Ghana, officially the Republic of Ghana
is a country in West Africa. It borders Côte d'Ivoire to the west, Burkina Faso to the north, Togo to the east, and the Atlantic Ocean to the south. Accra is the capital and largest city. The country's population in 2005 was 21,029,853.
It was inhabited in pre-colonial times by a number of ancient kingdoms, including the inland Ashanti kingdom and various Fante states along the coast. Trade with European states flourished after contact with the Portuguese in the 15th century, and the British established a crown colony, Gold Coast, in 1874.
It was the first black African country to obtain independence from colonial rule. Upon achieving independence from the United Kingdom in 1957, the name Ghana was chosen for the new nation as a reference to its ancient roots in the Empire of Ghana.
For most of central sub-Saharan Africa, agricultural expansion marked the period before 500 A.D. Farming began earliest on the southern tips of the Sahara, eventually giving rise to village settlements.
Toward the end of the classical era, larger regional kingdoms were formed in West Africa, one of which was the Kingdom of Ghana, north of what is today the nation of Ghana. After its fall at the beginning of the 13th century CE, Akan migrants southward then founded several tribal empires including the Ashanti federation and Fante states.
Much of the area was united under the Ashanti confederation by the 16th century. The Ashanti government operated first as a loose network and eventually as a centralized kingdom with a highly-specialized bureaucracy centered in Kumasi.
.The first contact between tribal peoples of the area then called the Gold Coast and Europeans occurred in 1470. During the next few centuries pieces of the area were controlled by British, Portuguese, and Scandinavian powers, with the British ultimately prevailing. The tribal kingdoms maintained varying alliances with the colonial powers and each other, which resulted in the 1806 Ashanti-Fante war, as well as an ongoing struggle by the Ashanti against the British. Moves toward regional de-colonialization began in 1946, and the area's first constitution was promulgated in 1951.
Formed from the merger of the British colony Gold Coast and the British Togoland trust territory by a UN sponsored plebiscite, Ghana became the first sub-Saharan country in colonial Africa to gain its independence in 1957. Kwame Nkrumah was an African anti-colonial leader, founder and first president of the modern Ghanaian state. He was the first African head of state to espouse the Pan-Africanism, an idea he came into contact with during his studies at Lincoln University in the United States, at the time when Marcus Garvey was becoming famous for his "Back to Africa Movement."
Nkrumah was overthrown by a CIA-assisted coup[citation needed]. A series of subsequent coups ended with the ascension to power of Flight Lieutenant Jerry Rawlings in 1981. His changes resulted in the suspension of the constitution in 1981 and the banning of political parties. A new constitution, restoring multiparty politics, was approved in 1992, and Rawlings was elected in free elections of that year and also in 1996. The constitution prohibited him from running for a third term. John Kufuor, the current president, is now in his second term. 2007 will mark Ghana's Golden Jubilee celebration of 50 years of independence.
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