Cape Coast, Ghana

For every 10 people in Cape Coast in 1990, there were 43.2 in 2025.

On the UN's projection it will have 444,000 people in 2050. It passed 250,000 people between 2015 and 2020. The UN first counts it as a city in 1990, when it passed 50,000 people.

projected (after 2025) · how sure the UN is: high moderate low

How to read this: one column every five years, 1975 to 2050; its height is the number of people. Hatched columns are the UN's projection. The thin strip beneath says how sure the UN is of each figure: the stronger the colour, the surer. A blank means the place was not on the UN's list of cities that year.

How to read this: every dot is one of the 58 cities in Ghana in 2025, and a dot's area is how many people live there, the biggest being Accra. The ringed dot in colour is Cape Coast; the grey dots are the rest. The outlines around them are neighbouring countries.

In 2025, Cape Coast covered 63 km², and buildings, roads and other built-up land covered 11 km² of it. That is 37 m² of built-up land for each person, about a square 6 by 6 metres. Since 1990, its built-up land has grown to 2.7 times its size, and its people are 4.3 times as many.

How to read this: the outer pale square stands for all the land the city covers, and the solid square inside it for the part with buildings, roads and the like on it. All three squares share a scale, so you can compare them by eye. A hatched one is a year the UN has projected.

Of every 1,000 people in Ghana in 2025, 8 lived in Cape Coast, which is 281,579 people.

How to read this: shrink Ghana to 1,000 people and this is what you get. The coloured squares are the ones who would live in Cape Coast; the grey ones are everybody else, in other cities, in towns and out in the country.

In the world, 2025

1. 2062 Suizhou China282,058
2. 2063 Moundou Chad281,943
3. 2064 Ikirun Nigeria281,875
4. 2065 Heroica Nogales Mexico281,580
5. 2066 Cape Coast281,579
6. 2068 Batala India281,142
7. 2071 Shankarpur India280,248
8. 2072 Tundla India280,215
9. 2073 Kofu Japan280,212

In Ghana, 2025

1. 71 Accra5,592,780
2. 98 Kumasi4,297,984
3. 457 Sekondi-Takoradi1,127,436
4. 830 Tamale654,868
5. 2066 Cape Coast281,579
6. 2364 Koforidua246,770
7. 2371 Obuasi245,920
8. 2405 Ho243,211

How to read this: the number before each name is its place among all 12,138 cities in the world in 2025; bars are people, on one scale per list. Only cities that reach 300,000 people have a page here, so a gap in the numbers is a smaller city.

Ghana · All the world's cities

The figures for Cape Coast are the UN's own, at five-year steps: an estimate for each of 1990 to 2025, then projection to 2050. Projected years are drawn hatched, and the UN publishes no range of uncertainty for a city. What a city means here, how the UN measures one, and why that number can differ from the one Cape Coast publishes about itself: how the figures here are put together.

Sources: UN WUP 2025 · Natural Earth · flag-icons. Every source, its licence and how to cite it →

Verified 2026-09-30 · 73 canaries