Ghana
The land of the Akan and the mother's line, of chiefs and the Golden Stool, of the great funerals and a famously peaceful spirit. The complete guide.
Ghana is a country on the West African coast, on the Gulf of Guinea, of some thirty-five million people, long known as one of the calmest and most welcoming nations on the continent. It was the first colony in sub-Saharan Africa to win its independence, in 1957, and it has become a byword for peace and steady democracy in its region. To understand Ghana, begin with its largest people, the Akan, who reckon descent and inheritance through the mother; with the living institution of chieftaincy, crowned by the Ashanti kingdom and its Golden Stool; with the deep Christian faith laid over an older reverence for ancestors; and with the famous Ghanaian funeral, the grandest event in the culture. From these flow the customs that follow: the warm, unhurried greeting; the heavy, soup-and-starch table; the love of bright cloth and proverb; and a public life that is gentle, dignified, and quick to welcome a stranger. This guide walks through each in turn.
Overview
Ghana sits on the West African coast, facing the Gulf of Guinea, with Ivory Coast to the west, Burkina Faso to the north, and Togo to the east. Some thirty-five million people live here, most of them in the greener, wetter southern half of the country and along the coast, where the capital, Accra, spreads beside the sea. The land runs from coastal plains and lagoons up through forest to the drier savanna of the north, and the great Volta River and its huge lake mark the eastern interior. English, left by the British, is the official language and the common tongue, while people speak their own languages at home, Twi and Fante and the other Akan tongues above all, along with Ga, Ewe, Dagbani, and many more.
Ghana holds a special place in Africa's story. Once called the Gold Coast for the gold its land gave up, it became, in 1957, the first colony in sub-Saharan Africa to win its freedom, under the Pan-African leader Kwame Nkrumah, and its independence lit the way for a wave of others across the continent. Since then, and especially in the decades since 1992, it has earned a name as one of the most peaceful and steady democracies in Africa, an island of calm in a sometimes turbulent region, where power changes hands at the ballot box without bloodshed.
A few deep things shape Ghanaian life. The largest people, the Akan, trace family through the mother rather than the father, a pattern that runs through inheritance, clan, and chiefship. The institution of chieftaincy is alive and honoured, with the Ashanti king and the Golden Stool at its summit. Faith is overwhelmingly Christian in the south and Muslim in the north, laid over a deep and enduring respect for ancestors. And Ghanaians are known for a gentle, dignified, unhurried warmth, for their love of proverb and indirect speech, and for funerals so grand they are the heart of the social calendar. The sections that follow trace these forces and then walk through the customs of daily life.
The peoples and the mother's line
Ghana is a country of many peoples, grouped into a handful of large families. The largest by far are the Akan, who make up nearly half the country and include the Ashanti of the central forest and the Fante of the coast; they speak the related tongues of Twi and Fante. To the north live the Mole-Dagbani peoples, the Dagomba and Mamprusi and others, with their own old kingdoms; in the southeast, in the Volta region, live the Ewe; and around Accra live the Ga and Adangbe. Each has its own language, history, and customs, yet they have lived together peaceably and mixed freely, especially in the cities, and Ghanaians wear their national identity lightly and proudly over their many peoples.
The single most striking thing about the Akan, and the thing that sets much of southern Ghana apart, is that they reckon family through the mother. A child belongs to the mother's clan, not the father's; property and position pass down the mother's line; and a man's heir is traditionally not his own son but his sister's son. This matrilineal way, rare in the world and rarer still among large peoples, shapes inheritance, marriage, and the whole web of kin, and it gives mothers, sisters, and maternal uncles a central place. The Ewe and the northern peoples, by contrast, reckon descent through the father in the more common way, so the country holds both patterns side by side.
