Ghana

REGION: West Africa
CAPITAL CITY: Accra
POPULATION: Approx. 23 million
LAND AREA: The size of Tennessee and Kentucky combined

Years of economic restructuring and democratization have made Ghana, in the opinion of many, one of the most promising countries in Africa today. In 1957, Ghana became the first of Sub-Saharan Africa's colonized countries to gain independence (from Britain). In 1992, after more than a decade of movement toward democracy, Ghana adopted a milestone constitution allowing multiparty politics and paving the way for free elections ever since. Internally stable, Ghana also has contributed to regional stability by means, for example, of peacekeeping troops. Ghana is the world's second-largest producer of cocoa; and major offshore oil reserves, the discovery of which was announced in mid-2007, are likely to spur the country's economic growth over the coming years. Like their neighbors Africa-wide, most Ghanaians are farmers — and most of those are small landholders who operate at the subsistence level.