Ghana, officially the Republic of Ghana, is a country along the Gulf of Guinea and the Atlantic Ocean, in the subregion of West Africa. Spanning a land mass of 238,535 km2 (92,099 sq mi), Ghana is bordered by the Ivory Coast in the west, Burkina Faso in the north, Togo in the east, and the Gulf of Guinea and Atlantic Ocean in the south. Ghana means "Warrior King" in the Soninke language.
Cape Coast is a city, fishing port, and the capital of Cape Coast Metropolitan District and Central Region of south Ghana. One of the country's most historic cities, it is the location of Cape Coast Castle, a World Heritage Site, with the Gulf of Guinea situated to its south. According to the 2010 census, Cape Coast had a settlement population of 169,894 people. The language of the people of Cape Coast is Fante.
Mfantsipim is an all-boys boarding secondary school in Cape Coast, Ghana, established by the Methodist Church in 1876 to foster intellectual, moral, and spiritual growth on the then Gold Coast. Its founding name was Wesleyan High School and the first headmaster was James Picot, a French scholar, who was only 18 years old on his appointment.
The University of Cape Coast is a public collegiate research university located in Cape Coast, Ghana. The university was established in 1962 out of a dire need for highly qualified and skilled manpower in education. It was established to train graduate teachers for second cycle institutions such as teacher training colleges and technical institutions, a mission that the two existing public universities at the time were unequipped to fulfil. The university has since added to its functions the training of doctors and health care professionals, as well as education planners, administrators, legal professionals, and agriculturalists. UCC graduates include Ministers of State, High Commissioners, CEOs, and Members of Parliament.
Joseph Ephraim Casely Hayford,, also known as Ekra-Agiman, was a Gold Coast journalist, editor, author, lawyer, educator, and politician who supported pan-African nationalism.
Education in Ghana was mainly informal, and based on apprenticeship before the arrival of European settlers, who introduced a formal education system addressed to the elites. Pre-Independent Ghana was known as the Gold Coast. The economy of pre-colonial Gold Coast was mainly dependent on subsistence farming where farm produce was shared within households and members of each household specialized in providing their household with other necessities such as cooking utilities, shelter, home, clothing and furnitures. Trade with other households was therefore practised in a very small scale. This has made economic activities in pre-colonial Gold Coast a family institution/customs; family-owned and family-controlled. As such, there was no need for employment outside the household that would have otherwise called for discipline(s), value(s) and skill(s) through a formal education system. Pre-colonial Gold Cost therefore practised an informal education (apprenticeship) until it was colonized and its economy became a hybrid of subsistence and formal economy.
Sir Kobina Arku Korsah was the first Chief Justice of Ghana in 1956.
William Esuman-Gwira Sekyi, better known as Kobina Sekyi, was a nationalist lawyer, politician and writer in the Gold Coast.
The Ghanaian people are a nation originating in the Ghanaian Gold Coast. Ghanaians predominantly inhabit the republic of Ghana, and are the predominant cultural group and residents of Ghana, numbering 20 million people as of 2013. Native Ghanaians make up 85.4% of the total population. The word "Ghana" means "warrior king".
Sir Edward Okyere Asafu-Adjaye (1903–1976) was a Ghanaian political figure, lawyer and diplomat. He was the first Ashanti lawyer and Ghana's first High Commissioner in Britain with accreditation to France concurrently.
Annie Ruth Jiagge, , also known as Annie Baëta Jiagge, was a Ghanaian lawyer, judge and women's rights activist. The first Ghanaian woman to become a lawyer, she was also the first woman in Ghana and the Commonwealth of Nations to become a judge. She was a principal drafter of the Declaration on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women and a co-founder of the organisation that became Women's World Banking.
The Clerk family is a Ghanaian historic family that produced a number of pioneering scholars and clergy on the Gold Coast. Predominantly based in the Ghanaian capital, Accra, the Clerks were traditionally Protestant Christian and affiliated to the Presbyterian Church. The Clerk family is primarily a member of the Ga coastal people of Accra and in addition, has Euro-Afro-Caribbean heritage, descending from Jamaican, German and Danish ancestry.
