Yearbook 2010
According to COUNTRYAAH, Ghana has a population of 29.77 million (2018). Ghana was designated by the British think tank Overseas Development Institute (ODI) as the African country that will first achieve the UN’s so-called Millennium Development Goals by halving poverty and famine. According to the report, Ghana through economic reforms has managed to increase food production by 80 percent per capita over the past 30 years and reduced the number of malnourished by 75 percent between 1990 and 2004. In relative terms, according to softwareleverage, Ghana is the most successful African country in this regard according to ODI.
Ghana’s authorities hope that new oil discoveries will strengthen the country’s economy. During the year, the government borrowed from China a total of about US $ 13 billion for infrastructure expansion. Most of the money will be used to build roads, railways, schools and hospitals, while about a quarter of the total will go to facilities for the oil and gas industry.
- Abbreviation Finder: Check to see how the two letter abbreviation of GH stands for the country of Ghana in geography.
Geopolitics
The Republic of Ghana is a West African state overlooking the Gulf of Guinea. At the time of the independence struggles, Ghana earned the name of ‘star of Africa’: not only was it the first black African country to achieve independence in 1957 (from the United Kingdom), but the Ghanaian president, Kwame Nkrumah, was a leading exponent of Pan-Africanism. Nkrumah, throughout his political career, has promoted the foundation of a political union between African states that went beyond the simple intergovernmental structure created with the Organization of African Unity. In the years of political instability following the coup that ended his presidency in 1966, Ghana, absorbed by internal issues, however, it failed to maintain its role as Africa’s standard-bearer in international relations. Only with the Jerry John Rawlings regime and then with the return to democracy in 1992 did the country return to play a vanguard role on the continent. Starting in 1982, Rawlings – later elected president in 1992 and 1996 – normalized relations with international donors, adhering to the stabilization and structural adjustment plans of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, convincingly anticipating what some would do. years later, and in some cases listlessly, many African regimes thrashed by debt.
These efforts to fully re-enter the international order were also recognized by US President Barack Obama, who chose Ghana as the destination of his only state visit to sub-Saharan Africa during his first term.
Ghana has all the characteristics of a success story: a virtuously managed and growing economy, a stable government, not very corrupt and very active in the fight against poverty and a well-functioning democratic system. These elements make it a country well regarded by major international donors, in particular the United States and the United Kingdom, even if recently China has played a leading role in this field.
As regards relations with neighboring countries, some friction remains with the Ivory Coast and Nigeria. In the first case, at the center of the dispute would be the smuggling of cocoa and the sovereignty over the hydrocarbons that lie along the maritime border between the two countries; in the second case, the object of the dispute would be the high number of Nigerian workers present in Ghana, which would deprive the local population of jobs.
Ghana is an active member of the African Union (former president John Kufuor was its current president in 2008) and of Ecowas, the regional economic organization whose commission was chaired between 2010 and 2012 by James Victor Gbeho, Ghanaian ambassador. Former UN Secretary General Kofi Annan is also from Ghana.
Ghana is considered one of the most mature and stable democratic systems in Africa and has already passed two alternations without trauma as a result of the electoral results. The sudden death of President John Atta-Mills, which took place in July 2012, was an opportunity to demonstrate the solidity of democratic institutions: unlike what happened in many neighboring countries on similar occasions, the succession to power took place in different ways. and within the time frame provided for by the Constitution. Reintroduced in 1992, multi-party elections were held regularly, improving the voting climate with each round of elections. The two main parties, which have alternated in the government, refer to the political traditions of post-independence Ghana, or to the thought of Nkrumah (the National Democratic Congress,Ndc) and that of former prime minister Kofi Busia (the New Patriotic Party, Npp). With some approximation, the first can be defined on the left and the second on the right. Political stability must be contextualized on the one hand in the chronic chaos experienced between 1966 and 1992, with nine coups d’etat, and on the other in the climate of violence established by military governments in many neighboring states. Currently, the NDC led by President John Mahama is governing.
The country is considered to be among the most advanced in Africa in terms of freedom of the press, of expression and of political participation.