Ethnicity

Table 3.11 presents the distribution of ethnic groups in the Northern region by sex and district. Mole-Dagbon is the predominant ethnic group, constituting 52.7 percent of the population. In 11 of the 20 districts, the Mole-Dagbon group represents the largest ethnic group.

The next group is the Gurma, making up 27.3 percent of the population and largely concentrated in Kpandai, Nanumba South, Nanumba North, Zabzugu-Tatale, Saboba and Bunkpurugu-Yunyoo districts. A greater proportion of the Guan ethnic group is in four districts, namely Bole, West Gonja, Central Gonja and East Gonja.

There are two relatively small ethnic groups from southern Ghana namely the Akan (3.7%) and Ewe (1.7%). While 67.8 percent of the population of Chereponi is Akan, 9.3 percent of the population of East Gonja is Ewe.

Religion

Table 3.12 shows that Muslims form 60.0 percent of the population the Northern region. This is followed by Christians constituting 21.0 percent. Among the Christians, the Catholics have the highest proportion (7.6%). Traditionalists constitute 16.0 percent of the population.

Compared with the 2000 census figures, there is an increase of 3.3 percentage points and 1.7 percentage points for Muslims and Christians respectively in the region while the proportion of traditionalists decreased by 5.3 percentage points.

Savelugu Nanton has the highest proportion of Muslims (95.4%) and Saboba has the lowest proportion (9.5%) but a substantial proportion of traditionalists (26.9%). There are even more traditionalists in Nanumba South (47.8%) and Nanumba North (42.1%)