Ghana

• 1. Introduction

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  Ghana, a country of more than 35 million people on the Gulf of Guinea, made history on the 6th of March 1957. That day it became the first colony in Sub-Saharan Africa to achieve sovereignty. Its capital and largest city is Accra, and it shares borders with Côte d'Ivoire to the west, Burkina Faso to the north and Togo to the east.

  Ghana is now the second most populous country in West Africa, and it is a constitutional democracy led by a president. Yet its story raises real puzzles. Where does the name Ghana come from, and who chose it? Who ruled this land before European ships appeared on the horizon, and what did those ships come for? And what became of the hopes of independence in the decades that followed? The answers begin with the name itself.

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• 2. A Borrowed Name

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  The word Ghana was first used for an empire called Wagadu, which flourished in West Africa from the 3rd to the 12th centuries. Arab traders involved in the trans-Saharan trade gave it that label. The name is thought to come from Kaya Maghan, the title of Wagadu's rulers, which translates as ruler of gold.

  Around the turn of the 20th century, Rev. J. B. Anaman made the first attempt to connect the peoples of the Gold Coast with that ancient Ghana. He drew on D. W. Cooley's 19th-century reading of Arabic geographical sources. Anaman also suggested a different derivation that linked the name to the Wangara. Lady Flora Shaw later gathered Arabic and European writings into detailed narratives of the kingdom. She presented it as a major African power, comparable to the states of Western Europe.

  Between 1907 and 1911, Rev. W. T. Balmer taught his students that the Akan had migrated from an ancient kingdom near the Upper Niger. According to Jack Goody, this hypothesis lacked linguistic and historical evidence. Even so, it became influential among educated elites and nationalist intellectuals. In the 1920s the idea entered classrooms, chiefly at Achimota, and spread from there to other schools.

  J. B. Danquah carried the theory further in his academic writings. He used Arabic and French translations to argue that the Akan came from the Upper Niger region. He also proposed that Ghana was a corruption of Akane or Akana, and tied it to the ancient region of Akkad. Eva L. R. Meyerowitz went further still. She claimed that Akan origins lay in the Sahara and the Near East. In her view, Akan culture was not mainly black African and could be linked to Libya-Berber, Mediterranean or Near Eastern cultures.

  By the years leading up to independence, the name had been embraced as a symbol of precolonial prestige, cultural unity and national legitimacy. The kingdoms that actually stood on this ground had their own histories, and several of them were built on gold.

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• 3. Kingdoms of Gold

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  Bonoman in the south and the Kingdom of Dagbon in the north were the earliest kingdoms to emerge in the territory. Bonoman existed there in the 11th century. From the 17th century, a family of Akan states began to emerge from what is believed to have been the Bonoman area, built mainly on gold trading. They included Adansi and Asante in the Ashanti Region, Denkyira in the Western North region, the Mankessim Kingdom in the Central region, and Akyem and Akwamu in the Eastern region.

  Kumasi was the capital of the Asante state. Its government began as a loose network and eventually became a centralised kingdom with a specialised bureaucracy. By the 19th century, the southern part of present-day Ghana fell within the Asante Kingdom. Before meeting Europeans, the Akan had built an economy resting chiefly on gold, including gold bars, which they traded with other African states.

  The Ewe arrived by another path. They migrated from the Ketu area in Benin together with Gbe-speaking kin, the Adja, Fon, Phla/Phera and Ogun/Gun. Along the way they settled at Tado in Togo and at Dogbo Nyigbo in the Benin Republic. Their final dispersal point was Nortsie, a walled town in present-day Togo. The high-handed rule of King Agorkorli, known also as Agɔ Akɔli, forced them to scatter from there.

  In Ghana, the Ewe speak three principal dialects. Anlo is heard along the coast, Tongu along the Volta River and Ewedome in the hill country. The Ewe live in the Volta Region, while the Ga-Dangme, who migrated westward from south-western Nigeria, occupy the Greater Accra Region and parts of the Eastern Region. The gold of these peoples was about to attract visitors from across the sea.

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• 4. The Coast of Forts

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  Portuguese traders reached the Gold Coast in the 15th century, drawn by the availability of gold. They built a trading lodge at a coastal settlement called Anomansah, which means the perpetual drink, and renamed it São Jorge da Mina. In 1481, King John II of Portugal commissioned Diogo de Azambuja to build Elmina Castle. The work was completed in three years.

  By 1598 the Dutch had joined the gold trade, building forts at Fort Komenda and Kormantsi. In 1617 they captured Elmina Castle from the Portuguese. In 1642 they took Axim, the site of Fort St Anthony. The Swedes and Denmark-Norway each founded their own Gold Coast, and the Germans established the Brandenburger Gold Coast, also called Groß Friedrichsburg.

