Punctuality in the Ghanaian Workplace

By Everett Cento

Wow! This week has been absolute chaos. From watching a man get sentenced to 20 years for shooting his wife, to covering a metropolitan emergency, to filling in for a short-staffed newsroom, I felt like I barely had a moment to breathe. Through all of this movement, one theme kept coming up: punctuality.

It all started when I noticed an interesting advertising campaign at the Accra Metropolitan Assembly building. It was a bold, government-backed message encouraging people to be punctual. At first, I did a double-take. An ad… about punctuality? In the U.S., especially in professional settings, being on time is an ingrained expectation. It’s so baked into school bells, job interviews, and daily schedules that it’s hard to imagine needing a reminder, let alone a full-on awareness campaign. 

Since we’ve arrived in Accra, I’ve heard the phrase “Ghanaian time” thrown around a lot, but I haven’t noticed too much tardiness in my own day-to-day operations. Most people at my office are reasonably on time. There’s a general sense of relaxed structure, and while things might not always happen right on the dot, they do happen. I’ve never seen anyone seriously reprimanded for being late, with the exception of the interns. That’s all to say that the need for a city-wide punctuality campaign struck me as curious.

Then I started to reflect on my experiences here so far. I thought back to a memorable moment during my HR orientation on Monday. When our representative was explaining how important punctuality is in the workplace, she looked at me and said something along the lines of, “This is why white people get ahead, they’re always on time.” It was phrased almost like a question, and I could tell that she wanted me to confirm whether white people were indeed punctual. I didn’t know how to respond. Given the loaded geopolitical undertones, I just offered a short anecdote about how important punctuality is back home.

It was a really interesting experience to be singled out in the office like that. As a white American, I’m rarely in environments where I’m the minority, and moments like this have given me a new perspective. I wasn’t offended, but I did feel the weight of being seen as representative of something bigger than myself. It made me think about how easy it is to take for granted the privilege of blending in, of not having to carry the burden of group perception or field questions that, intentionally or not, reduce you to a symbol. Being put on the spot like that adds pressure, even in an otherwise warm and welcoming environment.

Later that week, when one of the other interns arrived late, I was praised for my punctuality. However, I was being used as a comparison to reprimand one of my peers. I didn’t like that my habits were used to make a point, and I felt guilty for being used to quietly scold someone else. In the process, they also made what felt like a backhanded comment about the fact that I even ordered my Uber home precisely at 3:00 p.m. (the time I get off) when I was assigned off-site. I guess leaving on time is weirder than arriving on time?

It was interesting to observe how something that’s so baked in to my life back home could stand out so much here, and even more interesting how it could become a focal point for reflection in such a busy week. I knew I was going to stand out here, but I never expected to be racialized through something as mundane as timekeeping.