MatildaJohannaClerk was a medical pioneer and a science educator on the Gold Coast and in West Africa as well as the second Ghanaian woman to become an orthodox medicine-trained physician. The first woman in Ghana and West Africa to attend graduate school and earn a postgraduate diploma, Clerk was also the first Ghanaian woman in any field to be awarded an academic merit scholarship for university education abroad. M. J. Clerk was the fourth West African woman to become a physician after Nigerians, Agnes Yewande Savage (1929), the first West African woman medical doctor and Elizabeth Abimbola Awoliyi (1938) in addition to Susan de Graft-Johnson, née Ofori-Atta (1947), Ghana's first woman physician. These pioneering physicians were all early advocates of maternal health, paediatric care and public health in the sub-region. For a long time after independence in 1957, Clerk and Ofori-Atta were the only two women doctors in Ghana. By breaking the glass ceiling in medicine and other institutional barriers to healthcare delivery, they were an inspiration to a generation of post-colonial Ghanaian and West African female doctors at a time the field was still a male monopoly and when the vast majority of women worldwide had very limited access to biomedicine and higher education. Pundits in the male-dominated medical community in that era described Matilda J. Clerk as "the beacon of emancipation of Ghanaian womanhood."
The Presbyterian College of Education, Akropong, is a co-educational teacher-training college in Akropong in the Akwapim district of the Eastern Region of Ghana. It has gone through a series of previous names, including the Presbyterian Training College, the Scottish Mission Teacher Training College, and the Basel Mission Seminary. The college is affiliated to the University of Education, Winneba.
Christian Gonçalves Kwami Baëta was a Ghanaian academic and a Presbyterian minister who served as the Synod Clerk of the Evangelical Presbyterian Church of the Gold Coast from 1945 to 1949. He was among a number of prominent individuals, corporate organisations and civil society groups that were instrumental in the establishment of the University of Ghana, Legon in 1948.
Gold Coast Euro-Africans were a historical demographic based in coastal urban settlements in colonial Ghana, that arose from unions between European men and African women from the late fifteenth century, circa 1482 until 1957, when Ghana attained its independence. In this period, the Gold Coast was politically controlled at various times by the Portuguese, Germans, Swedes, Danes, Dutch and the British. There are also records of merchants of other European nationalities such as the Spaniards, French, Italians and Irish, operating along the coast, in addition to American sailors and traders from New York, Massachusetts and Rhode Island. Euro-Africans were influential in intellectual, technocratic, artisanal, commercial and public life in general, actively participating in multiple fields of scholarly and civic importance. Scholars have referred to this Euro-African population of the Gold Coast as “creoles”, “mulattos”, “mulatofoi” and “owulai” among others. The term, “owula” conveys contemporary notions of "gentlemanliness, learning and urbanity" or “a salaried big man” in the Ga language. The cross-cultural interactions between Europeans and Africans were mercantile-driven and an avenue to boost social capital for economic and political gain i.e. "wealth and power." The growth and development of Christianity during the colonial period also instituted motifs of modernity vis-à-vis Euro-African identity. This model created a spectrum of practices, ranging from a full celebration of native African customs to a total embrace and mimicry of European culture.
The history of Freemasonry in Ghana can be traced to the early nineteenth century when the first Masonic lodge was consecrated in the country. The practice of Freemasonry was imported to the then Gold Coast and other Commonwealth realms by European residents in the nation during the British colonial era. Most of the lodges in Ghana are governed by the United Grand Lodge of England (UGLE) and Wales, Grand Lodge of Scotland and the Grand Lodge of Ireland. Similar to their sister organisations worldwide, Ghanaian masonic fraternities are strictly apolitical and non–religious societies.
The Ewe Unification Movement was a series of west African ethno-nationalist efforts which sought the unification of the Ewe peoples spread across what are now modern Ghana and Togo. It emerged as a direct political goal around 1945 under the colonial mandate of French Togoland, however the ideal of unifying the group has been an identifiable sentiment present amongst the ethnicity's leadership and wider population ever since their initial colonial partitions by the British and German Empires from 1874 to 1884. While there have been many efforts to bring about unification, none have ultimately been successful due to both the platform itself often being a secondary concern for political leadership, or inter/intrastate conflicts overshadowing them.
William (Bill) Jones Varley, FSA was a British geographer and archaeologist, particularly known for his excavations of English Iron Age hillforts, including Maiden Castle and Eddisbury hillfort in Cheshire, Old Oswestry hillfort in Shropshire, and Castle Hill in West Yorkshire. He was also a pioneer of geographical research and education in colonial Ghana where he worked in 1947–56, and was involved in historical conservation there.
Kobina Hagan was a Ghanaian politician and teacher. He was the Principal Secretary for the Central Organisation of Sports (COS) from 1960 to 1963 and later member of parliament for the Denkyira constituency from 1965 to 1966.