Whichever line a people follows, family in Ghana is wide and binding. A person belongs to a great web of kin and to a clan that stretches far beyond the household, and the lineage holds land, honours its ancestors, oversees marriages, and settles its own disputes. Elders are deeply revered as the keepers of wisdom and the voice of the ancestors, and the young are taught never to contradict them openly. The village and the clan are a person's belonging and their safety net, and the duties of kinship, to help, to host, to turn out for the celebrations and the funerals, are taken with great seriousness across all the peoples of Ghana.
Chiefs and the Golden Stool
Ghana is one of the places where the old institution of chieftaincy is most alive, sitting beside the modern state rather than swept away by it. Across the country, traditional rulers, known as chiefs and, at the highest level, as kings, still hold court, settle disputes, oversee custom and land, and command deep respect. A chief is not merely a figurehead: he is enstooled in a sacred ceremony, bound by oath to his people, advised by a council of elders, and seen as the living link between the community, its land, and its ancestors. The symbol of a chief's office among the Akan is the stool, carved from a single block of wood, which holds the spirit of the line; to be enstooled is to take office, and a stool kept for an ancestor becomes a shrine.
At the summit of all this stands the Ashanti kingdom and its king, the Asantehene, who reigns from the palace at Kumasi in the central forest. The Ashanti built one of the great states of West Africa, rich on gold, and at its heart lies the Golden Stool, believed to hold the very soul of the Ashanti nation, so sacred that no one, not even the king, may sit upon it. The Asantehene is revered across the whole country, and the great Ashanti court, with its gold regalia, its talking drums, and its linguists who speak the king's words, is among the most splendid living traditions in Africa. Every six weeks the festival of Akwasidae brings chiefs, elders, and people to the palace to honour the ancestors and renew their loyalty.
Chieftaincy runs differently among the different peoples, the centralised kingdoms of the Ashanti and the north contrasting with the looser arrangements of the Ewe and others, and in the north the chief's office is called a skin rather than a stool, for the animal hide on which he sits. But everywhere the chief and the elders carry weight, and the modern republic recognises them, gathering them into houses of chiefs and leaving much of custom and land in their hands. To meet a chief is to observe careful protocol, to approach through his linguist, to offer drinks, and to show the deep respect his office still commands. This living royalty is one of the deepest features of Ghanaian life.
Faith, ancestors, and the peaceful spirit
Ghana is a deeply religious country, and in the south overwhelmingly Christian. About seven in ten Ghanaians are Christian, the highest share in West Africa, ranging from old Catholic and Protestant churches to the booming Pentecostal and charismatic churches whose lively, music-filled services and all-night vigils fill the cities. In the north, Islam is strong, brought long ago across the desert by traders, and Muslims make up around a fifth of the country. The two faiths live together with notable ease, and a Ghanaian Christian and Muslim will share a street, a workplace, and often a family without strife, a calm that the country wears with quiet pride.
Beneath the world faiths runs an older layer that has never gone away: the reverence for ancestors and the belief in a high God, lesser spirits, and the unseen powers of the land. The Akan honour a supreme God they call Nyame, along with lesser deities and, above all, the ancestors, who are felt to watch over the living and to be present at every important moment. Libation, the pouring of drink upon the ground with words of prayer to God and the ancestors, opens almost every serious gathering, Christian and traditional alike, and few Ghanaians see any contradiction between church or mosque and the honouring of those who came before. The shrines, the priests, and the festivals of the old religion endure alongside the new.
Out of all this comes the gentle, dignified spirit for which Ghana is known. Ghanaians are famously warm, polite, hospitable, and slow to anger, taking life at an unhurried pace and prizing harmony, patience, and good manners. They are indirect communicators, softening bad news and wrapping hard truths in proverb and metaphor, for the Akan tongue is rich in proverbs and their skilful use is taken as a mark of wisdom. Open confrontation and loud anger are frowned upon; dignity, restraint, and respect are admired. This calm, courteous temper, set within a deeply religious life, is among the most defining and most welcoming features of the country.
