24 •
The Lion King
• January - March 2016
Prime Minister.
GHANAIAN PEOPLE
The Ghanaians are a people originat-
ing from the Ghanaian Gold Coast.
Native West Africans make up 98%
percent of the Ghanaian population.
There is also a new population of
Asians, Middle Easterners, Europeans
and other recent immigrants. There
are over 100 different ethnic groups,
each with its own distinct language.
SOCIETY AND CULTURE
Ghana’s cultural diversity is most evi-
dent in cuisine, arts, literature, heri-
tage, music, dance, clothing, and
sports.
Kente is a Ghanaian ceremonial cloth
traditionally used as the national cos-
tume. Kente is hand-woven on a hori-
zontal treadle loom in strips measuring
about 4 inches wide, which are sewn
together into larger pieces of cloth.
Kwame Nkrumah Memorial Park, Accra, Ghana.
Cloths come in various colours and
designs, which have different mean-
ings, and are worn on important social
occasions. During the 13th century,
Ghanaians developed their unique art
of adinkra printing.
Notable Ghanaian authors include
novelists Ayi Kwei Armah (
The
Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born
) and
J. E. Casely Hayford, author of
Osiris
Rising
. In addition to novels, other
literary genres such as theatre and
poetry have been well developed at
a national level.
Ghanaian music incorporates sever-
al distinct types of instruments such
as talking drums, the atenteben and
koloko lute, the atumpan, and log
xylophones used in asonko music. The
most well-known genre to come from
Ghana is highlife. Highlife originated in
the late 19th century and early 20th
century.
In the 1990s, a new genre of music,
hiplife, was created through the
combination of highlife, Afro-reggae,
dancehall and hiphop. Hiplife is the
most popular Ghanaian music, fol-
lowed by highlife.
The dances are varied. Some popular
dances include Adowa and Azonto.
Other traditional dances from Ghana
are Kpanlogo, Klama and Bamaya.
GOVERNANCE
Kwame Nkrumah the first Commander-
in-Chief of the Republic of Ghana was
deposed in 1966, after which Ghana
entered a period of military rule. On
31 December 1981, the regime led by
Flight lieutenant Jerry John Rawlings
installed the Provisional National
Defence Council (PNDC), of which he
became Chairman.
In 1992, Rawlings retired from the
military and set up the National
Democratic Congress (NDC), and was
subsequently elected for two terms as
President.
Ghana has been a stable democ-
racy since 1992. Following the death
of President John Atta Mills in July
2012, Vice President John Dramani