  Merchants built more than 30 forts and castles along this shoreline, and Europeans took part in the Atlantic slave trade here. Cape Coast Castle and Elmina Castle mark places where blood was shed in that trade. Today the Cape Coast Castle Museum and the St. George's Castle Museum at Elmina offer guided tours. UNESCO's World Heritage Convention listed the castles and forts as monuments. In its words: "They are a significant and emotive symbol of European, African encounters and of the starting point of the African Diaspora."

  Great Britain moved in during 1874, taking control of some parts of the country as the British Gold Coast. Military clashes followed between the British and the Akan nation-states, in the roughly 100 years of the Anglo-Ashanti wars. The Kingdom of Ashanti defeated the British on some occasions, but it eventually lost in the War of the Golden Stool in 1900. Within half a century of that defeat, a new generation would organise a different kind of challenge, with protests and strikes in place of armies.

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• 5. Nkrumah's Ghana

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  In 1947 the newly formed United Gold Coast Convention, led by a group known as The Big Six, called for "self-government within the shortest possible time." Kwame Nkrumah, a Ghanaian nationalist, formed the Convention People's Party in 1949 with a sharper motto: "self-government now." The party launched a "positive action" campaign of non-violent protests, strikes and non-cooperation with the British authorities. Nkrumah was arrested and sentenced to one year in prison. In the 1951 general election he won a seat in Parliament and was released.

  The Ghana Independence Act 1957 joined the Gold Coast, Ashanti, the Northern Territories and British Togoland into one independent dominion within the Commonwealth. The flag of red, gold and green with a black star dates from that union. On the 1st of July 1960, after a referendum and a presidential election, Nkrumah declared Ghana a republic and became its president. The country still celebrates that day as Republic Day.

  At Lincoln University in Pennsylvania, Nkrumah was introduced to Pan-Africanism, in the era when Marcus Garvey was known for his Back to Africa Movement. Nkrumah became the first African head of state to promote the concept. He merged the teachings of Garvey, Martin Luther King Jr. and the naturalised Ghanaian scholar W. E. B. Du Bois into the shaping of 1960s Ghana. He played an instrumental part in founding the Non-Aligned Movement, and he set up the Kwame Nkrumah Ideological Institute to teach communism and socialism.

  At home the picture was darker. His regime repressed political opposition and held elections that were not free and fair. A constitutional amendment in 1964 made Ghana a one-party state, with Nkrumah as president for life of both the nation and its party. Ghanaians still honour him, and the day of his centenary celebration became a public holiday called Founders' Day. A journey abroad in 1966 would end his rule.

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• 6. Coups and Ballots

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  On the 24th of February 1966, Ghana's armed forces overthrew Nkrumah in a coup codenamed Operation Cold Chop. He was abroad at the time, travelling with Zhou Enlai in the People's Republic of China, on a mission to Hanoi, Vietnam, to help end the Vietnam War. Colonel Emmanuel Kwasi Kotoka and Brigadier Akwasi Afrifa led the coup. A National Liberation Council chaired by Lieutenant General Joseph A. Ankrah then took charge.

  From 1966, alternating military and civilian governments ruled Ghana, often shaken by economic instability. That run ended in 1981 with the rise of Flight Lieutenant Jerry John Rawlings and his Provisional National Defence Council. The constitution was suspended and political parties were banned. When the economy declined, Rawlings negotiated a structural adjustment plan, and growth recovered during the mid-1980s. A new constitution restoring multi-party politics was promulgated for the presidential election of 1992, which Rawlings won. He won again in the general election of 1996.

  The 1992 constitution divides power among a president who is commander-in-chief, a parliament, a cabinet, a council of state and an independent judiciary. Two parties dominate: the National Democratic Congress and the New Patriotic Party. The military government gave way to the Fourth Republic in January 1993. Voters choose the government every four years.

  A tribal war in Northern Ghana in 1994 pitted the Konkomba against other groups, including the Nanumba, Dagomba and Gonja. Between 1,000 and 2,000 people were killed, and 150,000 were displaced.

  John Kufuor of the New Patriotic Party became president on the 7th of January 2001 and won re-election in 2004. It was the first time under the Fourth Republic that power passed from one legitimately elected leader to another. In 2008, John Atta Mills of the National Democratic Congress narrowly defeated Nana Akufo-Addo. Mills died of natural causes, and Vice President John Mahama succeeded him on the 24th of July 2012. After the 2012 general election, Mahama became president in his own right, and Ghana was described as a stable democracy.

