Research on African urbanism tends to overlook how older people navigate and experience the city. This chimes with concerns that transport geography has yet to adequately attend to the agency of elderly residents in global South contexts or explore how the mobilities of this population group contribute to urban dynamics. Rather than viewing these observations as limitations in existing scholarship, this paper views them as opportunities to support recent efforts aimed at revealing ‘the elusive essence of African cities’. Based on qualitative data collection with older people residing in the cities of Accra and Sekondi-Takoradi, the paper introduces Ghanaian vernacular into the transport geography lexicon. It is argued that this approach offers a way to generate empirical and theoretical perspectives that are more attuned to the urban experience as encountered and shaped by elderly populations in sub-Saharan Africa. Through doing so, the paper outlines forms of spatial and social mobilities, intergenerational relations, and imaginaries embedded in older people’s experiences of ageing outside of global North contexts.