- Ghanaian journalist, educator, lawyer, editor, politician and author, Joseph Ephraim Casely Hayford (also known as Ekra-Agiman, 29 September 1866 –11 August 1930) published (what is probably) the first African novel written in English, Ethiopia Unbound: Studies in Race Emancipation (1911).
- Voices of Ghana: Literary Contributions to the Ghana Broadcasting System 1955 -57 was the first Ghanaian literary anthology of poems, stories, plays and essays. It contained works that had been broadcast on Radio Ghana between 1955 and 1957; and writers anthologised included Frank Parkes, Kwesi Brew, Cameron Duodu and Efua T. Sutherland. It was published by the Ghana Ministry of Information and Broadcasting in 1958.
- In the mid-18th century, Reverend Thomas Thompson from the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts, upon his arrival to the Gold Coast sent three young Africans – including Philip Quaque to London for training. Quaque later became the first African to be ordained as a minister in the Church of England, and a prolific writer whose letters provided a unique perspective on the effects of slave trade and its abolition in Africa.
- The first Ewe (Niger–Congo language spoken in south-eastern Ghana) grammars and primers (an elementary textbook that serves as an introduction to a subject of study or is used for teaching children to read) were produced in the 1850s at the Bremen Mission, which operated in the East of the country since 1847.
- The first printing press was established at Akropong (a town in southern Ghana) in the 1870s.
- During the 13th century, Ghanaians developed their unique art of adinkra printing (visual symbols), which were hand-printed and hand-embroidered and used exclusively by the then Ghanaian royalty for devotional ceremonies. Each design has a name and meaning derived from a proverb, a historical event, human attitude etc.
- The Ghanaian national literature is one of the oldest in the entire African continent, as the first work of Ghanaian literature dates from 163 A.D.
- Efua Sutherland, a colonial-era female playwright, dramatist, poet and director, helped to establish the literary magazine, Okyeame (in 1961), which saw the rapid rise of a new generation of thinkers, writers and poets.
- Ghanaian author, poet, playwright and academic, Ama Ata Aidoo became the first published African woman dramatist after Longman published her first play in 1965.
- Prominent Ghanaian writer, playwright and dramatist, Joseph Coleman de Graft, (aka Joe de Graft, 2 April 1924 – 1 November 1978), who was appointed the first director of the Ghana Drama Studio in 1962 was responsible for the Ghanaian premieres of plays by two Nigerian dramatists: James Ene Henshaw and Wole Soyinka.
- Quobna Ottobah Cugoanos was the first African writer to publish a book attacking slave trade – Thoughts and Sentiments on the Evil and Wicked Traffic of the Slavery and Commerce of the Human Species (1787).
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