My textbook for AP World History contained a section on the Punic Wars, and I remember it saying that the Phoenicians Colonized much of the Western Mediterranean and along the coast of West Africa. Upon conducting further research into the topic of Phoenician colonization, I failed to find anything related to colonies along the Coast of West Africa/Gold Coast.
I'm honestly really curious to whether or not these colonies even existed, and if they did, what ever happened to them after loosing contact with Carthage?
We do possess a Carthaginian account of a colonization/exploration expedition along the west coast of Africa during the sixth or fifth century B.C.E., though the text survives only in a Greek translation (apparently incomplete) known as the Periplous of Hanno. How far south the Carthaginians traveled remains unclear, but it seems that the settlements founded by the expedition did not extend beyond what is now the Atlantic coast of Morocco. One of these settlements, Thymiaterion, might in fact correspond to Tingis (modern Tangier), which already existed at the time; if so, the Carthaginians may have symbolically "re-founded" the city.
Unfortunately, scholars have reached no consensus on the locations of the other settlements (named Karikon Teichos, Gytte, Akra, Melitta, Arambys, and Kerne), due to both the ambiguities in the Periplous and the general dearth of archaeological evidence for Phoenician activity in the area. Later literary sources also reveal very little, apart from a mention of Kerne in the fourth-century Periplous of Pseudo-Skylax, describing a Phoenician trading site on the island but no permanent settlement.
I wish I could tell you more! :(
Sources: Edward Lipiński, Itineraria Phoenicia, Studia Phoenicia 18, Orientalia Lovaniensia Analecta 127 (Leuven: Peeters, 2004) 435-475; Duane W. Roller, Through the Pillars of Herakles: Greco-Roman Exploration of the Atlantic (London: Routledge, 2006), 29-43.