Togo is a country located in West Africa. It has an area of 57,000 square kilometers and a population of approximately 8 million people. The ethnic composition of Togo is largely Ewe (37%), with minority groups such as Mina, Kabye and Akposso making up the remaining 63%. The majority of the population are adherents to Christianity, with around 64% following Protestantism, 27% following Roman Catholicism and 9% following Islam. Education is compulsory for children up to the age of 12 and the literacy rate is estimated to be around 68%. The official language is French but there are also many other languages spoken throughout the country such as Ewe, Mina and Kabye. The capital city Lomé has an estimated population of over 1 million people making it one of the largest cities in Togo. Check hyperrestaurant to learn more about Togo in 2009.
Togo is a state of West Africa, overlooking the Gulf of Guinea with a short coastline (approx. 60 km), which corresponds to an inland, squeezed between Benin to the E and Ghana to the West, which develops in a longitudinal sense to Burkina Faso to the North, for about 550 km, constituting a band of variable width between a maximum of about 130 km and a minimum of 50 km.
Social conditions
In terms of GDP per capita, Togo is one of the world’s poorest countries and just over 2/3 of the population lives on less than 2 US dollars per day. Visit AbbreviationFinder to see the definitions of TGO and acronym for Togo. Only about half of the residents have access to clean water. Just over every twenty children die during their first year of life.
In Togo, the insurance and pension system includes: disability insurance, occupational injury insurance and support for families with children. Healthcare is a state responsibility. There are nine hospital beds per 10,000 residents (2005) and one doctor per 20,000 (2008). Qualified personnel are available for just under two of three deliveries. In 2009, 8% of total government expenditure was allocated to the health sector. The proportion of people aged 15-49 affected by HIV/AIDS tripled in the 1990s, but has subsequently declined somewhat and now amounts to just over 3%. Severe diseases such as dysentery and other diarrheal diseases, malaria, lung diseases and tuberculosis are other common causes of death.
Women are discriminated against in a number of ways. For example, a woman has no legal right to inherit either his father or his husband. In the countryside, it is more common for a man to displace his wife than for the couple to undergo a regular divorce. The woman then loses all her assets and the custody of any children. Violence against women is common, especially in marriage. Although genital mutilation (female genital mutilation) has been banned since 1998, it is common practice in some of the country’s ethnic groups. In primary school, the proportion of girls is basically as high as the proportion of boys, but in secondary school the boys are in the clear majority. Of the country’s MPs, 11% are women. Check to see Togo population.
Physical characteristics
Of very ancient geological constitution, with formations of Precambrian origin and, in part, Paleozoic, the territory Togolese is divided into morphologically differentiated bands subparallel to the coast: this is low and sandy, interrupted by lagoons and ponds (the name Togo means “coast of the lagoon”); followed, towards the interior, by a slightly raised hilly area (no more than 200 m asl), then a plateau around 400 m asl, which forms the basis for the Monti del Togo chain (where it reaches 1000 m altitude), located along the border with Ghana; finally, in the northern section, the altitude drops again in correspondence with the course of the Oti river and its tributaries. The Oti (450 km overall) enters Togo from Benin, then passes into Ghana, and is the main river of the northern Togo, of which it marks for a stretch the border with Ghana; in the southern part, E of the Monti del Togo, the Mono river flows, Guinea, where it flows. ● Latitude and altitude characterize several climatic regions: N of the Monti del Togo there is a tropical climate of Sudanese type, with high temperatures (annual averages around 28 ° C) and modest excursions, and with a single rainy season (not abundant) in summer, which correspond to vegetal formations of the savannah type and gallery forests; in the central highlands, temperatures are lower and rainfall becomes much richer (even over 1700 mm per year, in two rainy seasons), allowing the formation of forests; in the coastal region the average annual temperature is 26 ° C and the rainfall is rather modest (770 mm per year in Lomé), so that the vegetation is savannah except on the coast, where mangrove formations abound.
Population
The distribution of the population is very irregular: in the small coastal region (where the capital is located), which covers less than a tenth of the entire surface, over a third of the total population is gathered, with a density three times higher than that of the rest of the country. Other notable cities are Sokodé, in the center, then Atakpamé, Kpalimé and Kara, all located on the plateau. Both the rate of demographic growth (rate of 2.7% in 2009) and the birth rate (36.4 ‰) are high, although showing, in the last twenty years, a tendency to decrease (in the early 1990s, the population growth rate was 3.2% and the birth rate was 40 ‰). The social conditions of the population are characterized by a great backwardness: life expectancy at birth is 59 years old, infant mortality, although declining since the 1990s, it remains high (56.8 ‰) and illiteracy affects just under half of the Togolese. ● Besides French, the official language, the various ethnic languages are spoken; the most common, both taught in schools, are the eewe and the kabré. Half of the population practices traditional animistic cults, but Christianity (23% Catholics, 12% Protestants) and Islam (15%) are also professed.