ABOUT GHANA
Ghana, presently with a total population of over 18.8 million according to the year 2000 census, lies in the center of the West African coast, shares borders with the three French-speaking nations of Côte d'Ivoire to the west, Togo to the east, and Burkina Faso to the north. To the south are the Gulf of Guinea and the Atlantic Ocean.
Ghana has a total area of 238,537 square kilometers. The country extends inland for some 670 kilometers to the north. The Greenwich Meridian, which passes through London, also traverses the eastern part of Ghana at Tema.
There are, nonetheless, five distinct geographical regions. Low plains stretch across the southern part of the country. To their north lie three regions--the Ashanti Uplands, the Akwapim-Togo Ranges, and the Volta Basin. The fifth region, the high plains, occupies the northern and northwestern sector of the country.
MAJOR ETHNIC GROUPS
The major ethnic groups are the Akan, Ewe, MoleDaghane , Guan, and Ga-Adangbe. English is official language used in government, large-scale business, national media, and school beyond primary level. Akan, Ewe, Ga, Nzema, Dagbane, and Hausa are also used in radio and television broadcasting.
RELIGION
According to 2000 census, 69% percent Christian, 15.6% percent Muslim, others 6.9%. Christianity predominates in center and south, whilst dominates Islam in north.
INDEPENDENCE
As was the case in many sub-Saharan African countries, the rise of a national consciousness in Ghana developed largely in the twentieth century in response to colonial policies. Ghana's first independent administration was inaugurated on March 6, 1957, with Kwame Nkrumah as prime minister. On July 1, 1960, Ghana was declared a republic with Kwame Nkrumah as its president. The Nkrumah administration was overthrown by the military in February 1966. By 1981 Ghana had undergone seven major changes of government since the fall of Nkrumah . At its forty-fifth independence on 6th March 2002, Ghana is under the administration of the New Patriotic Party
The country's warm, humid climate has an annual mean temperature between 26°C and 29°C. Variations in the principal elements of temperature, rainfall, and humidity that govern the climate are influenced by the movement and interaction of the dry tropical continental air mass, or the harmattan, which blows from the northeast across the Sahara, and the opposing tropical maritime or moist equatorial system. The cycle of the seasons follows the apparent movement of the sun back and forth across the equator.
Farther to the north, Kumasi receives an average annual rainfall of about 1,400 millimeters, while Tamale in the drier northern savanna receives rainfall of 1,000 millimeters per year. From Takoradi eastward to the Accra Plains, including the lower Volta region, rainfall averages only 750 millimeters to 1,000 millimeters a year.
Temperatures are usually high at all times of the year throughout the country. At higher elevations temperatures are more comfortable. In the far north, temperature highs of 31°C are common. The southern part of the country is characterized by generally humid conditions. Humid conditions also prevail the northern section of the country during the rainy season. During the harmattan season, however, humidity drops as low as 25 percent
Endowed with gold and oil palms and situated between the trans- Saharan trade routes and the African coastline visited by successive European traders, the area known today as Ghana has been involved in all phases of Africa's economic development during the last thousand years. As the economic fortunes of African societies have waxed and waned, so, too, have Ghana's, leaving that country in the early 1990s in a state of arrested development, unable to make the "leap" to Africa's next, as yet uncertain, phase of economic evolution.
As early as the thirteenth century, present-day Ghana was drawn into long-distance trade, in large part because of its gold reserves. The trans-Saharan trade, one of the most wide-ranging trading networks of pre-modern times, involved an exchange of European, North African, and Saharan commodities southward in exchange for the products of the African savannas and forests, including gold, kola nuts, and slaves. Present-day Ghana, named the Gold Coast by European traders, was an important source of the gold traded across the Sahara. As European navigational techniques improved in the fifteenth century, Portuguese and later Dutch and English traders tried to circumvent the Saharan trade by sailing directly to its southernmost source on the West African coast. In 1482 the Portuguese built a fortified trading post at Elmina and began purchasing gold, ivory, and pepper from African coastal merchants.
Although Africans for centuries had exported their raw materials--ivory, gold, kola nuts--in exchange for imports ranging from salt to foreign metals, the introduction of the Atlantic slave trade in the early sixteenth century changed the nature of African export production in fundamental ways. An increasing number of Ghanaians sought to enrich themselves by capturing fellow Africans in warfare and selling them to slave dealers from North America and South America. The slaves were transported to the coast and sold through African merchants using the same routes and connections through which gold and ivory had formerly flowed. In return, Africans often received guns as payment, which could be used to capture more slaves and, more importantly, to gain and preserve political power. An estimated ten million Africans, at least half a million from the Gold Coast, left the continent in this manner.
Victor Kwami Kugbeadzor
Priceworth Tours
P.O. Box GP 17511
Accra.Ghana.
Phone: 233-21-405506
This page was created by Victor Kwasi Kugbeadzor. All rights reserved. Copyright 2002. Comments and questions should be mailed to the webmaster, kwasi80@yahoo.com.