Ghana sits on the Atlantic Ocean and borders Togo, Cote d’Ivoire, and Burkina Faso. It has a population of about 29.6 million (2018). In 1957, when the leaders of the former British colony of the Gold Coast sought an appropriate name for their newly independent state the first black African nation to gain its independence on 6 March 1957 from colonial rule they named their new country after ancient Ghana.
The modern state of Ghana is named for the African empire that flourished until the 13th century and was situated close to the Sahara in the western Sudan. The centre of the empire of Ghana lay about 500 miles (800 km) to the northwest of the nearest part of the modern state, and it is reasonably certain that no part of the latter lay within its borders. The claim that an appreciable proportion of modern Ghana’s people derived from emigrants from the empire cannot be substantiated with the evidence available at present.
However, written sources relate only to Muslim contacts with the empire of Ghana from about the 8th to the 13th century or to the period since European contact with the Gold Coast—i.e., modern Ghana—which began in the 15th century. Many modern Ghanaian peoples possess well-preserved oral traditions, but even though some of these may reach as far back as the 14th century, this is after the final disappearance of the empire of Ghana and such very early traditions often present considerable problems of interpretation. Little progress has so far been made in linking the surviving traditions with the available archaeological evidence.
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Modern-day Ghana, which gained its independence on March 6, 1957, consists primarily of the former Gold Coast. The colony’s drive for independence was led by nationalist and Pan-African leader Kwame Nkrumah, who viewed Ghana’s sovereignty as being important not only for the Ghanaian people but for all of Africa, saying “Our independence is meaningless unless it is linked up with the total liberation of the African continent.” Indeed, more than 30 other African countries, spurred by Ghana’s example, followed suit and declared their own independence within the next decade.
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