Ghana used to be called the Gold Coast. The name was changed to Ghana because its thought that the present day natives ancestors were migrants from the ancient kingdom of Ghana.
The Portuguese were the first Europeans to arrive in 1470. They built a permanent trading base call Elmina Castle in 1482. Soon the British, Dutch, Danish, and Germans arrived. The British eventually made the Gold Coast a colony and a bordering area, the Togoland, a trust territory. Both of these areas would later become Ghana.
In 1957 Ghana was the first of the sub-Saharan colonies to become an independent nation.
