Tamale & the North

The north's older history is one of savanna kingdoms. From about the 15th century, rulers of the Naa Gbewaa dynasty founded the kingdoms of Mamprugu, with its capital later at Nalerigu, and Dagbon, whose rulers, the Ya Na, moved their seat to Yendi. In the 17th century Mande warriors founded Gonja to the west, and the Wa Naa came to rule the Wala from Wa. Muslim traders and scholars came with the trade routes, building mosques such as Larabanga's, and Salaga became a great market for kola nuts and, in the 19th century, enslaved people.

In the 18th century Asante brought Dagomba, Mamprusi and Gonja under its influence, and in the 1890s the wars of Samori Toure reached Wa. Britain declared the Northern Territories a protectorate in 1901, while eastern Dagbon around Yendi was held by Germany as part of Togoland until 1914, then passed to British administration. Colonial rule invested little here and used the north as a source of migrant labour for the southern mines and cocoa farms, a gap in schools and roads that still shapes the region.

Since independence the north has been marked by chieftaincy and land disputes. Dagbon's succession quarrel between rival royal gates led to the killing of the Ya Na in 2002 and was settled with the enskinment of a new Ya Na in 2019. The conflict between Konkomba and Nanumba communities in 1994 cost many lives, and a dispute over the Bawku chieftaincy between Kusasi and Mamprusi communities has flared repeatedly. In 2019 the old Northern Region was split to create the North East and Savannah regions.

The north speaks many languages: Dagbani around Tamale and Yendi, Mampruli in the North East, Gonja in the Savannah Region, Frafra (Gurune), Kusaal and Kasem in the Upper East, and Dagaare, Wali and Sisaala in the Upper West, with Hausa as the market language. Islam is the majority faith among the Dagomba, Gonja and Wala, while Christianity and traditional religion are strong in the Upper East and Upper West.

Chiefs are enskinned rather than enstooled, sitting on animal skins. The Dagomba Bugum, or fire festival, sees torch-bearing processions at night, and Damba, marking the Prophet's birth, brings horsemen and drummers to the chiefs' palaces. The talking drums and griot-like praise singers of Dagbon keep royal genealogies.

The smock, a striped hand-woven tunic called batakari or fugu, is the north's signature garment and was worn by Ghana's founding fathers at independence in 1957. Bolgatanga is known for straw baskets, leather goods and smocks, and in Sirigu the women's co-operative has kept alive the tradition of painting compound walls with patterns in earth pigments.

Tamale is the north's big city, with several hundred thousand people, a university and a busy market. Yendi, Damongo, Salaga, Nalerigu, Bolgatanga, Navrongo, Bawku and Wa are the other main towns, and most people live in rural villages of round or rectangular mud compounds.

Farming dominates: yams, maize, millet, sorghum, groundnuts, rice and soya, with cattle, goats and guinea fowl. Women gather shea nuts and process them into shea butter, much of it exported for cosmetics. Many young people migrate south for work, and the north remains poorer than the rest of Ghana, with illegal small-scale gold mining spreading in parts of the Upper East and Upper West.

The day follows the heat: farms and markets are busiest in the morning, afternoons are for shade, and evenings for the pito bar or the mosque. Motorbikes and bicycles are the main transport, and Tamale's roads are full of them. Water supply, the timing of the rains and the cost of fertiliser matter to everyone.

The staple is tuo zaafi, known as TZ: a stiff porridge of maize or millet flour eaten with ayoyo, a slippery soup of jute leaves, or with okra or groundnut soup, usually with guinea fowl or beef. Dawadawa, fermented locust beans, gives northern soups their pungent flavour, and shea butter is used in cooking as well as on the skin.

Breakfast is often koko, a spiced millet porridge, with koose, fried bean fritters. Tubaani, steamed bean-flour cakes, and wasawasa, a dish of steamed yam-peel flour with pepper and oil, eaten in Dagbon and across the north, are local specialities. Guinea fowl is the north's celebratory meat, grilled or in stew, and roadside grills sell kebabs of beef and offal.

Pito, a lightly fermented beer of millet or sorghum brewed in households, is the region's drink, sold in calabashes at pito bars.

Mole National Park in the Savannah Region is the north's chief draw. From the lodge on the escarpment, walking and driving safaris head into the savanna woodland in search of elephants, antelope, warthogs and baboons, which gather at the waterholes in the dry season. Nearby Larabanga has its Sudanese-style mud mosque, whitewashed with bulbous buttresses and traditionally dated to the 15th century, and the town of Damongo is the gateway.

Tamale is the hub rather than a sight, with its central market, mosque and cultural centre, and it is a base for Yendi, the Dagbon capital, and Salaga, with its former slave-market site. In the North East, Nalerigu has an old defensive wall and the palace of the Nayiri, king of Mamprugu, and Gambaga its escarpment.

The Upper East centres on Bolgatanga, with its craft market. Sirigu's painted houses and women's pottery co-operative, the Tongo Hills and the Tengzug shrines, Navrongo's mud-walled cathedral, and Paga's crocodile ponds and Pikworo slave camp are all within reach. In the Upper West, Wa has the palace of the Wa Naa, and the Wechiau Hippo Sanctuary protects a stretch of the Black Volta.