By: Edzorna Francis Mensah
The Ghana Statistical Service Thematic Report on Migration from the 2021 Population and Housing Census has revealed that, Ghana is currently a migrant sending, transiting, and receiving country as report has shown that, Migrants constituted 28.9% out of the total population of 30,832,019 enumerated under the period under review.
Greater Accra is the leading migrants’ destination region and ten Regions out of the sixteen lost population through migration with the Volta Region posting the highest.
According to a report launched in Accra on Thursday, March 9, 2023, female migrants mostly move due to marriage and family reunions whereas males move for economic reasons and the two main destinations for Ghanaian emigrants are Europe and America.
The Migrant population (28.9%) has a higher proportion of educated persons than the non-migrant population, (71.1%) and non-Ghanaian population are mostly into sales and service and are also largely self-employed without employees.
Child migrants are mostly engaged in Agriculture and sales and services and Migrant children aged 5-17 constitute 18 percent of the total population. Whereas Migrants are mostly found in rural areas than urban, the age of the Emigrant population peaks at 25 to 39 years.
In a remarks by Chief Director for the Ministry of the Interior, Mrs. Adelaide Anno-Kumi, commended the Service for their efforts to engage stakeholders in order to promote uptake of the census data for decision-making.
“The Ministry of the Interior counts so much on the rich data emanating from the 2021 Population and Housing Census to address the issues relating to migration in the country to move forward with our sectorial policies and programmes” she said.
The objective of this report is to describe, analyse and provide explanation for patterns, trends, and the future perspective of both internal and external migration in Ghana.
Data for this report came mainly from the 2021 PHC supported with others from the last two censuses, 2000 and 2010.
Other supporting information, such as causes of migration and changes therein were sourced from previous studies on migration.
Variables for internal migration were derived from Nationality; Birthplace; Place of Residence Variables for external migration were derived from the Section on Emigration.
