Akan (Asante & Fante)
Matrilineal peoples of the Ghana–Côte d'Ivoire forest belt whose Asante Empire, Golden Stool, kente cloth and adinkra symbol system created one of Africa's most sophisticated courtly civilizations.
Kente — strip-woven silk of the Asante court
Image: Wikimedia Commons
Identity
Population: ≈ 20+ million (Asante, Fante, Akuapem, Akyem, Bono, Baoulé, Anyi and related groups)
Location: Southern and central Ghana and southeastern Côte d'Ivoire — the historic gold-forest zone
Language: Akan (Twi dialects: Asante, Akuapem; Fante) and Baoulé/Anyi in Côte d'Ivoire
Language family: Niger-Congo → Kwa → Central Tano
Traditional governance: Sacred chieftaincy within a matrilineal frame: the Asantehene enthroned on (never touching) the Sika Dwa Kofi — the Golden Stool that embodies the nation's soul; queen mothers (ohemmaa) nominate kings; a hierarchy of paramount, divisional and town chiefs rules with elders' councils and the right of destoolment.
Clans, Sections & Sub-groups (11)
Most African peoples are federations of named sub-groups — clans, sections, chiefdoms or sub-tribes — each with its own dialect, territory and traditions.
Asante (Ashanti)
The great confederacy of Kumasi under the Asantehene and the Golden Stool — the most powerful Akan state.
Fante
The coastal Akan of the Central Region; asafo companies, appliqué flags and the first European contact.
Akyem
Three states (Abuakwa, Kotoku, Bosome) of the eastern forest and goldfields.
Akuapem
Of the Akuapem ridge; a confederation with Guan substrate and the seat of early missionary literacy.
Bono (Brong)
Of Bono-Manso and Techiman — the oldest Akan state, ancestral to the others.
Kwahu
Of the Kwahu plateau; famed traders and the Easter paragliding festival country.
Nzema
Of the far southwest coast; kin to the Ivorian Anyi, home of Kwame Nkrumah.
Ahanta
Of the western coast around Busua and Axim; early European trading partners.
Denkyira
The 17th-century power that dominated the goldfields until defeated by Asante at Feyiase (1701).
Assin, Wassa, Sefwi, Adansi, Agona
Further Akan states of the forest belt, each with its own paramountcy and stool history.
The eight abusua (matriclans)
Cutting across all states: Oyoko, Bretuo, Agona, Asona, Aduana, Ekuona, Asakyiri and Asenie — a person's clan follows the mother.
Gallery
15 images
Culture
Clothing: Kente — strip-woven silk/cotton cloth of named patterns once reserved for royalty; adinkra cloth stamped with proverb-symbols for funerals; gold ornaments proclaiming the wearer's status at durbars.
Food: Fufu with light or palm-nut soup, banku with tilapia, jollof, kelewele (spiced plantain); the kola nut and schnapps libation open ceremonies.
Ceremonies: Akwasidae, every 42 days, when the Asantehene sits in state and ancestors are fed; Odwira purification festival; Fante Fetu Afahye; naming (outdooring) on the eighth day; spectacular funerals in red and black celebrating the ancestor's journey.
Marriage customs: Knocking ceremony (kokooko) and bridewealth join lineages; children belong to the mother's abusua (clan) — inheritance passes through the maternal line to sisters' sons.
Initiation rites: Bragoro puberty rites for girls historically marked entry to womanhood; drum, goldsmith and kente-weaver apprenticeships transmit guild knowledge; stool-house rituals initiate chiefs into ancestral office.
Greetings, Prayer & the Table
The everyday practices a visitor meets first — how people greet, pray, eat and host. Forms vary by family, region and generation, and many coexist with Islam and Christianity rather than being replaced by them.
Greetings & respect
'Akwaaba' — you are welcome — is the word Ghana is known by. In a seated gathering you greet from your right and move leftward around the group, taking each person's hand in turn; skipping anyone is a visible insult. 'Ɛte sɛn?' (how is it) draws 'Me ho yɛ' (I am well). Chiefs are greeted through a linguist (ɔkyeame) rather than directly, and one removes sandals and lowers the cloth from the shoulder before a chief or an elder.
