The Republic of Ghana is located along the Gulf of Guinea and the Atlantic Ocean in the West African subregion. Formerly known as Gold Coast, the country is bordered by the Ivory Coast in the west, the Gulf of Guinea and the Atlantic Ocean in the south, Togo in the east, and Burkina Faso in the north.
The country is bestowed with precious metals, hydrocarbons, industrial minerals, and other natural resources. A middle income economy, Ghana is also one of the top producers of high-quality cocoa in the world.
Before Ghana gained its independence, it used the British West African pound currency issued by the West African Currency Board until July 1958, when the Bank of Ghana was established and released the Ghanaian pound banknotes that feature the Bank of Ghana building. In 1965, Ghana decided to leave the British colonial monetary system and introduced the cedi currency and its sub-unit “pesewa” as its legal tender. Banknotes of the 1965 issues bear a portrait of Dr. Kwame Nkrumah. When the Convention People’s Party government of Kwane Nkrumah was overthrown, the portrait of the president was taken off from the notes by the military government. The cedi was also revalued.
In 1979, a new set of notes bearing entirely new designs was issued and in 1996, the Bank of Ghana started releasing another family of notes in reduced sizes to make them more convenient to handle. In 2007, another set of notes that carry a combined portrait of the country’s “Big Six”, namely, Kwame Nkrumah, Ebenezer Ako Adjei, Edward Akufo-Addo, William Ofori Atta, Joseph Boakye Danquah, and Emmanuel Odarkwei Obetsebi-Lamptey, were introduced put into circulation. Finally, in 2019, the bank unveiled a new set of banknotes with enhanced durability and security features such as Crane’s RAPID windowed security thread, an improved golden iridescent gold bar stripes, and a watermark that shows Tetteh Quarshie, a cocoa pod, and an electrotype denomination.
