Country Guide

Ghana is situated in West Africa with a coastline on the Gulf of Guinea. In area it is about the size of the United Kingdom and extends between 5° and 11°N. It is bordered on the west by Ivory Coast, on the north by Burkina, and on the east by Togo.

Ghana experiences the same sequence of weather and climate around the year as that described for Nigeria and adjacent countries: the coastal region has two rainy seasons, one peaking in May or June, the other in October, but in the north there is a single rainy season starting in May or June.

There is, however, one local peculiarity about the distribution of rainfall in Ghana. Rainfall is lower on the coast than it is a short distance inland. This is thought to be a consequence of two local features which apply to this part of the West African coastline.

First, at the time when rainfall is heaviest in much of West Africa the waters offshore are unusually cool for near-equatorial latitudes; a cool current appears on the ocean surface. Second, the coast here follows a direction from west-southwest to east-northeast and is parallel with the prevailing winds.

The table for Accra is representative of this drier coastal strip. Farther inland rainfall increases.

In the northern half of the country there is an increasing tendency for a single rainy season and the table for Tamale is representative of this region. Annual rainfall is lower here as also in northern Nigeria.

As a consequence of the lower rainfall and less cloud, Accra is rather sunnier than many other places on this coast; hours of sunshine average about five a day during the rainy season and as much as seven to eight hours during the drier months. Sunshine hours are reduced in the wetter districts inland but increase again in the drier regions of northern Ghana.