MISSION STATEMENT
The Birim South District Assembly exist to improve the standard of living of the people through development oriented programmes such as the provision of quality health, security, education, social infrastructural services and others
Location and Size of the District
The Birim South District was created in 2008 by L.I 1850. It was carved out of the former Birim South District now Birim Central Municipal as part of the government’s decentralization programme. Akim Swedru is the District capital. The District covers an estimated land area of 299.50sqkm. The District shares boundaries with Birim Central in the North-east, Assin North (West) and Asikuma Odoben-Brakwa and Agona to the South.
The district is mostly undulating and hilly and lies within the semi-deciduous forest zone. The underlying rock formation is mainly made up of the upper Birimian rocks. These rocks consist predominantly of volcanic lava, schist, hyalites and greywacke with; minor granite intrusions and normally gives rise to salty clay soil without course materials. The topography of Birim South District is hilly, consisting of lava flows and schist which in some cases rise to 61 meters above sea level. Hyalite (silica) and greywacke (hardened sandstone) areas have low relief and experience relatively low rainfall.
The district is drained by the Birim River. Its major tributaries include Funso, Apetesu, Asikasu, Ahonfra, Akwassua, Nsute, Adim, Tropea and Kasawere. Even though the Birim River system for a greater part of its stretch in the district is permanent, it is not put to much use. It can be harnessed to serve as a source of pipe borne water supply to serve most of the communities near-by and for agricultural purposes especially in the dry season.
The District falls within the wet semi-equatorial climatic zone which experiences substantial amount of precipitation/rainfall. Annually rainfall is between 150cm and 200cm reaching its maximum during the two peak periods of May toJune and September-October. This promotes intensive farming activities within these two periods i.e. May to June and September to October.
The relative humidity is about 56 percent in the dry season and 70 percent in the raining season. The temperature ranges from of 25.2?C and 27.5?C. The undulating nature of the topography occasionally results to flooding in some communities during the peak period of the rainy season.
The vegetation is mainly characterized by tall trees with evergreen undergrowth endowed with economic trees. The District falls within the semi-deciduous rainforest region leading to high degree of rainfall for crop cultivation and human use. Human activities such as bad farming practices, lumbering (especially chain saw and firewood operations), mining, construction works have had negative impact on the vegetation over the years resulting in scattered parcels of secondary forest.
Ethnicity
The information on ethnicity was collected only from Ghanaians by birth and Ghanaians with dual nationality. The classification of ethnic groups in Ghana is that officially provided by the Bureau of Ghana Languages and which has been in use since the 1960 census. Table 3.8 shows the ethnic composition of Ghanaians (Ghanaians by birth and Ghanaians with dual nationality) and locality in the Birim South District. The Akan ethnic group is the highest in the district (88%). This is higher than that of the Eastern Region (51%), implying that four out of every five persons in the district are Akans compared to one out of every two persons in the Eastern Region. The next popular ethnic group in the district is Ewe (4.5%) followed by Ga-Adangbe (2.9%) then Guan (2.4%). Ethnic groups from the northern part of the country and others constitute less than 2.5 percent of the population.
The rural-urban variations of the non- Akan ethnic groups in the district are worth noting. It can be observed that Ga-Adangbe (4.7%) Ewe (6.4), Grusi (0.2%) and others (0.2%) are more concentrated in the rural areas than the urban areas possibly because of easy access to land for farming activities. The Guan (3.7%) and Gurma (1.4%) are more concentrated in the urban areas who may probably be engaged in other economic activities other than farming.
Religious Affiliation
There are different kinds of religious affiliations in the district, however Christianity is the most dominant. Figure 3.4 which shows the distribution of the population by religion indicates that more than 85 percent of the population are Christians while Islamic and traditional religion are respectively represented by seven percent and 0.5 percent of the population. Other religions such as Eckankar, Bahai, Hinduism, Buddhism, Hare-Khrisna, Yoga and all Transcendental Meditation etc constitute 0.7 percent of the population whereas 7.7 percent of population does not have any religious beliefs.
Population Size and Distribution (urban/rural)
Table 2.1 presents the distribution of population by locality of residence in the Birim South District. The total population of the district is 119,767 representing 4.5 percent of the population of the Eastern Region (2,633,154). Sex disaggregation of the population in the district follows both the national and regional trends where females out number males. Females represent 51.6 percent of the population against 48.4 percent males. The sex ratio in the district is 93.8 implying that to every 100 females there are 94 males. The urban sex ratio is 89 and rural is 98 to every 100 females respectively.
Rural-urban distribution of the population indicates that 62,854 (52.5 %) persons live in the district in the rural areas which represents 4.2 percent of the rural population in the Eastern Region. The remaining 56,913 (47.5%) who live in the urban areas represent 5 percent of urban population in the region.
In comparison to the Easternregional figures where 56.6 percent of the population lives in the rural areas it may be reasonable to state that the Birim South’s population is more of urban compared to most of the districts in the region. The proportions of females in both the rural (50.4%) and urban areas (52.9%) are higher than that of males, however in the rural areas the difference in male–female proportions is almost negligible compared to that of the urban areas.
Dependency Ratio
The dependency ratio is measure of the dependent population made up of those below 15years and 65 years and older to those in the reproductive age group of 15-64 years. This is used to measure the economic burden borne by those in the production ages. The age dependency ratio in Birim South in 2010 was 86 as shown in table 2.4. This means there are 86 persons in the dependent age for every 100 persons in the working ages.
Child dependency ratio is 74.5 implying that for every 10 persons in the economically active population there are about 7 children in the economically inactive population. The dependency ratio for the aged is 11.3 meaning that for every 10 persons in the economically active population there is one aged person.
Major activities in Agricultural sector are crop farming and livestock production employing about 70% of the active working population.