StapleGhana
Banku
Fermented maize and cassava dough cooked to a smooth sour ball, eaten with okro stew or grilled tilapia and pepper. Sour, dense and shaped by hand into a rounded mound.
Serves 4 · 45 minutes, plus 3 days fermenting
Frafra (Gurunsi of Bolgatanga)
Farmers of the Upper East around Bolgatanga whose women paint the walls of their compounds in bold geometric patterns, whose baskets are exported worldwide, and whose region supplied the labour that built colonial Ghana's south.
Identity
Population: Estimated 900,000 to 1.2 million across Ghana and Burkina Faso
Location: The Upper East Region of Ghana around Bolgatanga, Bongo and Tongo, and adjacent southern Burkina Faso
Language: Gurenɛ (Frafra), with the Nabit and Talni varieties
Language family: Niger-Congo → Gur → Mabia (Oti-Volta)
Traditional governance: Earth priests (tendaana) and clan elders in the older order, with chiefs (naba) established later; Ghanaian district administration.
Clans, Sections & Sub-groups (4)
Most African peoples are federations of named sub-groups (clans, sections, chiefdoms or sub-tribes), each with its own dialect, territory and traditions.
Gurene of Bolgatanga
The regional centre's communities.
Nabdam of Nangodi
A distinct group with its own speech variety.
Talensi of Tongo
The community around the Tongo hills and the Tongnaab shrine.
Booni and Bongo communities
Northern communities toward the Burkina border.
Culture
Clothing: The smock (fugu) woven in narrow strips and sewn, worn across northern Ghana; contemporary dress; the beaded and leather ornament of festivals.
Food: Millet and sorghum as tuo zaafi with soups of dawadawa, baobab leaf and okra, groundnuts, guinea fowl, and the pito millet beer that is the region's social medium.
Ceremonies: Funerals with several days of drumming, dance and gun-firing; the earth-shrine rites; harvest festivals; the Tongnaab pilgrimage.
Marriage customs: Patrilineal and clan-exogamous; bridewealth in cattle and goods; the negotiation runs through both lineages and involves the earth priest where land is at issue.
Initiation rites: Boys' entry into adult labour and the age groupings; the older initiations reduced; funerals rather than initiations are the community's great collective performances.
Food & Recipes
Every dish the Atlas publishes for Ghana and Burkina Faso, at national rather than community level — 17 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.
Ghana
9 dishes
StapleGhana
Tuo Zaafi
also TZ, Sagim
Maize and cassava flour cooked into a soft swallow, the staple of northern Ghana, eaten with an okra or ayoyo soup that has to be slippery enough to swallow it.
Serves 6 · 40 minutes
National dishGhana
Ghanaian Jollof
Rice cooked in a reduced tomato and pepper base, made in Ghana with aromatic rice and a lighter hand on the purée. The rivalry with Nigeria over this dish is conducted with total seriousness.
Serves 6 · 1 hour 15 minutes
National dishGhana
Kenkey
also Kormi, Dokono
Fermented maize dough half-cooked, wrapped in maize husks and boiled into dense sour balls. The Ga and Fante staple, eaten with fried fish and pepper sauce.
Serves 6 · 2 hours, plus 3 days fermenting
Street foodGhana
Waakye
Rice and beans cooked with dried sorghum leaves, which turn it a deep reddish brown, sold from before dawn with shito, gari, spaghetti and boiled egg piled on.
Serves 6 · 1 hour 30 minutes, plus overnight soaking
Street foodGhana
Kelewele
also Spiced fried plantain
Ripe plantain cubed, tossed in ginger, chilli and spice and deep-fried, sold from pans on Accra street corners after dark and eaten with roasted peanuts.
Serves 4 · 30 minutes
Festival & feastGhana
Fufu with Light Soup
Pounded cassava and plantain with a clear peppery soup of goat or fish. Sunday food, and the dish most Ghanaians name when asked what they would want if they were far from home.
Serves 6 · 1 hour 30 minutes
Regional specialityGhana
Red Red
Black-eyed peas stewed in palm oil with tomato, served with fried ripe plantain and gari. Named twice for red: the palm oil and the tomato.
Serves 6 · 1 hour, plus overnight soaking
Drink & sweetGhana
Sobolo
Hibiscus infused with pineapple skin, ginger and cloves, sold chilled in bottles at every junction in Accra. Ghana's version leans heavily on the ginger.
Serves 8 · 30 minutes, plus chilling
Burkina Faso
8 dishes
StapleBurkina Faso
Tô
also Saghbo
Stiff millet or sorghum porridge, the daily food of most of the country, torn off in lumps and dipped in sauce. Eaten with the right hand from a shared bowl.
Serves 6 · 40 minutes
National dishBurkina Faso
Riz Gras
Rice cooked in a rich tomato and meat broth until it absorbs everything, the West African one-pot in its Burkinabè form. The name means fat rice and is not an exaggeration.
Serves 6 · 1 hour 30 minutes
Street foodBurkina Faso
Brochettes
Skewers of beef or mutton grilled over charcoal and rolled in a peppery groundnut spice mix, sold from braziers on every street corner in Ouagadougou after dark.