Prayer & devotion
Mpae — libation — is the central act: schnapps, palm wine or water is poured to the ground in stages while the speaker calls on Onyame (God), Asase Yaa (the earth), and the nsamanfo (the ancestors) by name, the gathering answering as each portion falls. At the Adae festivals (Akwasidae and Awukudae) the ancestral blackened stools are fed with mashed yam and drink in the stool room, the chief presiding.
Eating & feeding
Fufu is swallowed, not chewed, from a common bowl with the right hand; hands are washed before and after. Elders eat first and take the meat. Guests are pressed to eat and given the largest share, and 'wo bɛdidi?' (will you eat?) is asked of anyone who arrives at mealtime.
Hospitality
A visitor is seated, given water, and only then asked their mission — asking business before offering water is rude. Drinks are presented to the elder of the visiting party, who may pour a little to the ground before drinking.
Avoidances & etiquette
The left hand is never used to greet, give, receive, point or eat. One does not cross a chief's path or greet with a covered head.
Medicine, Divination & the Body
Healing and surgery, oracular systems, and the ordering of courtship and fertility. Historical practice is recorded as heritage; where a practice is harmful or now unlawful, that is stated rather than glossed over.
Medicine & surgery
Ɔkɔmfoɔ priest-healers and herbalists (ɔdunsinni) treat with plant medicines, steam baths and spiritual diagnosis; shrines specialise in particular afflictions. Bone-setting and midwifery were skilled trades. Smallpox inoculation is documented among the Akan: Onesimus, an enslaved man in Boston, described the West African practice of deliberate infection to his enslaver in 1706, and it was used to check the city's 1721 epidemic.
Divination & fortune-telling
Diviners work through possession at shrines, through the ɔkɔmfoɔ's dance, and by casting cowries and seeds; the Akan calendar of forty-two days (adaduanan) governs auspicious days. Dreams are read seriously, and the day of a person's birth fixes their name and something of their expected character.
Courtship, sexuality & fertility
The bragoro puberty rite for girls publicly marked readiness for marriage and was accompanied by instruction; pregnancy before it was a grave offence. Marriage was arranged between families with drinks and bridewealth, polygyny permitted, and descent traced through the mother, so a man's heirs were his sister's children rather than his own.
Kingdoms, Inheritance & War
Kingdoms, queendoms & councils
The Asante confederacy was founded on the Golden Stool (Sika Dwa Kofi), said to have been called down from the sky by Ɔkɔmfoɔ Anokye and holding the soul of the nation. The Asantehene rules with the Asantehemaa — the queen mother, who nominates candidates for the stool, may publicly rebuke the king and is the authority on royal genealogy. A chief who fails is destooled.
Inheritance & succession
Strictly matrilineal: property, office and stools pass within the abusua, from a man to his brother or his sister's son. This makes the maternal uncle the decisive figure in a child's life and has produced repeated legislative friction in modern Ghana, where the Intestate Succession Law now provides for widows and children.
War, weapons & war chants
The Asante army was organised by wing — vanguard, left, right, rear and the king's own — and moved to orders relayed on fontomfrom talking drums, which reproduce speech. The Fante asafo companies, with their appliqué flags and shrines, were quarter-based militias. In 1900 Yaa Asantewaa, the Ejisuhemaa, led the war of the Golden Stool against the British after the men hesitated, telling them that if they would not go forward, the women would.
Sculpture & the Epic Tradition
Sculpture & carving
Lost-wax gold casting produced the goldweights — thousands of small brass figures, each a proverb — and the regalia of soul-washers and linguists. The akua'ba fertility figure, with its high disc face, is among the most recognised African forms. Carved stools embody the owner's soul and are blackened at death to become ancestral shrines.
Epics & oral literature
Anansesem — the spider Ananse's cycle — is the great Akan narrative tradition, carried by enslaved Akan to the Caribbean and the Americas as Anansi. Court history is kept in drum poetry and by the ɔkyeame linguists, whose staffs illustrate proverbs, and Adinkra symbols encode maxims in visual form.
