The Akim Abuakwa Handbook

Abstract

AKIM ABUAKWA is one of several independent States in the Gold Coast, British West Africa. Kibi (pronounced Kye-bi), its capital and seat of government, is sixty miles inland from Accra, capital of the Colony and headquarters of the British Government. Formerly extending from the Meridian of Greenwich to the first degree west longitude, the territorial extent of the State was considerably reduced when part of the south-eastern frontier was sold in I875 to the British Government for the New Juaben Settlement, now a prosperous State with the "modern Koforidua as its capital. Akim Abuakwa has an area of about 3,000 square miles, i.e., over a hundred thousand acres larger than the West Riding of Yorkshire, and the territory covers about an eighth of the total area of the Colony (23.490 sq. miles). The census of I92I gave its population as 90,306. This makes Akim Abuakwa the fourth most populous State in the Eastern Province, but a reliable forecast places the aggregate in I928 at I23,000 souls, or' a tenth of the total population of the Colony (I,I7I,913)• Like all the States in the Colony and Ashanti, Akim Abuakwa is an agricultural country, and it is not yet-thank Heaven-an industrialised manufacturing country. Its chief economic products are Cocoa, Cola and Rubber, all but the first being natural to the soil and " growing wild in marketable quantities. Lying as it is in the grip of the West African forest belt, it yields an abundance of West African Mahogany, and this, for the most part, is at present undeveloped, The country is well watered, and its principal river, the Birrim, noted for its rich deposits of gold and diamonds, takes its source from Apapam , a village near Kibi, The Scarp-a rather peculiar feature of the topography of the Gold Coast-cuts across the Northern portion of the State, and Akwawa, the highest hill, rising 2,585 feet above sea level, li s at Begoro, one of the Divisional scats of government in Akim Abuakwa.