Abstract
This report describes monthly population mobility distribution trends in Ghana between 2022 and 2024, with a focus on movement between rural areas, towns and smaller cities, and major metropolises.
The objective is to inform decision-making in areas such as economic policies, infrastructure development, healthcare delivery, housing, and sustainable urban planning by exploring the spatial and temporal granularity of mobile network data to investigate how mobility is impacting the distribution of the population in Ghana and how this varies over time.
Key findings
- Rural districts, collectively, experienced substantial population growth due to movement from more urban areas, especially towns and smaller cities.
- Bole district, in Savannah Region, particularly stands out as experiencing very high population growth, which may be associated with galamsey (artisanal mining) activity.
- Many districts containing towns and cities, including regional capitals, experienced little population growth or even population decreases due to movements to rural areas or to Accra.
- Accra metropolis experienced notable population growth, in contrast to other urban areas.
About the report
Authorship & acknowledgements
This report was authored by the Flowminder Foundation and Ghana Statistical Service under the Data for Good partnership, and was made possible thanks to the pseudonymised call detail records (CDR data) provided by Telecel Ghana.
The Data for Good partnership is a pioneering public–private partnership between Ghana Statistical Service, Telecel Ghana and Flowminder to leverage
anonymised mobile network data to study population distributions and mobility patterns.
Data & data privacy
The mobile network data provided by Telecel Ghana to Flowminder is pseudonymised. This means that no personal data, such as an individual’s identity, demographics, location, contacts or movements, is made available to the government or any other third party at any time. All results produced by Flowminder are aggregated results (for example, subscriber density in a given municipality), which means that they do not contain any information about individual subscribers. This approach complies with the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (EU GDPR 2016/679). Data is processed on a server installed behind Telecel Ghana’s firewall in Ghana, and no personal data leaves the operator’s premises.
Data considerations
The estimates shown are our best current assessment of movements from non-traditional data: anonymised data from a mobile network operator. However, there are a number of uncertainties. The information should be interpreted together with other available evidence.