What I knew about Ghana before today

Very little actually, I knew roughly where Ghana is on a map. Ghana is just slightly smaller than the UK. Ghana is in Western Africa, bordering Togo to the East, Côte d'Ivoire to the West and Burkina Faso to the North.

What was the last war or conflict Ghana took part in?

Ghana is actually currently involved in the Western Togoland Rebellion - this is essentially a conflict brought about by an area of Eastern Ghana declaring independence from Ghana. It’s striking how little international coverage there is of this situation other than this DW article from last September.

A Bizarre fact about Ghana

Tonight’s bizarre fact about Ghana was going to be from a BBC Pidgin article (yes, I didn’t know about Pidgin either). The fact I was going to wow you with was that the fastest man in the world to run backwards was the Ghanaian, Ferdie Adoboe. He set the world record for the fastest 100-yard backwards sprint which he complete in 12.7 seconds around 1983. This fact became slightly less fascinating when I learned there are a whole host of various backwards sprinting records and this is just one of them.

BBC Pidgin also goes on to explain that Ghana is home to the largest man-made lake in the world. Lake Volta. It’s huge - by surface area. Unfortunately, it’s not the largest by volume however, this is Lake Kariba on the Zambezi River.

So, by some very selective measures, Ghana can lay claim to the fastest backwards sprint and the largest man-made lake.

Was Ghana a former colony?

Yes, unsurprisingly so. Ghana was colonised by the Portuguese, Swedish, Dutch, and Danish among others before becoming part of the British Empire as four separate colonial territories: Gold Coast, Ashanti, the Northern Territories and British Togoland. Ghana only became a unified nation when it finally became independent in 1957.

The fact that Ghana gained independence from colonial rule in 1957 is pretty significant as it was the becoming the first sub-Saharan nation to do so. Maybe this should have been today’s bizarre fact…

What’s Ghana’s National dish?

Ghanian food looks delicious. Fufu is often considered the closest food that comes to being Ghana's national dish. Fufu is a doughy-like ball made from boiled, mashed up plantain. I’m definitely doing fufu with my description.