All you need to know about Ghana: the regions, people, history and places, in one read

Ask ten Ghanaians to describe their country and you will get ten answers: the noise of Kejetia market, the quiet of a cocoa farm in Ahafo, the dust of the harmattan in Tamale, a Friday night in Osu, the walls of Cape Coast Castle. This guide won't replace any of that. It gives you the frame around it: where Ghana is, how many people live there and where, what they speak, how the country is run and what it lives on. Every figure comes from a public source, and most of them you can query yourself in our datasets.

Cover: the Independence Arch in Accra. Photo: Kwameghana (Bright Kwame Ayisi), CC0, via Wikimedia Commons

Ghana at a glance

Where Ghana is

Ghana sits on the Gulf of Guinea in West Africa, with Côte d'Ivoire to the west, Burkina Faso to the north and Togo to the east. The Greenwich meridian runs through it, close to the port of Tema, so Ghana keeps Greenwich Mean Time all year and never changes its clocks.

The country changes a great deal from south to north. The coast is a band of lagoons, fishing towns and cities. Inland is the forest belt, home of cocoa, timber and gold. North of that the land opens into savannah, drier and more thinly settled, with one long rainy season instead of the south's two. From about December to February the harmattan blows dust down from the Sahara, turning the sky white and the mornings cool.

Across the middle of the country lies Lake Volta, one of the largest artificial lakes in the world. It formed behind the Akosombo Dam, finished in 1965, which still supplies a large share of Ghana's electricity.

The Akosombo Dam and Lake Volta. Photo: Phildawson, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

The 16 regions, and where people live

Ghana had ten regions until 2018, when referendums led to six new ones: Ahafo, Bono East, North East, Oti, Savannah and Western North. The 2021 census counted 30,832,019 people. Here's how they are spread:

A few things stand out. Greater Accra and Ashanti together hold more than a third of all Ghanaians (35.3%). Greater Accra is the smallest region by area but the most crowded, with about 1,700 people to the square kilometre. Savannah is the opposite: the largest region, with about 19 people per square kilometre. The areas are measured from mapped boundaries, so they're approximate.

Ghana is getting younger and more urban at the same time. On World Bank figures, about 59% of Ghanaians live in towns and cities in 2026, and about 35% are under 15.

Each region breaks down into districts, run by 261 metropolitan, municipal and district assemblies. Our region profiles and district profiles put population, schools, clinics, banks and more side by side for every one, and population by region splits the census by age and sex.

People, languages and faith

English is the official language: it's used in schools, courts, Parliament and the national media. But at home and in the market, most Ghanaians speak one or more Ghanaian languages. There are more than 80. Akan is the most widely spoken, in forms such as Asante Twi, Akuapem Twi and Fante. Ewe, Ga, Dangme, Dagbani, Dagaare, Gonja, Kasem and Nzema are among the eleven Ghanaian languages the state supports in education and broadcasting. Many people also speak Hausa, the trading language across the north, and Ghanaian Pidgin is common among young people in the cities. Our languages dataset lists 92 languages and dialects used in Ghana.

At the 2021 census, 71.3% of Ghanaians were Christian and 19.9% Muslim, with smaller numbers following traditional religions or none. Christian and Muslim holidays are both public holidays, and you'll often find churches and mosques on the same street.

A Kente weaver in Bonwire, Ashanti Region, one of the towns where the cloth is woven by hand. Photo: Sadads, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

A short history

For centuries before Europeans arrived, this part of West Africa was home to powerful states, including the Asante kingdom, whose capital was Kumasi. From the 15th century, Portuguese, Dutch, British, Danish and other traders built forts along the coast, first to trade in gold and later in enslaved people. Dozens of these forts and castles still stand along the coast, and together they are a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The castles at Cape Coast and Elmina are the best known.

Britain made the area the Gold Coast colony. On 6 March 1957, under Kwame Nkrumah, it became the first colony in sub-Saharan Africa to win independence from European rule, taking the name Ghana from an ancient West African empire. It became a republic on 1 July 1960.

The decades after were unsettled, with several military governments. The 1992 Constitution began the Fourth Republic, and since then Ghana has held regular elections and seen power change hands peacefully between parties several times. That record is a big part of how Ghanaians see their country.

The courtyard of Cape Coast Castle. Enslaved Africans were held in dungeons below it before being shipped across the Atlantic. Photo: Matti Blume, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

How the country is run

Ghana is a presidential republic. The President is both head of state and head of government, elected for four years and limited to two terms. John Dramani Mahama took office on 7 January 2025. General elections for the President and Parliament are held together in December every four years; the next is due in December 2028.