Serves Makes 12 · 30 minutes, plus 2 hours marinating
Street foodBurkina Faso
Gonré
also Bean cake, Gonre
Black-eyed beans ground with onion and chilli, wrapped in leaf and steamed into a firm savoury cake. Burkina Faso's breakfast and market food.
Serves 8 · 1 hour 30 minutes, plus overnight soaking
Festival & feastBurkina Faso
Poulet Bicyclette
Free-range chicken, so called because it has spent its life running about, marinated and grilled whole over charcoal. Served flattened with onion sauce for guests and celebrations.
Serves 4 · 1 hour 30 minutes, plus 4 hours marinating
Festival & feastBurkina Faso
Zamnè
also Acacia seeds, Zaamné
The small green seeds of a wild acacia, boiled long and cooked with beef and onion. A Burkinabè delicacy that is expensive, laborious and served to people you want to impress.
Serves 6 · 3 hours
Regional specialityBurkina Faso
Babenda
Wild leaves, rice and soumbala cooked together into a dark green one-pot, from the Mossi plateau. Soumbala is fermented néré seed and gives the dish its powerful savoury depth.
Serves 6 · 1 hour
Drink & sweetBurkina Faso
Dolo
also Millet beer, Chapalo
Sorghum beer brewed by women and sold in courtyards marked with an upturned calabash on a pole. It is drunk within a day or two, still fermenting, from a shared gourd.
Serves Makes about 5 litres · 4 days
Stories & Oral Literature
The Painted CompoundsArchitectural tradition
Frafra and Kassena women render and paint their compound walls in bold black, white and ochre geometric bands, triangles and zigzags, replastered and repainted collectively after each rainy season. The painting is women's work, done in groups, and the patterns are named and inherited. The Sirigu Women's Organisation of Pottery and Art has turned the tradition into a cooperative craft enterprise with an international market, without taking it out of the compounds where it belongs.
TongnaabReligious history
The Tongnaab shrine in the Tong hills at Tengzug is an earth shrine of exceptional reach: its cult spread south with labour migrants in the early twentieth century and became, under names like Nana Tongo, a major shrine complex in Asante and southern Ghana, consulted for protection against witchcraft. The colonial government bombarded the Tong hills in 1911 to suppress resistance and then found the shrine's influence spreading into the very colony it governed. Tengzug is on Ghana's UNESCO tentative list.
The Labour ReserveEconomic history
The Northern Territories of the Gold Coast were administered explicitly as a labour reserve for the cocoa farms and mines of the south, with taxation and recruitment designed to push men into migration. Frafra men went south in enormous numbers for a century, and the north's underdevelopment — fewer schools, fewer roads, less investment — was policy rather than accident. The Upper East remains among Ghana's poorest regions, and the migration continues.
Proverbs
“The wall is painted by the women who will sit against it.”
On whose work makes a home.
“The shrine that was bombed is still consulted.”
On Tongnaab and the 1911 expedition.
“The son who goes south sends money and does not come back.”
On labour migration.
Mythology & Spiritual Beliefs
Creation: Wine (Naawuni) as the high god; the earth (tengban) as the central power, addressed through the tendaana; ancestral spirits at lineage shrines; the Tong hills as a place of exceptional power.
Beliefs: Earth-shrine rites; ancestral offerings; divination; Tongnaab and its southern extensions; Catholic and Evangelical Christianity now widespread, with Islam present.
Ancestors: Ancestors are addressed at lineage shrines; funerals are the largest and most elaborate performances the community mounts, running several days.
Gods, Goddesses & Spirits
Naawuni
The high god
Tengban
The earth, addressed through the tendaana for fertility and oaths
Tongnaab
The shrine of the Tong hills, whose cult spread across southern Ghana
Architecture
Traditional settlements: Dispersed compounds of round and rectangular huts linked by painted walls into single enclosed units, scattered across the farmland with granaries and stock pens inside.
Building techniques: Mud and pole construction with conical thatch and flat roofs; collective replastering and geometric wall painting by women after each rainy season; granaries within the compound; basket weaving in straw.
Village layout: A linked compound with one controlled entrance, animals and granaries inside, fields around, and the earth shrine at an uncleared site.
Artifacts
Painted compound walls
Architecture
Geometric mural painting applied and renewed collectively by women.
Bolga baskets
Craft
Straw baskets woven in the Upper East and exported worldwide.
Tengzug shrine complex
Heritage site
The Tong hills earth shrine whose cult spread across southern Ghana; on Ghana's UNESCO tentative list.
Fugu smock
Textile
Narrow-strip woven and sewn smock, the dress of northern Ghana.
Historical Timeline
Pre-1700
Gur-speaking communities settle the Upper East plains under earth-priest authority.
1800s
Slave raiding from Zabarima and Mossi forces reaches the region; compounds are built defensively.
1911
British forces bombard the Tong hills to suppress resistance; the Tongnaab cult subsequently spreads south.
1920s–1957
The Northern Territories are administered as a labour reserve for the southern colony.
1990s–present
The Sirigu women's cooperative develops the painting tradition commercially; Bolga baskets reach international markets.
Sources & Further Reading
Open sources
Premium & scholarly sources
- Ethnologue: FarefareSIL International