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Ghana has 16 regions, and most maps of it still show 10. The country split four of its regions in 2019, which is recent enough that a great deal of what is printed, taught and drawn is the old map, and the new names are built out of the old ones in a way that makes them easy to mix up: Western and Western North, Northern and North East, Bono and Bono East. This page is all sixteen, the groups worth learning them in, and what tells you which one you are standing in.
The region is the top tier of Ghana's administration. Each has a regional minister appointed by the president and a regional capital, and below it sit the districts, municipalities and metropolitan areas that actually run local services. Unlike Tunisia's governorates, only one region, Greater Accra, is named after its capital: the rest are named for a direction, a river or the people who live there, so knowing where Tamale is does not tell you that it is the capital of Northern.
The number that matters is 16. From 1987 until 2019 Ghana had ten regions. Referendums held in December 2018 approved six new ones, created in February 2019, all by splitting an existing region:
Ashanti, Central, Eastern, Greater Accra, Upper East and Upper West were not touched. A map with Brong-Ahafo on it, or with Northern running all the way to the Ivorian border, is a map from before 2019.
A Ghanaian plate names a region. A standard plate opens with a two-letter code for the region that registered the vehicle, followed by a number and the last two digits of the year: GR and its variants for Greater Accra, AS for Ashanti, and so on. The codes were handed out for the ten old regions and a plate keeps its code for life, so an older car can carry a code for a region that no longer exists, and BA on a plate says Brong-Ahafo, which is now three regions.
The traps are nearly all in the names.
Western is on the coast and Western North is not. Western runs along the sea from the Ivorian border to beyond Takoradi; Western North is the forested strip inland of it, along the same border, with its capital at Sefwi Wiawso.
North East is not the north east corner of the country. It is a band between Northern and Upper East, reaching the Togolese border, with its capital at Nalerigu; the corner itself is Upper East. Northern is the larger region below both of them, around Tamale.
Bono East is not east of Bono in any simple way. Bono sits along the Ivorian border around Sunyani; Bono East is the much larger region between it and Lake Volta, around Techiman and Kintampo. Ahafo, the third piece of Brong-Ahafo, is the small one to the south, next to Ashanti.
Oti is the long thin one. It runs up the Togolese border from the north of Volta Region to the edge of Northern, and it is the region that most often goes missing from quizzes, because until 2019 it was the top half of Volta.
Those four groups are this game's, not Ghana's, and they follow one rule: each is made of whole regions from before 2019. So none of the six new regions is separated from the region it was cut out of, and a player who knows the old map of ten finds each new name where its parent used to be. That is why Oti sits with the East rather than the North, where its latitude would put it: until 2019 it was Volta.
The North is the savannah: the old Northern Region, now Northern, Savannah and North East, with Upper East and Upper West above them. It holds about two fifths of the country's land and a little under a fifth of its people. The Middle Belt is Ashanti and the old Brong-Ahafo, which is the forest heartland around Kumasi shading into savannah at its northern edge. The West is Western, Western North and Central: the coast from the Ivorian border to beyond Cape Coast, and the cocoa and gold country behind it. The East is Greater Accra, Eastern, Volta and Oti: the capital, the hills and the Akosombo dam behind it, and everything east of Lake Volta up to the border with Togo.
Savannah: the whole west of the old Northern Region, from the Black Volta and the Ivorian border across to the western shore of Lake Volta, with its capital at Damongo. It is the largest of the 16 by some way and among the least populated, and it holds Mole National Park, the country's largest. If you are in open savannah in the west of Ghana and it is not up against Burkina Faso, this is the likeliest answer.
Oti: the long strip up the Togolese border, from the north of Volta Region to the edge of Northern, with its capital at Dambai on the lake. It was the northern half of Volta until 2019, and it is the region to check any Ghana map against: a map with no Oti on it is a map of the ten regions.
Greater Accra: a short stretch of coast around Accra and Tema, much the smallest region on the map and, with Ashanti, one of the two most populous. It is the easy answer for anything unmistakably metropolitan, and the coastal plain here is flatter and drier than anywhere else on the Ghanaian coast, with grassland and scrub rather than forest behind the beaches.
16, since February 2019. Before that Ghana had ten regions, from 1987 onwards. Referendums in December 2018 approved six new regions, all created by splitting existing ones: Savannah and North East out of Northern, Bono East and Ahafo out of Brong-Ahafo (the remainder of which was renamed Bono), Oti out of Volta, and Western North out of Western.
Accra (Greater Accra), Kumasi (Ashanti), Cape Coast (Central), Koforidua (Eastern), Sekondi-Takoradi (Western), Sefwi Wiawso (Western North), Ho (Volta), Dambai (Oti), Sunyani (Bono), Techiman (Bono East), Goaso (Ahafo), Tamale (Northern), Damongo (Savannah), Nalerigu (North East), Bolgatanga (Upper East) and Wa (Upper West).
Yes. A standard Ghanaian plate opens with a two-letter code for the region the vehicle was registered in, then a number, then the last two digits of the year of registration. GR and related codes are Greater Accra and AS is Ashanti, for example. The codes were assigned for the ten regions that existed before 2019, and a plate keeps its code, so older cars can carry codes for regions that have since been split.
It was split into three regions in 2019. The part around Sunyani kept the older name Bono, the larger eastern part around Techiman and Kintampo became Bono East, and the smaller southern part next to Ashanti became Ahafo. No current region is called Brong-Ahafo.
Savannah, in the north west, is the largest by area. Greater Accra is much the smallest, and is also one of the two most populous regions, alongside Ashanti. The five northern regions together cover about two fifths of the country and hold a little under a fifth of its population.
The pairs whose names were built out of each other in 2019: Western and Western North, Bono and Bono East, and Northern and North East. North East is especially misleading, since it is not in the north east corner of the country: Upper East is. Upper East and Upper West are the other obvious pair: both border Burkina Faso, and Upper West is the one whose western edge is the Black Volta.
English, which is Ghana's official language. Place names are in the local languages, so the words on a sign are English and the names on it are Akan, Ewe, Ga, Dagbani and many others, and the names themselves are often the best clue to which part of the country you are in.
The other African trainers here are Nigeria States, Kenya Counties, Egypt Governorates, Morocco Regions, Tunisia Governorates, South Africa Provinces and South Africa Dialing Codes. For administrative maps of a similar size, try Germany States, Poland Voivodeships and UK Nations and Regions.
