durations, so Fajr, Maghrib and Isha can sit several hours apart even on the same calendar date, with London swinging widely between solstices and Accra barely shifting at all. Even cities at similar latitudes diverge if they fall in different time zones or follow different calculation conventions for the Fajr and Isha twilight angles.