Accra
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The impression your going to get of Accra and Ghana depends on your travel itinerary. If you have booked a package deal, say flying Gatwick to Accra international airport and are picked up from the airport straight to a 4 or 5 star beach side hotel, your going to experience nothing but relative luxury. There is it seems to me a bit of a dichotomy to me in that all the beaches I have seen are basically in pristine condition.
If you venture into Accra itself the experience is a little bit different , most roads have kiosks and small shops along the roadside which can give an impression of visual chaos. The thing to do is not compare Accra against the neat clean, & ordered roads of Belgium & accept that Ghana is still a third world country. However things seem to be improving, it can be seen that where there are small businesses the owners take car of their property & surroundings, so as Ghana develops so will the appeal on the eye.
Accra Mall , Teteh Quarshie
There was a time when Ghanaian passengers tried to take car parts as personal hand luggage because they couldn't get them in Accra .That's not true any more, now you can get virtually anything when you know where to look. Most shops are on a small scale but you will see whole shops devoted to one item - perfume for instance.
Large shops are developing & it was quite impressive to see the Accra mall at Teteh Quarshie roundabout not far from the air port; here was a mall comparable to anywhere in Europe. see for details
Looking down one of roads airport residential area
Public transport is virtually none existent in terms of local buses, but there is a good intercity network though the STC coach stations. taxis are in abundance see tourist basics :tourist basics
The area to go for hotels depends on your purpose for going; basically you can not go far wrong with any of the over three star hotels along the coast, but if you have business in Tema & stay at Aplaku then you have compromised your traveling time, since they are at opposite ends of the coast. There are no "no go areas" in Accra but perhaps the district Nima is equivalent to London's Hackney.
The alternative choice from Coast side hotels would be the air port residential district or cantonments These areas are like leafy suburbs of London & are very convenient to the airport.