Ghana’s hydroelectric Akosomo Dam, completed in 1965, created a vast lake extending 250 miles to the north and covering an area of 3,275 square miles becoming, in surface, the world’s largest man-made lake. Although the planners promoted Akosombo and the Volta River Project as a multi-purpose scheme, lake transport was an afterthought. When the builders closed the dam in 1964 and the Volta Basin began to fill, no decisions had been made of how Ghana would use the lake’s resources, deal with its challenges, and cope with its dangers. President Nkrumah commissioned Kaiser Engineers to study the potential of lake transport. In two reports, this engineering firm developed ambitious plans of how Volta Lake could become an inland “water highway” and connect Ghana’s poorer north and land-locked neighbors to the more prosperous south and coast, thereby contributing to Akosombo’s Pan-African potential, so dear to Nkrumah. Initially most lake transport was carried out by local entrepreneurs. Only in 1967 did the Volta River Authority, the state agency that built and operated Akosombo, launch a pilot project for south-north-south transport and founded the Volta Lake Transport Company (VLTC) in 1970. VLTC faced numerous challenges including lack of capital and low water levels due to ecological changes and drought. The paper, based on extensive archival and oral research, explores the history of water transport on Volta Lake from its planning in the early 1960s until the 2000s. It presents a case study of technopolitics. State interventions focused on projects like the south-north line and automobile ferries, while leaving most lake crossings, i.e. the transport of goods and people to regional markets along the lake’s shores, to private operators. The lake’s unpredictable nature and hazards – tree stumps, rock outcroppings, wind storms, and fluctuating water levels – made water transport a dangerous endeavor leading to accidents with loss in life and property. The state remained slow in regulating the lake. Instead, similar to road transport, private entrepreneurs mainly created the infrastructure of water transport that has become crucial for the lake’s economies but continues to operate often beyond the reach of the state.