Ghana

Official Name: Republic of Ghana

Population: 28 million

Capital City: Accra

Form of Government: Constitutional Democracy

Official Languages: English, Akan, Moshi-Dagomba, Ewe, Ga

Currency: Cedi

Borders: Côte d’Ivoire, Burkina Faso, Togo, and the Gulf of Guinea

About Ghana

Ghana is known as a lot of things amongst travelers: it has been called, “Africa for Beginners,” in the sense that it is one of the easiest and most welcoming countries on the African continent for tourists to travel to. It has also been called, “West Africa’s Golden Child,” or “the gateway to West Africa” and has been named one of “Africa’s greatest success stories.”

Ghana was the first independent nation and first democracy in Sub-Saharan Africa, gaining its independence from colonial Britain in 1957.

Present-day Ghana has a diverse population in terms of different tribes, languages, cultural practices and religious beliefs, and for the most part, they all seem to co-exist harmoniously as a unified country.

At the time of independence, it’s said that there were up to 100 different linguistic and cultural groups existing in Ghana. Some of the larger ethnic groups include the Akan, Ewe, Mole-Dagbane, Guan, and Ga-Adangbe.

Most everyone we met in Ghana had this vivacity, from the street vendors selling us their spicy concoctions to the shop-keepers, and the neighbors down the street from where we stayed.

It is a common phrase in Ghana, to say, “You are welcome” and we heard it everywhere, almost immediately followed up with a request to take a selfie with us and finally the declaration of, “I wish to be your friend,” another shared notion throughout the nation.

Throughout 2019, Ghana commemorated the 400th anniversary of the first Atlantic slave ship to leave its shores. The first slave ship from Ghana arrived in Jamestown, Virginia in 1619.

The then president of Ghana, Nana Akufo-Addo, launched a campaign in hopes to attract individuals of African descent from all over the world to visit Ghana, in essence to “return home” on a spiritual and birthright journey. It has been likened to people of Jewish descent making a pilgrimage to Israel to learn about their heritage and culture.

While no doubt this is an important historical landmark and I would encourage everyone to learn about the dark history of the Atlantic slave trade and I especially advocate for exploring ones own heritage and discovering who your ancestors are and where you come from; this was also clearly a (perhaps ingenious) attempt to bring in more tourists and foreign investments to boost the economic revenue of Ghana.

And possibly it worked. According to the Ghana Tourism Authority, the Year of Return brought in an additional 237,000 visitors, a 75% rise from previous years, and it added 1.9 billion dollars to Ghana’s economy. This is huge.

The history of Ghana and its West African neighbors goes much farther back than the times of the Atlantic slave trade. Ghana as a territory was home to great Kingdoms and important trading empires from the 7th to the 13th centuries.

The first great West African Empire of Ghana eventually became the empire of Mali, which Mansa Musa ruled in the 1300s. In 1324, he set off on a Hajj pilgrimage to Mecca and brought with him 100 camel loads full of gold, which he distributed along the way. Legend has it that by the time he reached Alexandria, Mansa Musa had given away so much gold that it caused an enormous economic inflation and collapsed Mesopotamia’s financial system.

This extravagance demonstrated by Mansa Musa led many to believe that West Africa was an extremely wealthy area. Five centuries later, the myth revolving around Mansa Musa and his wealth had inflated so much that the Europeans set out to conquer and colonize all of West Africa.

The first permanent European merchants to arrive in West Africa were the Portuguese, around 1471, followed by the Dutch, the Swedes, the Danes, the Brits and the Prussians, who all ended up participating in the Atlantic Slave trade, exporting enslaved Africans to the Americas. The early Portuguese explorers renamed part of this West African territory to the “Gold Coast.”

At this time, the Ashanti people were the dominant population, who had taken control over trade routes by the 16th century. The Europeans who arrived to take advantage of the Gold Coast’s business opportunities traded slaves, gold, and other goods with the local Ashantis. And in 1874, the Gold Coast was declared a British Colony.

During this time, the trans-Atlantic slave trade operated out of the Gold Coast, part of the “so-called triangular trade, in which arms, textiles, and wine were shipped from Europe to Africa, enslaved people from Africa to the Americas, and sugar and coffee from the Americas to Europe.” (Encyclopedia Britannica).

Britain officially outlawed the practice of slavery in its empire, in 1833, though it took a long time for it to permanently cease.

In the late 1800s, cocoa was introduced into the Gold Coast and became a major commodity.

During the first half of the 20th century, railroads were improved, education was emphasized, and new crops introduced, such as coffee, with cocoa becoming one of the biggest, most economically promising exports. The colonial government also exported gold and timber, and Ghana’s economy continued to rise.

By 1951, a big shift in Ghana started happening, when Kwame Nkrumah was invited to lead the new administration of the Gold Coast.

A few years earlier, Nkrumah established the Convention People’s Party which advocated for “self-government now.” This threatened the power of the British elites and Nkrumah was jailed by the colonists. Despite being jailed, the CPP party won the majority of votes in a popular election for National Assembly, and the British ended up transferring power to him. As Prime Minister and leader of the ruling party, Nkrumah led an African cabinet, a first for the region.

By 1957, Nkrumah and the CPP obtained independence and renamed the country “Ghana”, harkening back to the medieval kingdoms that prospered over the area centuries ago. Some trace it back to the emperors of the kingdom of Wagadu, where “Ghana” is said to mean “Warrior King” in the Soninke language. Others say it was due to the Arab trader’s name for the region, meaning “land of gold.” By 1960, Ghana had become a single-party republic with Nkrumah naming himself president for life of both the party and the country.