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Exploring Ghana
HISTORY OF GHANA
Ghana, officially the Republic of Ghana is a West African country on the Gulf of Guinea. Its neighbours are Côte d’Ivoire, to the west, Burkina Faso, which lies north, and Togo, to the east.
With nearly 32 million inhabitants (according to the 2021 census), Ghana is the second-most populous country in West Africa, after Nigeria. The capital and largest city is Accra; others are Kumasi, Cape coast and Tamale.
Ghana is a multilingual country in which about eighty languages are spoken. Of these, English, which was inherited from the colonial era, is the official language and lingua franca. Of the languages indigenous to Ghana, Akan is the most widely spoken.
Ghana has about 50 indigenous languages (Dakubu, 1996), and the major ones are Akan, Ewe, Ga, Dagaare, and Dagbani. Only 11 languages are taught in the schools and few of them are used on the radio and television.
Ghana Cuisine
Ghanaian cuisine is built around starchy staples like fufu, kokonte, banku, and emotuo. The Ghanaian food tradition is strong and ancient. They’re always served with a soup or stew along with a protein source, usually goat, beef, chicken, pork, lamb, snails, or fish. Ghanaians eat one or two large meals daily, with “small chop” or light snacks, like pieces of seasonal fruit or meat skewers.
Served for special ceremonies and celebrations, Jollof Rice shows off the best of Ghanaian cuisine.
Beef, chicken, or goat is first steamed with mouthwatering spices like ginger and garlic. Jasmine rice, black pepper, chiles, and tomato paste are added for a hearty, flavorful meal.
Jollof Rice can serve as a side dish with fried fish or a vegetable medley. Shito, a famous Ghanaian condiment made from a sweet, spicy pepper, is often served with Jollof Rice.
Fufu, Ghana’s national dish, is a dense dough made from boiled cassava and unripe plantains, eaten with soup. Traditionally, its prepared by pounding the ingredients together and shaping them into balls. Making fufu is labour-intensive, requiring one person to pound and another to shape the dough in a mortar.
The soup, made from palm-nuts, chiles, ginger, and tomatoes, complements the fufu’s heaviness. Ghanaians add proteins such as meat, fish, egg, or mushroom to the palm nut soup.
Tetteh-Quarshie Cocoa Farm
Located in the Eastern Region known as the first farm created for cultivating cocoa in Ghana Tetteh-Quarshie brought the first cocoa plant to Ghana in 1879.
Climate
The climate of Ghana is tropical and there are two main seasons: the wet and the dry seasons. North Ghana experiences its rainy season from April to mid-October while South Ghana experiences its rainy season from March to mid-November.
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