Stories & Oral Literature
How Anansi Won All StoriesTrickster tale
Sky-God Nyame owned every story, priced at three impossible captures: Onini the python, Osebo the leopard and the Mmoboro hornets. Kwaku Anansi the spider tricked each — measuring the python against a palm branch, trapping the leopard in a pit, luring hornets into a calabash 'because rain is coming' — and so all tales became 'Anansesem', spider stories.
The Golden Stool DescendsFounding myth
In the 1690s the priest Okomfo Anokye summoned from the sky a golden stool that alighted on the knees of Osei Tutu, first Asantehene. It contained the sunsum — soul — of all Asante; no one may sit on it, and when a British governor demanded it in 1900, Queen Mother Yaa Asantewaa led an army to defend it.
Abla Pokou and the Baoulé CrossingMigration legend
Fleeing an Asante succession war, Queen Abla Pokou reached the flooding Comoé River. The diviner said the waters demanded her most precious possession — she gave her infant son, crying 'Ba-ou-li' ('the child is dead'), and the river parted; her people, the Baoulé, carry the grief of that name.
Proverbs
“Sankɔfa: Se wo were fi na wosankofa a yenkyi.”
“It is not taboo to return and fetch what you forgot.”
Go back to your roots and recover what was lost — the famous Sankofa principle.
“Ti koro nkɔ agyina.”
“One head does not hold council.”
Wisdom is collective; decisions need many minds.
“Ɔbra ne woara abɔ.”
“Life is as you make it.”
Personal responsibility shapes destiny.
Mythology & Spiritual Beliefs
Creation: Nyame (Onyankopɔn), the Sky God, created the cosmos with Asase Yaa, Mother Earth, whose day of rest — Thursday — farmers traditionally honor by not tilling. Humans came from the sky or from holes in the earth, clan by clan, each abusua with its animal emblem.
Beliefs: A layered spiritual world: Nyame above; abosom (deities of rivers, forests and lakes such as Tano and Bosomtwe) as his agents served by akomfo priests; nsamanfo (ancestors) fed at blackened stools; every person has a kra (soul from God), sunsum (personality) and mogya (mother's blood lineage). The day of one's birth gives a soul-name (Kwame, Akosua...).
Ancestors: The ancestors are the true owners of land and stools. Chiefs' blackened stools are shrines; libation and Adae rites keep the dead within the community's moral economy — an Akan person acts under ancestral witness.
Gods, Goddesses & Spirits
Nyame / Onyankopɔn
Supreme Sky God — 'He who knows and sees all'
Asase Yaa
Earth goddess of fertility and truth; land oaths are sworn on her
Tano (Ta Kora)
Great river god, protector in war and justice
Bosomtwe
Spirit of Ghana's sacred meteor lake
Anansi Kokuroko
Anansi as cosmic weaver in some tellings — wisdom personified as the spider
Tano (Ta Kora)
Great river god of war and purity — the mightiest abosom after Nyame
Bia
River god of the west, Tano's brother
Abena Bosomtwe
Spirit of the sacred meteor lake where souls bid farewell
Nana Esi & the Mmoatia
Forest dwarf-spirits — herbalists' teachers and tricksters
Sasabonsam
Forest ogre of the deep woods, feared by hunters
Superstitions & Popular Beliefs
Living beliefs and omens passed between generations — recorded here as cultural heritage, varying by family and region.
- Farming is avoided on Thursdays in honor of Asase Yaa, the earth goddess's rest day.
- Whistling at night calls the sasabonsam and is forbidden to children.
- The left hand is never used to give, receive or point — it insults both giver and ancestors.
- Pouring the first drops of any drink to the ground feeds the ancestors before oneself.
- A cutlass or broom must not touch a person — it 'cuts' their spirit and must be ritually undone.
Music & Instruments
Musical tradition: Akan courts turned music into archive: fontomfrom and atumpan 'talking drums' recite royal history in drummed Twi, while adowa and kete dances translate proverbs into gesture. Highlife — West Africa's great popular style — grew from Akan palm-wine guitar traditions.
Atumpan
The paired talking drums of state — reciting appellations, history and proverbs.
