People of Ghana

About 70 linguistic and cultural groups are in Ghana. The major ethnic groups in Ghana include the Akan, Ewe, Mole-Dagbane, Guan, and Ga-Adangbe. The subdivisions of each group share a common cultural heritage, history, language, and origin. These shared attributes were among the variables that contributed to state formation in the pre-colonial period.

Competition to acquire land for cultivation, to control trade routes, or to form alliances for protection also promoted group solidarity and state formation. The creation of the union that became the Asante confederacy in the late seventeenth century is a good example of such processes at work in Ghana’s past.

Despite the cultural differences among Ghana’s peoples, linguists have placed Ghanaian languages in one or the other of only two major linguistic subfamilies of the Niger-Congo language family, one of the large language groups in Africa.

These are the kwa and Gur groups, found to the south and north of the Volta River, respectively. The Kwa group, which comprises about 75% of the country’s population, includes the Akan, Ga-Adangbe, and Ewe. The Akan are further divided into the Asante, Fante, Akwapim, Akyem, Akwamu, Ahanta, Bono, Nzema, Kwahu, Ahanta, Bono, Nzema, Kwahu, and Safwi. The Ga-Adangbe people and language group include the Ga, Adangbe, Ada, and Krobo or Kloli. Even the Ewe, who constitutes a single linguistic group, is divided into the Nkonya, Tafi Logba, Sontrokofi, Lolobi, and Likpe.

North of the Volta River are the three subdivisions of the Gur-speaking people. These are the Gurma, Grusi, and Mole-Dagbane. Like the Kwa subfamilies, further divisions exist within the principal Gur groups.

No part of Ghana, however, is ethnically homogeneous. Urban centers are the most ethnically mixed because of migration to towns and cities by those in search of employment.

Rural areas, with the exception of cocoa-producing areas that have attracted migrant labor, tend to reflect more traditional population distributions. One overriding feature of the country’s ethnic population is that groups to the south who are closer to the Atlantic coast have long been influenced by a monetary economy, Western education, and Christianity, whereas Gur-speakers to the north, who have been less exposed to those influence, have came under Islamic influence. These influences are not pervasive in the respective regions, however-nor are they wholly restricted tot hem.

Languages in Ghana

English is the official langue of Ghana and is universally used in schools. In 1962 the government selected nine Ghanaian languages, in addition to English and French, for use in education institutions:

» Akuapem-Twi

» Asante-Twi

» Dagbani

» Dangbe

» Ewe

» Fanti

» Ga

» Kasem

» Nzima