Balanta

Population: Around 500,000, roughly a third of Guinea-Bissau

Location: The coastal and central regions — Oio, Tombali, Quinara and the Casamance border area of Senegal

Language: Balanta (Balanta-Kentohe and Balanta-Ganja)

Language family: Niger-Congo → Atlantic (Bak)

Traditional governance: Age-grade organisation and councils of elders with no chiefs; the Portuguese invented chiefs to deal with, and the community largely ignored them; Bissau-Guinean administration today.

Most African peoples are federations of named sub-groups (clans, sections, chiefdoms or sub-tribes), each with its own dialect, territory and traditions.

Clothing: Woven and printed cloth; age-grade insignia; ceremonial dress for the fanado initiation and for funerals.

Food: Rice above everything — the Balanta produce the bulk of Guinea-Bissau's rice — with palm oil, fish and the cashew that now dominates the cash economy.

Ceremonies: Fanado initiation for age classes; funerals with wrestling, drumming and the display of the dead's achievements; rice harvest celebrations; the raising of new bolanha paddies.

Marriage customs: Bridewealth in rice, cattle and labour; age-grade membership governs eligibility; women's rice work gives them substantial standing in household decisions.

Initiation rites: Fanado, the initiation of an age class, historically at intervals of years and involving seclusion, instruction and circumcision; the age class then functions as a lifelong working and political unit.

Every dish the Atlas publishes for Guinea-Bissau and Senegal, at national rather than community level — 15 in all: the staple a household eats daily, the dish the country names as its own, street food, what is cooked for a wedding or Eid, regional specialities and a drink. Quantities and method are given for every one, so these are recipes rather than descriptions, and each has a photograph from Wikimedia Commons. The Food page carries the whole continent, searchable by country and by ingredient.

“The bund holds because everyone carried earth.”

Collective labour as the basis of production.

“A man who wants to rule should first find the tide.”

Rejection of authority claims.

“Rice is not sold before it is eaten.”

Subsistence before market.

Creation: Nhaala, a high creator, with ancestors and land spirits governing daily affairs; the bolanha rice fields have their own spiritual claims that must be settled.

Beliefs: Ancestor veneration with shrines in every compound; land and water spirits; iran spirit shrines shared with neighbouring peoples; Islam and Christianity present, with the older system dominant in the countryside.

Ancestors: Funerals are the community's largest events, with the dead's achievements displayed and their rice production recounted; ancestral claims underpin paddy ownership.

Traditional settlements: Dispersed compounds among the rice fields rather than nucleated villages; large round houses with conical thatch, sometimes with internal cattle stalls.

Building techniques: Mud and thatch construction; bund and tide-gate engineering; the impluvium house type in some areas, with a central open court collecting rainwater.

Village layout: Compound among the fields with granary and cattle space; paddies laid out in bunded blocks below the settlement.

1. Pre-1500

   Balanta communities settle the coastal region and begin mangrove reclamation.

2. 1500s–1800s

   Resistance to the Kaabu empire and to Portuguese trading demands; no centralised state forms.

3. 1900s–1936

   Portuguese pacification campaigns meet prolonged Balanta resistance.

4. 1963–1974

   The liberation war; Balanta age classes join the PAIGC in large numbers.

5. Present

   Balanta farmers produce most of the country's rice; cashew has reshaped the rural economy.