Fontomfrom ensemble
Towering royal drums announcing chiefs and speaking at durbars.
Seperewa
Akan harp-lute, ancestor of highlife guitar finger-styles.
Mmenson horns
Seven-ivory-horn ensemble sounding the chief's honors.
Architecture
Traditional settlements: Compact towns around the chief's palace (ahenfie) and central marketplace, organized by clan wards; Kumasi, the Asante capital, was laid out with 77 wards and a great palace complex that awed 19th-century visitors.
Building techniques: Traditional shrine houses (abosomfie) — the UNESCO-listed Asante traditional buildings — use timber frames, wattle-and-daub walls with bold bas-relief scrollwork (adinkra-like motifs), and steep thatched roofs around open courtyards.
Village layout: Four rooms around a courtyard: drumming room, singing room, cooking area and the shrine sanctum — the courtyard serving as ritual stage.
Artifacts
Sika Dwa Kofi (Golden Stool)
Regalia
The gold-covered stool embodying the Asante nation's soul; never sat upon, it has its own throne and attendants.
Kente cloth
Textiles
Strip-woven prestige cloth; each pattern is named — 'Adweneasa' (my skill is exhausted) marks the weaver's masterpiece.
Goldweights (mrammou)
Tools/Art
Miniature brass figures for weighing gold dust — a proverb library in metal, cast by lost-wax.
Adinkra stamps
Symbols
Carved calabash stamps printing symbols like Gye Nyame ('except God') — a graphic philosophy system.
Fontomfrom & atumpan drums
Musical instruments
Talking drums that recite royal history and praise poetry in drummed Twi.
Akuaba figure
Sculpture
Disc-headed fertility figure carried by women hoping to conceive beautiful children.
Migration Patterns
Pre-colonial movements: Akan-speakers coalesced in the Bono region on the forest–savanna edge, drawn by gold workings, then filtered south into the forest founding Denkyira, Akwamu and finally Asante around Kumasi. The Baoulé and Anyi broke west into Côte d'Ivoire in the 18th century after Asante succession wars — Queen Abla Pokou's crossing of the Comoé is the era's great migration epic.
Key routes:
- → Bono-Manso / Begho savanna edge → southern forest states (14th–16th c.)
- → Adanse–Denkyira heartland → Asante confederation at Kumasi (17th c.)
- → Westward Baoulé-Anyi exodus across the Comoé into Côte d'Ivoire (18th c.)
Industries, Trade & Routes
Industries built:
Trade profile: The gold engine of West Africa: Akan gold fed the trans-Saharan routes via Begho and Bono long before Europeans arrived, then pivoted to the coastal forts. Asante ran state caravans (batafo), taxed all roads to Kumasi, and imported salt, cloth, firearms and brass against gold and kola.
Trade routes:
- ⇄ Goldfields → Begho/Bono → Jenne and the trans-Saharan network
- ⇄ Kumasi great-roads system radiating to coast and savanna
- ⇄ Gold ⇄ European goods at Elmina and Cape Coast (15th–19th c.)
Historical Timeline
c. 11th–15th c.
Akan states (Bono-Manso, Begho) grow rich on the gold trade with the Sahel.
1471
Portuguese reach the 'Gold Coast'; Elmina castle follows in 1482.
c. 1670s–1701
Osei Tutu and Okomfo Anokye forge the Asante Empire; Denkyira defeated at Feyiase.
18th–19th c.
Asante dominates the forest zone; Kumasi becomes a great capital; wars with Fante and Britain.
1900–01
Yaa Asantewaa leads the War of the Golden Stool; Asante annexed but the Stool is never surrendered.
1957
Ghana — named for the medieval empire — becomes the first sub-Saharan colony to win independence under Kwame Nkrumah.
Present
The Asantehene remains one of Africa's most influential traditional monarchs; kente and adinkra are global icons.
Watch: Documentaries & Research
Curated YouTube searches — always up to date with the latest documentaries, lectures and archival footage.
Sources & Further Reading
Open sources
Premium & scholarly sources
- The Akan Doctrine of God — J.B. DanquahRoutledge
- Asante in the Nineteenth Century — Ivor WilksCambridge University Press