**Digya National Park** is Ghana's oldest protected wildlife reserve and its second-largest national park — a sprawling, little-visited wilderness of about 3,478 km² on the western shore of **Volta Lake**, straddling the **Bono East** and **Ashanti** regions (with a sliver touching the Eastern Region boundary). **Where it is and how it came to be.** Digya sits on the peninsulas and shoreline of the lake's western arm, roughly between Kwame Danso and the Afram Plains, and is reached most easily by boat across Volta Lake or by a long, rough road from Kwame Danso in Bono East. Its land was originally set aside as a **forest reserve in 1900** during the colonial era; it was re-gazetted as a **national park in 1971** under Ghana's Wildlife Reserves Regulations, making it the country's first national park in the modern sense. The park is managed by the **Wildlife Division of the Forestry Commission**. **Landscape and ecology.** Digya is a mosaic of Guinea savanna woodland, gallery forest along the lake margins, and open grassland — a transitional zone between Ghana's forest belt and the northern savanna. That mix gives it unusual ecological value: it protects one of the few remaining savanna–forest ecotones in southern Ghana, plus extensive wetlands along the Volta shoreline that are important for waterbirds. **Wildlife.** The park is best known for its **elephants**, which move between Digya and the Afram Plains, and for a good variety of savanna antelope — **kob, waterbuck, bushbuck, duiker, roan and hartebeest**. There are also **buffalo, warthog, baboons, monkeys (green and patas), hippos in the lake, crocodiles, and a rich birdlife** including fish eagles, herons, egrets, hornbills and migratory waterfowl. Predators such as **leopards and spotted hyenas** are present but rarely seen; lions are effectively absent. Digya is not a "big five" park — it is a quiet, wild, low-traffic reserve for the patient traveller. **Visiting.** Infrastructure is minimal: no luxury lodges, limited roads and few ranger posts, so trips are usually arranged through the Wildlife Division or tour operators, often combining a boat crossing of Volta Lake with guided walking and game drives. The best time to visit is the **dry season (roughly November to March)**, when vegetation thins and animals gather near water. **Why it matters.** Digya is a reminder that Ghana's conservation story is not only about Kakum's canopy walk or Mole's elephants — it is also about this vast, underfunded, under-visited lakeshore wilderness. Pressure from poaching, bushfires, farming encroachment and illegal fishing on Volta Lake remains its biggest threat. If you're planning a trip, tell me your starting point — Accra, Kumasi or somewhere in Bono East — and I'll sketch the most practical route and what to carry. As the Akan say, *"Se wo were fi na wosan kofa a, yenkyi"* — go back and fetch what you left behind; Digya is one of Ghana's forgotten treasures worth going back for.