
GhanaWeb is Ghana’s first vertical portal, content curation and syndication website covering news, politics, business, sports, entertainment, opinions and general information about Ghana. It was launched by GhanaWeb B.V., a privately-owned Dutch company in 1999. It also offers background information, classifieds, radio stations and a social network for Ghanaians and the Diaspora. According to Alexa Top Sites rankings by country, GhanaWeb ranks third in Ghana and is very popular among Ghanaian migrants in the United States, United Kingdom, Germany, Canada, Italy, South Africa, Netherlands, France and many other countries.
GhanaWeb is part of the AfricaWeb Holding group. It has evolved over the years to include video content (GhanaWeb TV)and social media components as well as a mobile app (GhanaWeb Reporter).
Initiatives
In July 2020, GhanaWeb partnered with Africa Consumer Pane, a cooperative effort between the digital publisher Africa Business Communities and market research firm MSI-ACI, to launch the Ghana Election Polls, conducted monthly to enable citizens express their opinions and projections of the 2020 elections. In February 2020, GhanaWeb was the only Ghanaian media company to receive funding from Google (Google News Initiative (GNI) Innovation) to enable the media company to thrive in a digital era and expand its projects.
History
Ghanaweb.com began in 1994 as a print magazine serving the growing Ghanaian community in Amsterdam by collating news stories from Ghanaian newspapers. The website was launched on January 1, 1999, as an amalgamation with GhanaHomePage – a blog on the domain of the University of Uta in Finland – which was conceived in the early nineties by a Ghanaian lecturer working in Finland. GhanaWeb.com/GhanaHomePage featured links to news, sports, announcements, chat rooms, a Ghanaian dictionary and many other resources. News stories from Ghana were republished from different sources and mailing lists from magazines.
GhanaWeb has currently evolved from a news aggregator to a producer of original content. It also has a mobile app. In 2020, it won the first Google News Initiative (GNI) Innovation Challenge for its GhanaWeb Reporter project.
On Thursday, the 18th of July, 1800GMT, visitors of GhanaWeb noticed that the entertainment and news publishing site has been hacked and was being used for fun purposes by the hacker. This left many people shocked, the pages weren’t leading them to the supposed article and they had no idea what was going on. Working around the clock, the technical team of GhanaWeb were able to regain full access of the website whiles tightening their security to avoid future hacks. Who was responsible? Up until this day, the perpetrator(s) is still unknown as the hacker used political parties to divert attention about his/her identity.