  Nana Akufo-Addo became president on the 7th of January 2017 and was re-elected after a tightly contested vote in 2020. In 2024 John Mahama won again, beating Mahamudu Bawumia by the 4th largest margin since 1992. By then, the government had turned its attention to the land itself. On the 11th of June 2021 it launched Green Ghana Day, aiming to plant five million trees to combat deforestation.

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• 7. Land, Water and Gold

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  Tema, a city near Accra, sits on the Prime Meridian. That makes Ghana the country closest to the point where the Prime Meridian crosses the Equator, a spot at 0°, 0° out in the Atlantic. Ghana's Atlantic coastline runs about 560 km. Pulmakong is its northernmost settlement, and Cape Three Points is its southernmost point.

  The land falls into low coastal plains, forested hills in the centre and savanna in the north. Mount Afadja, at 885 m in the Akwapim-Togo Range, is the highest point. Forest reaches 320 km north from the coast.

  The Volta system dominates the map. The White Volta and its tributary the Black Volta flow south into Lake Volta, the world's third-largest reservoir by volume and the largest by surface area. The Akosombo Dam, completed in 1965, created the lake. The Bui and Kpong dams also supply hydropower.

  Ghana sits where three hydro-climatic zones meet. The eastern coastal belt is warm and comparatively dry, the south-west corner is hot and humid, and the north is hot and dry. Rising temperatures, changing rainfall, drought, floods and sea-level rise threaten farming, fisheries, hydropower and water supply. Ghana signed the Paris Agreement in 2016 and has committed to net zero by 2060.

  Beneath the soil lies the wealth that once gave the colony its name. In 2019 Ghana was the 7th largest gold producer in the world, at around 140 tonnes. That year it passed South Africa in output for the first time, becoming the largest gold producer in Africa. It also exports silver, timber, diamonds, bauxite and manganese, and it is the second largest cocoa producer globally. The Jubilee Oil Field, discovered in 2007, contains up to 3 billion barrels of sweet crude oil.

  Electricity shortages in 2015 and 2016 gave Ghanaians a new word, dumsor, for power cuts that were persistent, irregular and unpredictable. By 2019 the country had a surplus.

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• 8. Cloth, Music and Football

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  Adinkra printing, according to the source, developed in the 13th century. Hand-printed and hand-embroidered adinkra cloths were used exclusively by royalty for devotional ceremonies. Each motif has a name and meaning drawn from a proverb, a historical event, a human attitude, a plant or an object. The philosopher Anthony Appiah described them as a means, in a pre-literate society, of "supporting the transmission of a complex and nuanced body of practice and belief."

  Kente is the best-known Ghanaian cloth and is worn by most southern ethnic groups, especially the Akan. It is woven by hand on a horizontal treadle loom, in strips about 4 inches wide that are sewn into larger pieces. The word comes from the Akan kɛntɛn, meaning a basket. The first weavers used raffia fibres to make cloth that looked like a basket, so it was called kenten ntoma, or basket cloth. The Ewe weave their own kente in the Volta Region, and the market at Agbozume draws buyers from across West Africa and the diaspora.

  African print fabric began with Dutch wax textiles. In the late 19th century, Dutch ships bound for Asia carried machine-made cloth that imitated Indonesian batik. The fabric did not sell well in Asia. In West Africa, mainly Ghana, there was already an established market for cloth, and the designs were adapted with local patterns and colours. Outside Africa it is called Ankara. Beyoncé and her sister Solange Knowles have been seen wearing it, and the Ghanaian-British designer Ozwald Boateng introduced African print suits in his 2012 collection.

  Kofi Ghanaba created Afro-jazz, described as the reuniting of African-American jazz with its African roots. Highlife, a form of secular music, originated in the 19th and 20th centuries and spread throughout West Africa. In the 1990s, highlife met Afro-reggae, dancehall and hip hop to produce a hybrid called hiplife. Dancing includes the Adowa, Kpanlogo, Azonto, Klama, Agbadza, Borborbor and Bamaya. The Nana Otafrija Pallbearing Services, known as the Dancing Pallbearers, appeared in a BBC feature in 2017, and footage from it became an Internet meme after the COVID-19 pandemic began.

  Football is the top spectator sport. Ghana's men's national team has won the Africa Cup of Nations four times and the FIFA U-17 World Cup twice. Asante Kotoko SC was crowned African club of the 20th century. Azumah Nelson, a three-time world champion, leads a line of Ghanaian boxers. The senior men's team has appeared at five World Cups, the most recent in 2026.

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