Polity

Ghana

Modern Sovereign Republics

Ghana, officially the Republic of Ghana, is a country in West Africa on the Gulf of Guinea, bordered by Ivory Coast, Burkina Faso and Togo, with Accra as its capital and largest city. Known during British colonial rule as the Gold Coast, it was formed when Britain unified four separate colonial territories into one dominion, and after resistance spanning more than a century it became, on 6 March 1957, the first colony in Sub-Saharan Africa to achieve sovereignty; Ghana declared itself a republic on 1 July 1960 under President Kwame Nkrumah. It operates as a unitary presidential republic with a multi-party democratic system, and with over 35 million people it is the thirteenth most populous nation in Africa and second most populous in West Africa. The Akan are the largest ethnic group, and most Ghanaians, about 71 percent, are Christian, with Muslims making up nearly a fifth of the population.

Facts

Government Type

Unitary constitutional democracy 1

Capital

Accra 1

Start Year

1957 1

Government type (class)

Republic 1

Classification

Status (Extant or Former)

Extant 1

FAQs

Why is the Gold Coast now called Ghana?

It was named for the medieval West African empire of Wagadu, which Arab traders called Ghana.

The name Ghana comes from Wagadu, an empire in West Africa that existed from the 3rd to the 12th centuries. Arab traders involved in the trans-Saharan trade called Wagadu Ghana, and the word is thought to come from Kaya Maghan, the title of Wagadu's rulers, which means ruler of gold. Early in the 20th century some writers argued for a historical link between the people of the Gold Coast and that ancient kingdom, though the historian Jack Goody states that one early version of this idea lacked linguistic and historical evidence. By the period leading to independence in 1957, the name Ghana was accepted as a symbol of precolonial prestige, cultural unity and national legitimacy.

Connections

In Era

The Contemporary Period

Source Wikipedia: Ghana

In the Other Atlases

Government Type

Republic

Also in Society and Culture Atlas: the government type of this subject.