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
Gonja
The cavalry kingdom of northern Ghana — founded by Mande horsemen from Mali in the sixteenth century, ruled by a paramount who rotates among divisional gates, and holder of the Damba festival and one of West Africa's important Arabic chronicles.
Gonja people
Ancient traditional Gonja home.jpg · Wikimedia Commons
Identity
Population: Several hundred thousand across Ghana's Savannah Region
Location: The White and Black Volta basin of northern Ghana — Damongo, Salaga, Bole and Kpembe
Language: Gonja (Ngbanyito), a Guang language, spoken as a lingua franca well beyond the group
Language family: Niger-Congo → Kwa → Guang
Traditional governance: The Yagbonwura as paramount, with the office rotating among divisional gates; a hierarchy of divisional and village chiefs; the Ghanaian state and the National House of Chiefs today.
Clans, Sections & Sub-groups (3)
Most African peoples are federations of named sub-groups (clans, sections, chiefdoms or sub-tribes), each with its own dialect, territory and traditions.
Ruling estate (Ngbanya)
Descendants of the Mande founders, from whom chiefs are drawn.
Muslim estate (Karamo)
Scholarly lineages providing clerics, chroniclers and advisers to the court.
Commoner estate (Nyamase)
The earlier populations incorporated into the kingdom, the majority of the people.
Gallery
2 images
Culture
Clothing: Woven smocks (batakari) with amulet pouches; chiefly gowns and hats; horse regalia for the Damba displays.
Food: Yam and millet, tuo zaafi with soups of okra and groundnut, guinea fowl, shea butter from the parkland trees.
Ceremonies: Damba, marking the Prophet's birth but with drumming, dancing and mounted display drawn from the kingdom's own tradition; chief installation with the drums of state; funerals of chiefs lasting days.
Marriage customs: Bridewealth negotiated between lineages; marriage across the three estates historically structured, with the Muslim estate maintaining stronger endogamy.
Initiation rites: Quranic school among the Muslim estate; for chiefly candidates, service in divisional offices as apprenticeship for the paramountcy.
Food & Recipes
Every dish the Atlas publishes for Ghana, at national rather than community level — 9 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.
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
Stories & Oral Literature
The Horsemen from MaliFoundation tradition
Gonja tradition holds that Mande cavalry under Ndewura Jakpa came south from Mali in the sixteenth century, seeking the gold and kola of the Volta basin, and conquered a state whose divisions still bear the names of Jakpa's sons. The Muslim clerics who came with them wrote the Kitab Ghanja, one of West Africa's important indigenous chronicles.
SalagaEconomic history
Salaga was the greatest market of the Volta basin in the nineteenth century, where kola from the forest met salt and cloth from the north, and where a very large slave market operated. Its wells still stand. Its destruction in a civil war in the 1890s and the diversion of trade to the coast ended it, and Salaga today is a small town with a very large history.
Proverbs
“The drum names the chief; the people keep the name.”
Legitimacy is announced and then earned.
“A horse does not know the border it crosses.”
Cavalry states and their reach.
“Kola travels further than the hand that picked it.”
The long-distance trade's logic.
Mythology & Spiritual Beliefs
Creation: Islamic cosmology among the Muslim estate; older Guang traditions of earth shrines and land priests among the commoner estate, both operating within the kingdom.
Beliefs: Sunni Islam, historically confined to the Karamo estate and now general; earth shrines and land priests handling fertility and land disputes; talismanic writing incorporated into smocks and regalia.
Ancestors: Divisional gates trace descent from Jakpa's sons; the rotation of the paramountcy among them is the constitutional expression of that genealogy.
Gods, Goddesses & Spirits
Allah
The one God, whose clerics served the court from the beginning
Earth shrines (tengban)
Powers of the land, served by priests of the earlier populations
Ancestral chiefs
The founding conquerors, whose names divide the kingdom
Architecture
Traditional settlements: Compact villages of round mud houses with conical thatch, joined by walls into compounds; chiefly palaces with reception courtyards; Larabanga's ancient mud mosque nearby.
Building techniques: Banco construction with projecting timber; Sudano-Sahelian mosque building with buttresses and pinnacles; painted wall decoration.
Village layout: Compound around a courtyard with granaries; village around the chief's palace and the mosque; market on the open ground.
Artifacts
Batakari smock
Textile
Strip-woven smock with amulet pouches, northern Ghana's signature garment.
Kitab Ghanja
Manuscript
Eighteenth-century Arabic chronicle of the kingdom.
Larabanga Mosque
Heritage site
Mud-and-stick mosque in the Sudano-Sahelian style, among Ghana's oldest buildings.
Salaga wells and market site
Heritage site
Remains of the nineteenth-century trade and slave market.
Historical Timeline
c. 1550–1650
Mande cavalry establish the Gonja kingdom in the Volta basin.
1700s
The Kitab Ghanja is compiled; Gonja pays tribute to Asante after military defeat.
1800s
Salaga becomes the region's great market; civil war destroys it in the 1890s.
1900s
British colonisation; the paramountcy is preserved under indirect rule.
Present
The Yagbonwura remains a major traditional authority in Ghana's Savannah Region.
Sources & Further Reading
Open sources
- Britannica: GonjaEncyclopaedia Britannica
- Ghana Museums and Monuments BoardGMMB
Premium & scholarly sources