Greetings
Greetings in Ghana are warm, important, and never to be skipped. When people meet they stop to exchange greetings and to ask after each other's health, family, and work before turning to anything else, and to rush past this is poor manners. The handshake is the common gesture, friendly and often lingering, frequently ending among friends in a soft finger snap. In a group there is a proper order to follow, and one custom is widely observed: when shaking hands along a line of people, you move from your own right to your left, and the visitor is greeted in turn.
The strongest rule of greeting concerns the hands. The right hand is used for greeting, giving, and receiving; the left hand is regarded as unclean and is not offered in a handshake, used to give or receive, or used to point or wave, and a Ghanaian takes real care over this. To use the left hand carelessly, or to keep a hand in a pocket while greeting, reads as disrespect. Where one of the parties is Muslim, especially a woman, a handshake between the sexes may not be offered, and it is best to follow the other person's lead.
Respect for age and rank runs through every greeting. Elders and people of standing are greeted first and with extra warmth, and the young show deference in how they greet, sometimes with a slight bow. Titles matter: elders and seniors are addressed by title rather than bare name, and an older stranger may be called Auntie, Uncle, Sir, or Madam as a courtesy, while chiefs and the highly placed are given their proper titles. The visitor who greets fully, uses the right hand, and addresses elders with respect will be received with the famous Ghanaian welcome, captured in the word akwaaba, meaning simply, you are welcome.
Food and hospitality
Ghanaian food is hearty and built around a starchy staple eaten with a rich, spiced soup or stew. The most beloved is fufu, a smooth, stretchy mound pounded from boiled cassava and plantain, pinched off by hand and swallowed in pieces with a soup, the light soup and the groundnut and palm-nut soups being favourites, cooked with meat, fish, or the smoked and dried catch the country loves. Alongside fufu come other staples: banku and kenkey, both made from fermented maize, eaten with pepper and fish; and a wealth of one-pot dishes such as waakye, rice and beans cooked together, and the red, smoky jollof rice over which Ghana and Nigeria carry on their famous, friendly quarrel as to whose is best.
The flavours lean on tomato, onion, ginger, and the fiery pepper that runs through the cooking, with palm oil and groundnut giving the soups their richness. Plantain appears everywhere, boiled, fried into sweet ripe slices, or roasted; the north leans more on grains, on the stiff porridge called tuo zaafi and on millet and yam. Street food is a delight, from grilled tilapia and kebabs to roasted plantain with groundnuts and the spiced bean dishes sold from roadside pots. Yam holds a place of honour, celebrated at harvest festivals as the first and oldest of foods.
Hospitality is a point of pride, and a visitor is always offered food and drink. To arrive at a Ghanaian home at mealtime is to be invited to eat, and the polite guest accepts at least a little, for to refuse outright can seem cold. Food is eaten with the right hand, especially the pounded staples, the left kept away from the dish, and it is good manners to wash the hands before and after. Water or a drink is offered to a guest almost at once. In the Muslim north alcohol is set aside, while across the country palm wine and the local beers and spirits accompany celebrations, and a few drops are first poured to the ancestors. To share a meal in Ghana is to be made part of the household.
Dress
Ghana is famous for its cloth, and dress is a daily pleasure and a language of its own. The most celebrated is kente, the bright, handwoven cloth of the Ashanti and Ewe, made of narrow strips sewn edge to edge into bold geometric patterns, each colour and design carrying a meaning and a name. Kente was once the cloth of kings and is still worn for the grandest occasions, a band of it draped over the shoulder marking a graduate, a chief, or a celebrant. Alongside it are the printed wax cloths worn across the country in brilliant colour and pattern, sewn into matching outfits for families and groups, and the Adinkra cloth stamped with symbols, each a proverb in visual form.
Each people and occasion has its proper dress. A chief appears in rich kente or in a great patterned cloth wound around the body in the manner of a toga, with gold ornaments and sandals; ordinary men too may wear cloth wrapped this way for ceremony, or the smock and tunic of the north, a striped handwoven shirt worn with pride and adopted as a mark of Ghanaian identity. Women wear the wrapper and matching blouse, often with a head wrap, and dress with care and flair. For weddings, funerals, festivals, and church, Ghanaians turn out in their finest, and matching cloth sewn for a family or a group is a common and cheerful sight.
