A friend of ours recently wrote a great blog post entitled “Eight Lessons From My First Year Overseas.” As we approach our anniversary of one year overseas, we can agree with all eight of her points. One stuck out as something we are still working diligently on: #5 Know Your Currency
This is a 50 Ghanaian cedis bank note. However, depending on who you ask in Ghana’s East Mamprusi District, you could get up to five different answers as to what it is called. Why so complicated? First we’ve have to start with a short history lesson…
On the surface, the currency in Ghana seems pretty simple. You have cedis and pesewas; a structure set up like dollars and cents. The conversion rate to US dollars is simple too. It seems to hover between 3.8 to 4.2 cedis to the dollar which makes the math easy (divide by 4!).
Look at the history of currencies in Ghana and you’ll notice that the nation has had several major changes. Originally, cowry shells were the currency used in Ghana. When the British arrived, the British pound was introduced alongside the cowry shells and they eventually phased them out. Then the following timeline began:
1958: Ghana is now independent of British rule and spins off its own currency, the Ghanaian Pound
1965: Ghana creates the Ghana cedi and pesewa, dropping the pound – the rate is 2.4 cedis to one pound The word cedi is a Fante people of Ghana word for “cowry” and pesewa came from the smallest denomination of gold dust currency.
1967: Ghana creates a 2nd cedi called the New Cedi in which 2 equaled one 1 pound (conveniently dropping the recently deposed Kwame Nkrumah‘s image from all bills)
2007: a third (final?) cedi is introduced to address the rampant inflation that occurred over nearly four decades. This currency devalued by dropping 4 zeroes off the old currency (so 10,000 old New Cedis = 1 newer cedi). The currency code is changed from GHC to GHS
2010: a 2 cedis note was introduced because of the expense of printing so many 1 cedi bills and that bill featured… wait for it… president Kwame Nkrumah once again!
*UPDATE* 2017: a 5 cedis note was created to celebrate 60 years of central banking in Ghana. Oddly enough, it is the same color as the original 5 cedis note but comes in a slightly smaller size.
The 2010 Two Cedis Note
The 2017 Five Cedis Note
So that’s where we are today with 1 USD buying about 4 GHS. Simple enough? No.
The problem in our local language of Mampruli is that money talk can be in four or more possible formats:
English of the current Cedi
English of the old Cedi
Shorthand English of the old Cedi
Mampruli of the old Cedi which is based on math involving cowry shells (the original currency)
So here’s how that works. Let’s look at the common ways one could hear someone say 50GHS:
Current English: “Fifty Ghana“
Old English: “Five Hundred Thousand” or occasionally “Half Million“
Short-hand Old English: “Five Hundred“
Mampruli: “kpalantus’ayi ni kɔbsinu” which means “two thousand and five hundred bags”
Whoa! What?! How does 2500 bags = 50GHS? What is in these bags?
A “bag” or kpalaŋŋa was a small-sack cowries which in the colonial days equaled £100 or 200 cedis in 1967. So you count your sacks of cowries and multiply them by 200 to come up with your cedis. Therefore, 2500 x 200 = 500,000.
Now take that 500,000 of 2nd gen cedis, drop 4 zeroes to get 2007’s new-er cedis and you have 50!
That’s why currency in Ghana’s northern region is still so incredibly complicated (for us newbies). Especially as we try to speak exclusively in Mampruli, we have to do the translation of numbers in our heads and then calculate two sets of math (bags to old cedis, then old cedis to new cedis). That’s crazy hard for an American!
One more fun one: 75GHS in Mampruli?
“kpalantus’ata ni kɔbsiyɔpɔi ni pihinu“
Which breaks down to “3000 + 700 + 50 bags of cowries.” Multiple those bags by their old value of ¢200/each and you 750,000 old cedis which deflates to … tada! 75GHS!
