This post presents carefully relevant and commonly needed statistics on Housing in Ghana. This post will be a valuable resource if you do not have time to dive through countless published reports and publications on housing in Ghana. The blog post will draw primarily from the 2010 population and housing census reports. But will be complemented with other more recently available data.
The 2021 Population and Housing Census (PHC) will provide the most updated data on housing.
Until the analytical reports are available, the 2010 census, though dated, remains the most comprehensive data source on housing in the country.
1. Current population (2021)
Preliminary data from the 2021 PHC released by the Ghana Statistical Service show that the country’s total population is 30,792,608, of which 50.7% are females and 49.3% are males.
The number of households reported in the country was 3.4 million.
2. Number of houses and regional distribution in Ghana
The 2010 PHC reported 3,392,745 as the total number of houses in the country. Most homes (16.9%) were located within the Ashanti Region. The region also had the second-highest number of households living per house in Ghana (2.0), behind the Greater Accra region (2.2). The Upper West region had the least number of families living in a house (2.4).
Preliminary data from the 2021 Population and Housing Census released by the Ghana Statistical Service are not yet comparable with the data from 2010. This situation is because the initial data reports enumerated structures. According to the report, 10,661,421 structures were listed, of which 57.0% were used for residential purposes only. Another 2.6% were used for other purposes in addition to residential.
About 78.7% (9,837,153 structures) were conventional structures, 8.0% were metal containers, 9.7% were wooden structures, 2.8% were kiosks and 0.9% others.
When the Analytical Reports of the 2021 PHC are published, this post will be updated accordingly.
3. Types of houses in Ghana
For census purposes, the Ghana Statistical Services reports ten types of dwelling. These are; separate houses, semi-detached houses, flats/apartments, compound house (rooms), huts/buildings (same compound), huts/buildings (different compound), tents, improvised homes (kiosk/container etc.), living quarters attached to office/shop and uncompleted buildings.
Dwellings or living quarters are the spaces occupied by a household and does not necessarily refer to an entire house. A house occupied by two families would be counted as two dwellings.
Most dwellings (51.5%) in the country were rooms in compound houses (formally single-storey tenement houses). This was followed by separate houses (28.7%), semi-detached houses (7.1%), flat/apartments (4.7%) and huts/buildings (same compound) (3.1%). The remaining typologies constituted 4.9% of dwelling units.
The compound house is also the primary housing type across all regions. The share of compound houses as a proportion of the total stock of dwelling units ranged from 41% in the Volta region to 63.7% in the Northern Region. Even in urban areas, 58.7% of dwellings were compound houses.
4. What are Ghanaian houses made of?
Across the country, 57.5% of dwelling units in the country have cement blocks /concrete walls. Another 34.2% have mud, mud brick or earth-based walls. For roofs, most (71.4%) of dwellings have aluminium metal sheets, while 13% have slate or asbestos roofs. The rest have wooden, roofing tiles, thatch and bamboo roofs, among other materials.
5. Housing tenure types
Most households in Ghana own their houses, but this number is reducing in favour of renting. Families who owned their homes reduced from 57.4% in 2000 to 47.2% in 2010. On the other hand, households renting increased from 22.1% in 2000 to 31.1% in 2010. Rental tenure is expected to increase further over time.
Rental tenure appears as a predominantly urban phenomenon—the more urban a region, the greater the share of renting households. Most households in the three northern regions (as of 2010), primarily rural, also recorded the highest proportion of homeowners―Upper East (86.8%), Northern Region (83.2%) and Upper West (82.5%).
6. Room occupancy
Room occupancy is indicative of the space available per person. According to the Ghana Planning and Zoning Standards, the recommended maximum number of persons per room is two persons or two persons plus a child per room. Where there are more people per room than the recommended, that room is overcrowded. The average household size was 3.8 persons in 2010. In 2021, it reduced to 3.6, according to the 2010 population and housing census.
Most households in Ghana either occupy one room (44.5%) or two rooms (24.6%). Families in rural areas have more rooms available to them than those in urban areas. About 51% of households in urban Ghana live in single rooms (51.4%). In rural areas, this proportion is 35.9%.
There are also regional differences in room density. For instance, within the Ashanti region, 57.8% of households occur single rooms, although the average household size in the region is 4.1. In the Upper East Region, which has the most negligible share of families living in single rooms (14.3%), 6.8% of households occupy nine or more rooms, the highest in the country.
References
Unless specified, all data is from the 2010 PHC
Ghana Statistical Service. (2014). 2010 Population and Housing Census Housing in Ghana—National Analytical Report. Ghana Statistical Service.