The colours themselves carry meaning, nowhere more than at funerals, where black and red mark mourning and white marks the celebration of a long life. In daily and working life, Western dress is common in the cities, suits and shirts in the office, but fine traditional wear is equally respected and often preferred for important days. Modesty is valued, more strictly in the Muslim north and at religious places, and a neat, well-kept appearance is admired everywhere, for Ghanaians notice dress and take care over it. To dress well for an occasion is to honour it and the people gathered.
Festivals
The Ghanaian year is full of festivals, each people keeping its own, and they are among the most vivid windows into the culture. Many mark the harvest and the ancestors. The Ashanti keep Akwasidae every six weeks, a great court day at Kumasi when the Asantehene receives homage amid gold and drumming; they also hold the Adae Kese, a grand version of it. The Ga of Accra keep Homowo, whose name means hooting at hunger, recalling a famine overcome and giving thanks for the harvest with a special meal and the sprinkling of food for the ancestors. The Ewe of the Volta keep Hogbetsotso, recalling their migration and freedom, and the northern peoples keep the Damba and the Fire festival, with drumming, riding, and display.
The shape of a festival is much the same across the country: the pouring of libation to God and the ancestors, the gathering of chiefs in state under their umbrellas and amid their drummers, processions and durbar parades, drumming and the dances proper to each people, the Akan's graceful Adowa, the Ewe's driving Agbadza, the Ga's lively Kpanlogo. Families come home from the cities and from abroad, debts and quarrels are meant to be settled, and the community renews itself before its rulers and its ancestors. A festival is a homecoming and a thanksgiving as much as a celebration.
Over the traditional calendar lie the great religious feasts. Christmas and Easter empty the cities as Christians travel home, and Christmas is a long, joyful season of church, family, and feasting. The two Muslim Eids are the high points of the northern year, kept with prayer, new clothes, and the sharing of meat. National days are kept as well, above all Independence Day on the sixth of March, which Ghana celebrates with pride as the day it led Africa toward freedom. Through all of them runs the same spirit of company, colour, music, and the gathering of the whole community.
Marriage and weddings
Marriage in Ghana joins two families, and the central event is the traditional wedding, the customary rite that makes the marriage real in the eyes of the community. It begins with the knocking, when the groom and his elders come formally to the bride's family, knocking at the door with drinks and gifts to ask for her hand and to open the talks. If the answer is yes, the two families agree the bride price and a marriage list of gifts, the drinks, cloth, money, and jewellery the groom's family brings, which is a mark of respect and of the man's seriousness rather than a purchase. The customary wedding itself is a warm family ceremony of prayers, libation, the presenting of the gifts, blessings from the elders, and feasting, drumming, and dancing.
The matrilineal way of the Akan shapes marriage in its own fashion. Because a child belongs to the mother's clan, the bond between a man and his sister's children is strong, and the wife's family keeps a lasting claim and role. Marriage must be outside one's own clan, the families investigate each other's standing and health before agreeing, and the union is understood as a tie between two lineages that both have an interest in keeping it well. Among the Ewe and the northern peoples, who reckon descent through the father, the arrangements differ in detail but the family-to-family character is the same.
Most couples follow the customary wedding with a second, religious ceremony, a white wedding in church for Christians or a Muslim rite, often on a separate and grander day, so that a Ghanaian wedding can be two celebrations in one. The whole affair is communal and generous, with many guests, matching cloth sewn for the families, and abundant food and music. Behind it lie the older expectations of marrying within the faith, gaining both families' blessing, and raising children, though in the cities young people increasingly choose their own partners and shape the customs to modern life. For all the change, the traditional rite and the joining of families remain at the heart of marriage in Ghana.
