Transport and infrastructure in Ghana
Our listing of the primary types of transport compares the infrastructure of Ghana with the average of all countries in Africa. The traffic routes have noticeable defects in many places and are often not in particularly good condition.In terms of the length of its rail network, Ghana ranks 121st in the world with 0.03 meters per inhabitant. In total, the rail network is 947 kilometers long.
The waterways listed refer to inland traffic on rivers and canals. The number of ports includes those located on the 539 km of coastline. In 2020, about 1.05 million freight containers were transported.
› Airports in Ghana
Back to overview: Ghana
Road traffic
The network of roads and highways has a total length of 65,725 km. For each of the country's 32.83 million inhabitants, this corresponds to 2.00 meters. This puts Ghana in 174th place in the global ranking. However, the country's size and population density of around 138 inhabitants per km² must also be taken into account. Countries with fewer inhabitants in the same or even larger area naturally achieve quite different values here and have to connect remote areas to the transport network despite a smaller population.With an average of 7381 traffic fatalities per year (2013 - 2019), road traffic in Ghana is considered quite dangerous. This corresponds to 24.6 accident fatalities per 100,000 inhabitants per year. By comparison, this figure is 12.3 in the USA and 17.0 worldwide.
In Ghana, traffic drives on the right-hand side of the road, i.e. people drive in the right-hand lane and overtake on the left. Oncoming traffic comes toward you on the left side. This regulation was enforced on August 4th, 1974. Here you can also find an overview of all countries with left-hand traffic.
Ghana | |||
total | per 1 mio inhabitants | per km² | |
---|---|---|---|
Roadways | 65,700 km | 2,001.80 km | 275.53 m |
Railroads | 900 km | 28.84 km | 3.97 m |
Waterways | 1,293 km | 39.38 km | 5.42 m |
Commercial harbors | 51 | 1.55 | 0.000 |
Airports | 5 | 0.15 | 0.021 |
Africa | |||
total | per 1 mio inhabitants | per km² | |
---|---|---|---|
Roadways | 2,997,800 km | 2,151.40 km | 98.86 m |
Railroads | 88,600 km | 63.57 km | 2.92 m |
Waterways | 68,400 km | 49.09 km | 2.26 m |
Commercial harbors | 7,905 | 5.67 | 0.000 |
Airports | 413 | 0.30 | 0.000 |
Data sources used
• Global Health Observatory Data Repository (World Health Organization)• UNCTAD
• Internation Union of Railways (UIC)
• CIA Factbook
• OECD Statistics
• Wikipedia (german)