Ghana
POPULATION 20,244,154
MUSLIM 16 percent
ROMAN CATHOLIC 15 percent
AFRICAN INDEPENDENT CHURCHES 14 percent
PRESBYTERIAN 12 percent
AFRICAN INDIGENOUS BELIEFS 21 percent
PENTECOSTAL 8 percent
METHODIST 7 percent
OTHER 7 percent
Country Overview
Introduction
The Republic of Ghana, located in West Africa, is bordered by Côte d'Ivoire (Ivory Coast), Burkina Faso, Togo, and the Atlantic Ocean. Its capital, Accra, is on the coast. The land is characterized by tropical rain forest in the south and wooded savanna in the north, and the inhabitants live mainly by subsistence agriculture, cocoa cultivation, fishing, petty retail trade, and food processing. Gold, timber, and cocoa constitute the bulk of exports. The major ethnic groups include the Akan (49 percent), Moshi-Dagomba (16.5 percent), Ewe (13 percent), Ga-Dangbe (8 percent), Guan (4.4 percent), and Gurma (4 percent).
Owing to outsider patterns of conquest and evangelization, Christianity is found mostly in the south and center of Ghana and Islam in the north, while practitioners of indigenous beliefs live mostly in rural areas. One group of traditionalists, the Afrikan Renaissance Mission (ARM, or Afrikania), claims four million followers, but this claim has not been independently verified.
Traders and accompanying clerics brought Islam to northern Ghana in the fifteenth century. In 1482 Portuguese explorers established the first European foothold on the southern coast at El Mina, where the first Catholic mass was conducted.
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