Business and the workplace
Business in Ghana is built on relationships and good manners, and it moves at a courteous, unhurried pace. A meeting opens with warm greetings, handshakes with the right hand, and friendly questions about health and family before any business is raised, and to push straight to the matter at hand reads as cold. Trust and personal rapport count for a great deal, and time spent building them is the real foundation of a deal. Ghanaians are polite and reserved in manner, and bad news or disagreement is delivered gently and often indirectly, wrapped in soft words or proverb, so a visitor should listen for what is meant as well as what is said and avoid blunt or confrontational speech.
The workplace runs on age and rank, and seniority commands respect. The most senior person is greeted and deferred to first, titles such as Doctor and Director are used with care, and decisions tend to flow from the top while juniors are slow to contradict an elder or a superior openly. Patience is essential, for things take time and consensus is valued over haste. On the clock, expectations are double-edged: Ghanaians speak ruefully of African time, and meetings may start late, so flexibility is wise, yet a visitor does well to be punctual themselves as a sign of seriousness and respect.
Dress for business is neat and formal, suits and good shirts in the corporate world, with fine traditional cloth equally respected and often worn for important occasions. Hospitality threads through business as through all of life: refreshments are offered and should be accepted, a shared meal builds the relationship, and warmth, patience, and respect open doors. Above all, the visitor who treats Ghanaian colleagues with courtesy, takes time over the relationship, and meets the country's calm, dignified manner in kind will find business done on a foundation of genuine goodwill.
Gift giving
Gifts in Ghana are part of hospitality, respect, and ceremony, and they are given warmly rather than as a formal transaction. When visiting a home, it is gracious to bring a small token, drinks, fruit, biscuits, or something for the children, and a guest from abroad is welcomed with something from their own country. At the great occasions, gifts are central: the drinks and goods of the marriage list, the presents for a new baby, and the donations brought to a funeral, where giving toward the costs is an expected and important act of solidarity with the bereaved family.
The manner of giving follows the rules of respect. A gift is offered and received with the right hand or with both hands, never with the left alone, and given with a few warm words. A gift may not be opened at once in front of the giver, so a guest should not expect it to be unwrapped on the spot. Drinks hold a special place in Ghanaian custom: a bottle of schnapps or other spirits, or a crate of drinks, is the classic gift to bring when approaching elders, a chief, or a family on a serious matter, and it is used in the libation poured to God and the ancestors, so that the gift itself becomes part of the blessing.
A few sensitivities are worth keeping in mind. To approach a chief or an elder empty-handed on a matter of importance is a misstep; the customary drinks open the way. In the Muslim north, gifts of alcohol are out of place and should be avoided. In business, a modest gift to mark a relationship is welcome, but a large or pointed one can be misread and is best avoided. As everywhere in Ghana, it is the warmth and the respect behind a gift, far more than its cost, that are seen and valued.
Etiquette and what to avoid
The heart of Ghanaian etiquette is respect, above all for elders, chiefs, and the proper forms of courtesy. Greet fully and never skip a greeting; address elders and seniors by title; let the senior person be greeted, served, and seated first; and show deference to age in word and manner. Ghanaians prize dignity, patience, and calm, and they dislike loud anger, rudeness, and open confrontation, which lose face on both sides; a soft word, a smile, and good humour carry the day. To behave with quiet courtesy is to be seen as a person of good character, for individual conduct is felt to reflect on one's whole family.
The single strongest taboo is the left hand. Across Ghana the left hand is regarded as unclean and should not be used to eat, to give or receive anything, to shake hands, or to point or wave; the right hand, or both hands together, is used instead, and a visitor should take real care with this. Other cautions follow from respect: do not point at people or beckon with a single finger; ask before photographing people, chiefs, shrines, or ceremonies; remove shoes and dress modestly at a mosque or a shrine; and treat chiefs, elders, and sacred things, the stools, the regalia, the festivals, with careful deference, approaching a chief through the proper channels.