Parliament has 276 members, one for each constituency. Below national government, the 261 district assemblies handle local matters such as sanitation, markets, building permits and local roads. Each region also has a House of Chiefs: traditional rulers have no formal political power, but they remain important in land, custom and local disputes.

What Ghana lives on

Three exports carry the economy:

• Gold. Ghana is Africa's biggest gold producer, and gold is its largest export.
• Cocoa. Ghana is the world's second-largest cocoa grower, after Côte d'Ivoire. Most of it comes from smallholder farms in the forest belt.
• Oil. Commercial oil production began offshore in 2010.

Beyond those are ports at Tema and Takoradi, a large trading sector, farming, and a growing services and tech scene in Accra. Mobile money is everywhere: many people pay for goods, send money home and settle bills from their phones.

The currency is the cedi. It was redenominated in 2007, when four zeros were removed, and it has lost a great deal of value against the dollar at times, which is why exchange rates and fuel prices are front-page news. Our cedi converter gives today's rate and the rate on any day back to 1996, and our guide to getting a fair dollar rate explains what banks and bureaus actually charge.

Inside the new Kejetia market in Kumasi, one of the biggest markets in West Africa. Photo: Afus199620, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons

Places worth seeing

• Cape Coast and Elmina castles, Central Region: the most visited reminders of the Atlantic slave trade.
• Kakum National Park, Central Region: rainforest you can walk above on a chain of rope bridges strung through the treetops.
• Mole National Park, Savannah Region: Ghana's largest national park, where you can walk out with a ranger to see elephants.
• Kumasi, Ashanti Region: the Manhyia Palace Museum, the Kejetia market and the Kente-weaving towns nearby.
• The Volta Region: waterfalls at Wli and Mount Afadja, Ghana's highest peak, plus trips on Lake Volta.
• Accra: Independence Square, the Kwame Nkrumah Memorial Park, Jamestown's lighthouse and the beaches.

Our protected areas register lists every national park and reserve.

The canopy walkway at Kakum National Park. Photo: daSupremo, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

An elephant in Mole National Park. Photo: Matti Blume, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Practical things to know

• Money: prices must be in cedis; the cedi is the only legal tender. Card payments work in bigger shops and hotels, and mobile money works almost everywhere.
• Phones: numbers have ten digits starting with 0, or +233 from abroad. Our guide to mobile prefixes explains which network is which.
• Addresses: every location has a GhanaPostGPS digital address, such as GA-123-4567. Check one with the digital address checker.
• Driving is on the right.
• Electricity is 230 volts, mostly with British-style three-pin plugs.
• Public holidays: Ghana has more than a dozen a year, including Independence Day on 6 March, Republic Day on 1 July and Founders' Day on 21 September, Kwame Nkrumah's birthday. The holiday calendar lists this year's dates.

Know Ghana in numbers: subscribe to API Ghana

Most of what's in this guide lives somewhere public: the census, map data, the Bank of Ghana, ministry releases. The hard part is finding it, matching up region and district names, and keeping it current. That's what API Ghana does. We collect published sources into one catalogue, check them, and serve them through one documented API, with a note of where every figure came from.

1. Create a free account and take your API key.
2. Browse the datasets and preview real rows before you commit.
3. See the plans when you're ready to build on it.

Common questions

What is the capital of Ghana? Accra, in the Greater Accra Region. Kumasi, capital of the Ashanti Region, is the second-largest city.

How many regions does Ghana have? Sixteen. Six were created in 2019 after referendums in 2018: Ahafo, Bono East, North East, Oti, Savannah and Western North.

What is the population of Ghana? The 2021 census counted 30,832,019 people. On World Bank projections, the population is about 35.7 million in 2026.

What language is spoken in Ghana? English is the official language. Akan (including Twi and Fante) is the most widely spoken Ghanaian language, and there are more than 80 in all.

When did Ghana gain independence? On 6 March 1957, the first colony in sub-Saharan Africa to do so. It became a republic on 1 July 1960.

What is Ghana known for? Gold, cocoa, the forts and castles of its coast, Kente cloth, a stable democracy, and a warm welcome, often summed up in the word akwaaba, "welcome".

Figures from the Ghana Statistical Service's 2021 Population and Housing Census, World Bank population estimates and projections, and API Ghana's region profiles, compiled from the census, OpenStreetMap and geoBoundaries. Last checked 28 September 2026.