Flag of Ghana.html



Flag of Ghana

Use	National flag and state and naval ensign
Proportion	2:3
Adopted	1957(readopted 1966)
Design	Horizontal tricolour of red, gold, and green, with a black star in the center
Designed by	Theodosia Okoh
Use	Civil ensign
Proportion	2:3
Design	A red field with the national flag, fimbriated in black, in the canton

The flag of Ghana was adopted in 1957. It has a horizontal tricolour of red, gold, and green, charged with a black five-pointed star in the center of the middle stripe. It was replaced with a variant with a white stripe in the middle from 1964 to 1966. Kwame Nkrumah, Ghana's first leader after independence, was the first to introduce the politically symbolic Pan-African colors- red, yellow, green, and black- into African flags. They were ultimately derived from the 19th century Ethiopian colors and have now become associated with the Rastafarian movement in the West Indies. The flag also became the inspiration of numerous other African flags during the period of decolonization. The black star in the center is the star of African freedom. Red recalls the blood shed by freedom fighters, yellow represents mineral wealth, and green is symbolic of the country's rich forests.

The flag was designed by Mrs. Theodosia Okoh to replace the flag of the United Kingdom upon attainment of independence in 1957. It consists of the Pan-African colours of Ethiopia, i.e., red, gold, and green, in horizontal stripes with a black five-pointed star in the centre of the gold stripe. The Ghanaian flag was the first African flag after the flag of Ethiopia to feature these colours.

The red represents the blood of those who died in the country's struggle for independence, the gold represents the mineral wealth of the country, the green symbolises the country's rich forests and natural wealth, and the black star stands for the lodestar of African freedom. (The black star was adopted from the flag of the Black Star Line, a shipping line incorporated by Marcus Garvey that operated from 1919 to 1922,¹ and gives the Ghana national football team their nickname, the Black Stars.)

The civil ensign is a red flag with the national flag in a black-fimbriated canton.

Air force ensign and civil air ensign

The ensign of the Ghana Air Force

The Ghanaian civil air ensign

The Ghana Air Force has its own ensign which incorporates the flag of Ghana. Civil aviation in Ghana is represented by the national civil air ensign. It is a standard light blue field with the Ghanaian flag in the canton. It is charged in the fly with either a red, yellow and green roundel (in the case of the military ensign) or black five-pointed star (in the case of the civil ensign). they have both been used since independence, and the subsequent founding of the Ghana Air Force in 1959.

Historic flags

Flag of the Union of African States (1959-1962)

National flag, 1964-1966. Flag ratio: 2:3

The flag of the Union of African States was modelled on Ghana's flag with two black stars. Later this was changed to be a black star representing every member nation (also two).

Originally Ghana and Guinea were the only members, but in May 1959 the third star was added to represent Mali. Nowhere specified how the stars were arranged, and it was possible that they were arranged in a triangle, although the three-in-a-line formation (as shown here) is more likely. ² It adopted a green, white and red tricolor with a central black star after this period, when political union was unclear, as was Ghana's internal politics.

References

External links

• Ghana at Flags of the World