Yearbook 2008
Ghana. High oil and food prices drove inflation up. The rate of increase in prices peaked in June at 18.4 percent and then declined marginally. The state budget for 2008 predicted inflation of 6–8 percent.
Despite financial problems, a new presidential palace was completed in Accra. The budget framework of US $ 30 million was widely cracked and the final cost was estimated at close to US $ 50 million. The opposition criticized the large expenditures when austerity was recommended in other areas. The building was financed with the help of a loan from the Indian state and the main contractor was an Indian company.
- ABBREVIATIONFINDER: Click to see the meanings of 2-letter acronym and abbreviation of GH in general and in geography as Ghana in particular.
In December, general elections were held. Despite Ghana having achieved good stability and growth under eight years of leadership of the New Patriotic Party (NPP), the New Democratic Congress (NDC) retained the majority in Parliament, albeit by a very small margin. The presidential election also seemed to result in NDC victory. The opposition party’s candidate, former Vice President John Atta Mills, had a tight but seemingly secure lead at the turn of the year. Then the election remained in a single constituency in early January. Former Minister of Justice and Foreign Affairs Nana Akufo-Addo was running for NPP. The last eight years President John Kufuor of NPP had to resign constitutionally.
Population 2008
According to Countryaah reports, the population of Ghana in 2008 was 24,779,508, ranking number 47 in the world. The population growth rate was 2.580% yearly, and the population density was 108.9022 people per km2.
GHANA. – Independent state in West Africa and member of the Commonwealth, established on 6 March 1957 by virtue of a law of the British Parliament (7 February 1957), enacted following agreements reached between the majority party in the former Colony of the Gold Coast, on the one hand, and the London government, on the other. The name of Ghana was chosen because it is assumed that the peoples of the territory derive their distant origin from the ancient empire of the same name, which stretched further north.
The new state is constituted by the union of four previous colonial possessions: the colony of the Gold Coast, the protectorate of Ashanti, the protectorate of the Territories of the North and the territory of Togo under trusteeship.
The Ghana quickly achieved independence under the new British policy – outlined during the Second World War – of granting state sovereignty within the Commonwealth to colonial territories. The Gold Coast was, in fact, the first African territory dependent on England to obtain in 1946 a Legislative Council with a majority of unofficial members. The competence of this Council, which until then had been limited only to the territory of the Colony, was extended to the territory under the protectorate of Ashanti, but not to the Northern Territories and to the territory under trusteeship (former mandate B) of Togo, to which it was instead it was later extended in 1950, when the Legislative Council was transformed into a Legislative Assembly. A further step forward was taken in 1954, ex officio (3 and 3 respectively, still remaining in 1950). Elections were held on the basis of the new Constitution, but against it an opposition movement was formed (September 1954) in the Northern Territories, i.e. the National Liberation Movement, which called for a form of federal government as opposed to a form of unitary government. adopted in the Constitution and supported by the Convention People’s Party, led by Kwame Nkrumah, who won in the elections of 1951 and 1954. Having made a compromise impossible, the question was decided in the course of new elections in July 1956, in which, however, Nkrumah’s party had again the majority (72 seats out of 105).
Following a plebiscite called by the UN, the majority of the residents of the British protected territory of Togo declared themselves in favor of joining an independent Gold Coast (May 1956).