**Yeji** is a historic fishing and trading port town on the western shore of the **Volta Lake**, in the **Pru East District** of the **Bono East Region** — one of Ghana's most important inland waterway settlements, and the northern gateway to the lake's vast inland sea. Yeji sits where the old Black Volta channel meets the expanded lake, roughly 250 km north of Accra as the crow flies but far more by road — you reach it via **Techiman → Kwame Danso → Yeji**, or from the south through **Kete Krachi** across the water. It was a significant trading town long before the dam: a crossroads for **Gonja, Akan and Guan** peoples, and a market where fish, yams, groundnuts, shea and livestock changed hands between the savannah north and the forest south. When the **Akosombo Dam** was completed in 1965 and the Volta Lake filled, Yeji's position on the waterline turned it into one of the lake's premier ports. Today Yeji's life is the lake. It is one of the busiest **ferry and cargo points** on the Volta, with boats and barges linking it to **Kete Krachi, Dambai, Kpando, Akosombo and Tema**. The **Yeji market** is famous for **smoked and dried fish** — tilapia, catfish, Nile perch — much of it trucked south to Kumasi and Accra. It is also a major **yam and grain** transshipment town, and the district is a notable **rice and cassava** producer. The **Yeji Government Hospital**, the senior high school and the district assembly anchor the town's services. Culturally, Yeji is a meeting point: **Gonja, Chumburu, Kotokoli, Ewe and Akan** communities live side by side, and the town observes the **Damba** festival alongside local yam and fishing festivals. The **Yeji Traditional Council** sits under the paramountcy linked to the **Krachi** and **Gonja** spheres of influence. The lake itself is the town's calendar — the **fishing closed season** (usually July–August) shapes incomes every year, and the annual rise and fall of the water level dictates where people farm, build and trade. Yeji also matters nationally for two reasons beyond fish. First, it is a key node in the government's **Volta Lake transport** plans — the long-talked-about expansion of ferry services and the dredging/port upgrades meant to move more cargo off Ghana's congested roads. Second, the lake around Yeji is part of the **Volta River Authority's** operational zone, and the town has been central to discussions about **resettlement, drowned lands and compensation** for communities displaced by the dam. If you're travelling there: expect a hot, dry savannah climate, a strong lakeside breeze, excellent fresh tilapia straight off the canoes, and boat transport as the natural way to move north–south along the lake. It is one of the most authentic lake-town experiences in Ghana — less polished than Akosombo, far more alive than a map suggests. As the Akan say, *"Ɔboɔ a ɛwɔ nsu mu no, nsu na ɛhu no"* — the fish that lives in water is known by the water. Yeji is a town the Volta made, and the Volta still feeds it.