In conversation, Ghanaians are warm and friendly but value tact, and indirectness is the norm; harsh, blunt, or boastful speech jars. Politics and the rivalries between peoples or parties are better listened to than pronounced upon by a visitor. Public affection between couples is kept modest, and dress and behaviour at funerals and in church or mosque should be sober and respectful. Meet the country's gentleness with gentleness, honour its respect for age and tradition, mind the right hand, and the famous Ghanaian welcome opens easily and warmly.
Death and the great funerals
The funeral is the grandest event in Ghanaian life, greater often than a wedding, and it lies close to the heart of the culture. Death is met not only with grief but with a vast, costly, days-long celebration of the life, for the dead are understood to pass into the world of the ancestors, from where they watch over the living, and a fitting send-off is a duty owed to them and a matter of the family's honour. Funerals are public events that draw the whole town, and across much of the country a weekend rarely passes without one; people attend the funerals of neighbours, colleagues, and distant kin as a matter of course, and a great share of family money goes toward them.
The rites unfold over time. Among the Akan a one-week observance is held seven days after the death to confirm the arrangements and set the tone, with the main funeral following weeks or even months later, once the family has gathered the money and the far-flung relatives. The funeral proper centres on a Saturday: a wake the night before, the burial, and then a great gathering of mourning, drumming, dancing, eating, and the receiving of guests and their donations. Mourners dress in the funeral colours, black and red for grief and for an immediate loss, white or black-and-white when the dead was old, for the death of an elder who lived long and left children is felt as much as a triumph as a sorrow. Posters announce the funeral, families wear matching cloth, and the scale of it all speaks of the family's love and standing.
Ghana is famous, too, for one extraordinary custom of the Ga people around Accra: the figurative coffin, carved and painted in the shape of something that captured the life of the dead, a fish for a fisherman, a plane for one who longed to travel, a cocoa pod, a car, a hen with her chicks. These works, made first by carpenters of Teshie, have become known around the world as an art form, and they catch the deeper Ghanaian spirit toward death, that a funeral is a final, loving portrait of a life. Beneath Christian and Muslim rites alike runs the old reverence for the ancestors, honoured with libation and remembered at anniversaries, above all the one-year memorial, so that the dead are never truly gone from the life of the family.
The nation today
Ghana is a republic on the West African coast, of some thirty-five million people, with its capital and largest city at Accra on the southern shore and the Ashanti city of Kumasi, seat of the Asantehene, as its second great centre. English is the official language, spoken across a country of many tongues, and the people are overwhelmingly Christian in the south and Muslim in the north. Ghana is widely admired as one of the most peaceful and stable democracies in Africa, where governments change at the ballot box and the rule of law holds, and it carries the memory of having led the continent toward freedom.
That history is its pride. Long known as the Gold Coast for its gold, the land held old kingdoms, Bonoman and Dagbon and, above all, the gold-rich Ashanti empire, before the British took control of the coast and, after long resistance, the interior. In 1957, under Kwame Nkrumah, Ghana became the first colony in sub-Saharan Africa to win its independence, a beacon for the whole continent and a leading voice for Pan-African unity. The decades that followed brought coups and hard times, but since 1992 the country has held to multiparty democracy, with repeated peaceful handovers of power, and it is held up across Africa as an example of recovery and reform.
Today Ghana lives by gold, cocoa, and oil, a cocoa it has grown since the nineteenth century and a gold that gave the land its old name, with its money the cedi and much of its trade and many of its people reaching out to the wider world. It faces real challenges, of debt, of a cost of living that has climbed steeply, and of a north that lags the wealthier south. Yet through it all the culture holds firm and warm: the chiefs still hold court, the funerals still gather the towns, libation is still poured to the ancestors, the cloth is still woven, and the famous Ghanaian welcome still greets the stranger. To know Ghana is to meet one of Africa's steadiest and most gracious nations, proud of its past and at ease with itself.