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Ghana
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Ghana, in West Africa, is a land of plains and low plateaus covered by rain forests in the west and Lake Volta in the east—one of the world's largest man-made lakes. The precious metal that once gave its name to the Gold Coast lured Portuguese, Danes, Dutch, Germans, and British. After Ghana's independence from Britain in 1957, President Kwame Nkrumah emerged as a leading spokesman for Pan-Africanism. A series of military coups brought Jerry Rawlings to power in 1981. Multiparty democracy started with the new 1992 constitution. In December 2000, for the first time in its history, Ghana witnessed the election of an opposition party.
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Ghana's first independent administration was inaugurated on March 6 1957 with Kwame Nkrumah as prime minister. On July 1 1960 Ghana was declared a republic with Kwame Nkrumah as its president. Earlier parliament had passed the Preventive Detention Act of 1958 which granted authority to the head of state to detain without trial those who were considered a threat to the nation. By means of such measures Nkrumah and his party intimidated leading members of the opposition. Some opponents were co-opted; others were either exiled or jailed. As leader of Ghana at the time of the Cold War Nkrumah forged alliances that increasingly placed him in the camp of the Eastern Bloc.
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Ghana has one of the strongest economies in West Africa, yet the country’s economic base continues to be agriculture and the people remain poor. Gold mining, the production of cacao (used to make chocolate), and tourism are the main sources of revenue. Ghana was known as a source of gold hundreds of years ago. European explorers who arrived in search of gold in the 1400s and 1500s first named the region the Gold Coast.
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Presently, Ghana has 18,530 primary schools, 8,850 junior secondary schools, 900 senior secondary schools, 28 training colleges, 20 technical institutions, 4 diploma-awarding institutions, 6 public universities and over 10 private universities. That means that most Ghanaians have relatively easy access to primary and secondary education. These numbers can be contrasted with the single university and handful of secondary and primary schools that existed at the time of independence in 1957. Ghana's spending on education has varied between 28 and 40 percent of its annual budget in the past decade. All teaching is done in English, Ghana's official language.
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Ghana gained its independence from British colonial rule on March 6, 1957. Prior to this time it was called the "Gold Coast," named by the Portuguese in the fifteenth century due to its wealth in gold and natural resources. The Portuguese were the first Europeans to discover Ghana in 1471. From that point until its independence, Denmark, England, Holland, Prussia and Sweden all sent explorers and merchants to Ghana for its wealth in both natural and human resources. During their battles for control over the land, these countries built forts and castles, which ... served as trading posts. As evidence of the extent of European colonial presence and concentration of activity in Ghana, 29 of the 32 European colonial forts and castles along the coast of West Africa are in Ghana.
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In August 2002, Ghana signed production agreements with Britain's First Oil for the development of its Tano (North and South) offshore oil and natural gas fields. Gas from the fields is to power turbines mounted on barges in the Effasu Lagoon. North Tano is to be developed first, supplying 26 Mmcf/d to Effasu by the end of 2003, where a gas processing plant will be built adjacent to the 134-megawatt (MW) power-generation barge. South Tano is farther offshore, in deeper water, and it will come on stream later. When on stream, gas deliveries will rise to 60 Mmcf/d and generating capacity at Effasu/Mangyea can be increased to 270 MW. The South Tano field should ... boost oil production from both fields to 3,000 bbl/d.
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