Gold Coast to Ghana

A coast named for gold

Direct sea trade with Europe began in the 15th century, and Portuguese, Dutch, British and other Europeans built forts along the coast to protect it. The trade was first about gold, which gave the future British colony its name, the Gold Coast; in the 17th century the focus shifted to the slave trade.^[1]

Borrowing an empire’s name

The Ghana empire was the first of the great medieval trading empires of West Africa, from the 7th to the 13th century. It lay between the Sahara and the headwaters of the Senegal and Niger rivers, in today’s southeastern Mauritania and Mali, and grew rich taxing the trade in salt from the north and gold from the south. Its rulers called it Wagadu; “ghana” was the king’s title.^[3] It declined from the 11th century and was absorbed into Mali in 1240.^[3]

When the Gold Coast won independence, it took that name. Britannica notes that the empire’s centre was about 800 km northwest of the new state and that it is “reasonably certain” none of the empire lay within its borders.^[3] The Gold Coast’s independence movement was led by Kwame Nkrumah, whose Convention People’s Party demanded immediate self-government from 1949.^[1]

Britain’s Ghana Independence Act of 7 February 1957 provided that the territories of the Gold Coast would, from 6 March 1957, form part of the Queen’s dominions “under the name of Ghana”.^[2] It was the first African country south of the Sahara to win independence from colonial rule, and more than 30 others followed within a decade.^[1]

“shall as from that day together form part of Her Majesty’s dominions under the name of Ghana”^[2]