Ghana 🇬🇭

Filed under Africa and more precisely Western Africa, Ghana is a sovereign state. The long form of the name is Republic of Ghana. Accra is the capital.

By land area it covers 238,533 km², which ranks it 82nd of the 249 countries and territories in this dataset — just behind Uganda and just ahead of Romania. For scale, it is almost exactly the same size as Romania.

Around 34.4 million people live there, placing it 47th of 249 by population — between Mozambique above it and Peru below. Among the 17 entries in Western Africa it ranks 8th by area and 2nd by population.

Plotted on a globe it falls at 8.0° north, 2.0° west, which puts it in the northern hemisphere, roughly 891 km from the equator, in what geographers would call the equatorial belt.

The prime meridian also passes close to it, so it straddles the line that divides east from west. Follow that same latitude east or west and you reach Ethiopia, Venezuela and Somalia — places that share its distance from the equator but little else.

It borders 3 neighbours: Burkina Faso, Ivory Coast and Togo. The largest of them by area is Ivory Coast, which is also the most populous. Together those neighbours hold about 65.0 million people.

Unlike its landlocked neighbours it reaches the sea directly, while also sharing land frontiers.

Spread across 238,533 km², that works out at about 144 people per square kilometre, which makes it more crowded than the typical entry on this list. Half the entries in this dataset fall below roughly 91 per square kilometre.

Someone from Ghana is a Ghanaian.

The one official language is English. English is one of the widely shared official languages here, listed by 90 other entries including American Samoa, Anguilla, Antigua and Barbuda and Australia.

Inside Africa it places 14th of 59 by population, and it accounts for 7.5% of everyone living in Western Africa.

The Ghanaian cedi (GHS) is used only in Ghana among the 249 entries on this site. Its own currency is one of the clearest markers of an economy that sets its own monetary policy rather than importing somebody else's.

Language reaches wider still. English is listed for 91 entries here, Ghana among them, so a visitor who speaks it can be understood across a large part of the map. Shared language tends to outlive the empires, trade routes and migrations that spread it, which is why the linguistic map and the political one rarely line up.

Zoom in from the world to Western Africa and Ghana sits 2nd of 17 by population and 8th by area. Its immediate company in that ordering is Nigeria just above and Ivory Coast just below, which is a more honest comparison set than a global league table.

Nigeria is the largest of the group by population, and every entry in Western Africa has its own page here if you want to work through the whole neighbourhood rather than one country at a time.

• 🇳🇬 Nigeria
• 🇨🇮 Ivory Coast
• 🇳🇬 Nigeria

Put next to every other entry on this site, Ghana ranks 82nd of 249 by area and 47th by population. That works out at 0.16% of the combined land area of all 249 entries and 0.42% of their combined population. Those denominators matter: this list includes territories and dependencies as well as UN member states, so a rank here is not the same as a rank among sovereign countries.

For a sense of scale, the entries immediately either side of Ghana in the size ordering are Uganda at 241,550 km² and Romania at 238,391 km², against Ghana's 238,533 km². If you can already picture one of those, you can picture this one.

Density tells a different story from either raw figure. Ghana averages 144 people per square kilometre of total area, which makes it middling in density — 89th of the 247 entries that have both a population and a measured area. Total area includes inland water, so the true figure for habitable land is higher than this.

The currency is the Ghanaian cedi (₵, GHS). It is issued for Ghana alone.

Accra is the seat of government and the answer most quizzes are looking for.

Its internet country code is .gh. To phone it from abroad you dial +233. Standard country codes: gh and GHA.

It holds a seat at the United Nations, one of 192 entries here that do. The other 57 entries are territories, dependencies or observers, which is why totals on this site run to 249 rather than the familiar 195.