Seismotectonics of Ghana and adjacent regions in Western Africa: A review

Abstract

Ghana and its surrounding West African region are often regarded as a stable intraplate area far from active plate boundaries, characterized by relatively low seismicity compared to tectonically active zones like the East African Rift. However, the region has experienced significant earthquakes (including a magnitude ~6.5 event in 1939 in Ghana) and a growing number of small-to-moderate events in recent decades, underscoring a critical need to resolve its seismotectonic framework. Seismic hazard studies have largely overlooked West Africa, and the causes and tectonic controls of its earthquakes remain poorly understood. To address this, we synthesize geological, geophysical, and seismic data in a comprehensive review to examine the regional tectonic setting, the spatial distribution of historical and recent seismicity, stress field characteristics, and the status of earthquake monitoring. We conclude that West African intraplate earthquakes are predominantly driven by the reactivation of pre-existing crustal weaknesses under far-field plate forces, augmented by stress transfer from the Atlantic margin (along offshore transform fracture zones) and the Cameroon Volcanic Line. Our observations highlight the region's current geodynamics and provide a basis for improved seismic hazard assessment. Given the rapidly growing population and infrastructure in seismically vulnerable areas across West Africa, these findings are crucial for informing earthquake preparedness and risk mitigation strategies.

Keywords

Africa / West Africa / Ghana / Gulf of Guinea / Transform faults / Seismotectonics / Earthquake catalogue

CRediT authorship contribution statement

John Somiah: Writing – original draft, Data curation. Jun Xie: Writing – review & editing. Sidao Ni: Supervision, Investigation, Funding acquisition, Conceptualization. Abayomi G. Osotuyi: Writing – review & editing, Resources, Data curation.

Data and resources

This study integrates information from publicly available geophysical, geological, and seismological datasets, including regional seismic catalogues, fault databases, and tectonic maps. Key data sources include the United States Geological Survey (USGS), IRIS Data Management Center and Global Centroid Moment Tensor (CMT) catalogue. Additionally, a few of the maps were generated using Generic Mapping Tools (GMT) (Wessel et al., 2013).

Author Agreement and acknowledgement

We, the authors of this research article, hereby confirm that we have seen and approved the final version of the manuscript being submitted. We also certify that this article is the authors’ original work and has not received prior publication nor is under consideration for publication elsewhere. We appreciate the opportunity to submit our work for consideration, and we look forward to the opportunity to contribute to the scientific community.

Declaration of competing interest

The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

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