Ghana is a West African country located on the Gulf of Guinea, with a population of around 29 million people. The main ethnic group is Akan, making up around 47% of the population. Other ethnic groups include Mole-Dagbani, Ewe and Ga-Adangbe. The majority of Ghanaians are Christian, with other religions such as Islam and Traditional religions making up much of the remaining population. Additionally, there is also a small Hindu minority living in Ghana as well. The literacy rate in Ghana is close to 75%, and the average life expectancy is 63 years. Check hyperrestaurant to learn more about Ghana in 2009.
Social conditions
Both Ghana’s economy and the social situation have improved during the 1990s and the proportion of the poor has fallen sharply. Visit AbbreviationFinder to see the definitions of GHA and acronym for Ghana. Nevertheless, about half of the population still lives on less than $ 2 a day. About 20 percent of the population does not have access to clean water. Almost every twenty children die during their first year of life. Malaria and diarrhea reap victims among children as well as adults. Tuberculosis is also common. Of the population aged 15-49, 2 percent is estimated to be affected by HIV/AIDS.
The availability of health care is very poor. There are nine hospital beds and a doctor of 10,000 residents (2009). Qualified personnel are available for just over half of the births. In 2009, 9 percent of government spending was spent on health care.
Structures that make women subordinate to men remain, but gender discrimination is officially banned and the same applies since 1994 genital mutilation (female circumcision). The status of women varies greatly between the big cities and the countryside. Girls start school to the same extent as boys. However, only 8 percent of the country’s MPs are women. Check to see Ghana population.
Population
The population, which at the 1970 census amounted to 8.6 million ab. and that of 1984 to 12.3 million, it had risen to over 17 million in 1995 (in a quarter of a century, therefore, it had doubled) and to more than 19 million in 1998. Population growth is slowly declining and, if in the 1960s and 1970s it exceeded 35 ‰ per year, in the 1990 – 97 interval it was equal to 27‰. These are still very high values that cannot fail to cause problematic interference with the country’s development prospects. The birth rate still exceeds 40, while mortality rates are rapidly contracting and are now around 11 ÷ 12 ‰ per year.
The health campaigns launched in the previous decades have had satisfactory results and, if infant mortality is still high (65 ‰ in 1997), life expectancy at birth has undergone a notable increase and is approaching sixty years. The government of the country in order to ease the population pressure, launched a birth control campaign, the results of which are as yet modest (in fifteen fertility decreased from 6, 5 to 5 %).
The capital, Accra, had a population of 950 in 1988. 000 inhab .; recent estimates, conducted on the entire urban agglomeration, attribute it to a population of just under 2 million residents. The second largest city in the country is Kumasi, the capital of the populous Ashanti Region.
Accra
Accra, the capital and largest city of Ghana, West Africa; 2.29 million residents (2013). The city is located in a flat coastal area of the Gulf of Guinea, where the climate is relatively dry. European trading companies already built in the 1600’s. forts here, i.e. the Danish Christiansborg, built by the West Indies-Guinea Company.
Accra is Ghana’s economic center and an internationally oriented trading town, but it lacks an actual city quarter. Consumer goods are bought in marketplaces that are scattered in the residential areas, and the trade is mainly handled by women.
The settlement pattern that previously followed ethnic divides is breaking up and is increasingly following a social divide. The poorest neighborhoods are in the middle of the city, and new suburbs are popping up at 20-25 km from the city, causing major traffic problems. The violent migration from the rural areas has also created major social problems, and in 2001 a long period of water shortages occurred.
Outside the city is the Legon campus and 30 km east of the industrial area around the modern port city of Tema.