90.41% turnout · 99.68% yes
The highest yes vote of all six.
Ghana-Net.com · Regions & Politics · 1957 to 2019
For more than thirty years every Ghanaian schoolchild learned ten regions. Then, on 27 December 2018, people in four of them voted to split, and within two months Ghana had sixteen. Older maps, guidebooks and even some government websites are still wrong. This page explains how the regions grew from five at independence, why six new ones were created, who voted and who did not, and what the new regional capitals have actually received since.
Every region in Ghana has a political birth. None of them was drawn purely for administration.
Ten, and frozen: for the next 35 years the map did not change. Two generations grew up with ten regions, and the 1992 Constitution made changing it deliberately difficult.
The demands were old. Parts of the Northern, Volta, Brong-Ahafo and Western regions had campaigned for decades, some since the 1960s, complaining that they were too big, too far from their regional capitals, and neglected in favour of the areas close to those capitals. A farmer in Bole or Yeji could travel most of a day to reach Tamale or Sunyani for a government office.
The NPP promised new regions in its 2016 campaign. After winning, President Akufo-Addo created a Ministry of Regional Reorganisation and Development and, in October 2017, a Commission of Inquiry under retired Supreme Court judge Stephen Alan Brobbey. The commission toured the country, received petitions for more new regions than it could support, and in June 2018 recommended six.
The critics: opponents said new regions meant new bureaucracies Ghana could not afford, and some accused the government of redrawing the map for electoral advantage. In the Volta Region the Oti proposal was especially divisive, because it took the Guan and other northern Volta peoples away from a region many Ewe saw as a single historic unit.
Under Article 5 of the Constitution, a new region needs a referendum in which at least 50 per cent of registered voters take part and at least 80 per cent vote yes. The Electoral Commission decided that only voters in the areas of the proposed new regions would vote, not the whole of the old region they were leaving. That decision was the most controversial of all: people in the rest of Volta, for example, had no say in losing half their region.
The highest yes vote of all six.
The highest No vote of the six, still under 1 per cent.
Techiman finally became a regional capital.
Gonjaland as a region, with Damongo as capital.
The Mamprusi heartland, with Nalerigu as capital.
Still far above the 50 per cent the Constitution requires.
Too good to be true? Results of 99 per cent invite questions. Election observers reported irregularities in some places, and the Electoral Commission promised to investigate staff involved. No one seriously disputes that the large majorities in these areas wanted their own regions; the dispute was always about who was allowed to vote. On 1 February 2019 the President made six constitutional instruments, C.I. 112 to C.I. 117, creating the new regions, and they were launched in the following weeks.
Northern Volta, along the Volta Lake and the Togo border: Guan, Konkomba, Akyode, Nchumburu and other peoples. The Volta Region kept Ho and the Ewe south.
The largest region by area: Gonjaland, Mole National Park, Larabanga and the ancient mud mosques.
The Mamprusi kingdom, seat of the Nayiri, with Walewale and Gambaga. The Northern Region kept Tamale and Dagbon, including Yendi.
Techiman's great market town, Kintampo, Nkoranza, Atebubu and the lake port of Yeji. Nearby: Buoyem caves and Boabeng-Fiema.
The smallest of the new regions: cocoa country and the big Newmont gold mine at Kenyasi. What was left of Brong-Ahafo was renamed the Bono Region, still ruled from Sunyani.
The inland Sefwi cocoa and timber country, and Bia National Park. The Western Region kept the coast, the forts and the oil.
The new map produced one of the strangest episodes of the Fourth Republic. Four traditional areas, Santrokofi, Akpafu, Lolobi and Likpe, known together as SALL, were placed in the new Oti Region by the constitutional instrument that created it. But the law that drew the parliamentary constituencies still placed them in Hohoe constituency, in the Volta Region.
The result: in the general election of December 2020, the people of SALL could vote for a president but not for a Member of Parliament. For four years they had no one in Parliament. The anomaly was only settled when a new Guan constituency was created for the 2024 election, which is one reason Parliament grew from 275 to 276 seats.
The lesson: a map drawn fast leaves people out. SALL is the clearest example, but boundary disputes between old and new regions and districts still surface in several places.
The full list, with our page for every capital. The overview is on regions and capitals of Ghana.
Each new region received a regional minister, a regional coordinating council, a regional house of chiefs, regional police and health directorates, and a promised seed fund for development. On paper that brought government closer to the people.
On the ground, progress has been slow and uneven. Several of the new capitals began with regional offices in rented houses, schools and district buildings. Regional hospitals, administration blocks and roads were announced and are in many cases still unfinished. In towns like Damongo, Nalerigu and Dambai the change is visible in new offices, more traffic and higher land prices, but not yet in the infrastructure the referendums promised. Techiman and Sefwi Wiawso, already busy towns, adjusted more easily.
For travellers: the regions matter more than they seem. Tourist boards, museum offices, road signs, bus routes and news reports now use the new names. If a guidebook tells you Mole is in the Northern Region or Kintampo is in Brong-Ahafo, it was written before 2019.
The six new regions answered real, decades-old demands, and the people in them voted for them in huge numbers. That matters. But the process decided in advance who got a vote, left the people of SALL without a Member of Parliament for four years, and created six new administrations before the money to build them existed. Ghana's regions have always been drawn with politics in mind, from Brong-Ahafo in 1959 to Oti in 2019. The test of the 2019 split is not the referendum result. It is whether, ten years on, a farmer in Bole or Yeji really finds the state closer and better than before.
Verified: 29 September 2026. The referendum date, the constitutional thresholds and the results by region follow the Electoral Commission's declaration of 28 December 2018 as published by the Daily Graphic (North East figure rounded). The constitutional instruments C.I. 112 to C.I. 117 and the SALL timeline follow published legal analysis; the creation of the Guan constituency for 2024 follows election monitoring reports. The 1957–1983 region history follows standard accounts; dates for Greater Accra and the Upper West are given as ranges where sources differ. The state of the new capitals reflects Ghanaian press reports and our own travels. Corrections welcome and will be published in full.