Togo

The area that is now Togo was a refuge zone between the powerful kingdoms of Asante to the west and Dahomey to the east, and its coast was part of the "Slave Coast" from which many captives were shipped. In 1884 Germany declared a protectorate over Togoland and developed plantations, railways, and the port, running it as a "model colony" with harsh forced labour.

After Germany's defeat in the First World War, Togoland was split between Britain and France under League of Nations mandates. British Togoland voted to join the Gold Coast and became part of independent Ghana in 1957; French Togoland became the independent Republic of Togo in 1960 under Sylvanus Olympio.

Olympio was assassinated in a 1963 coup — one of the first in post-independence Africa — and in 1967 Gnassingbé Eyadéma seized power. He ruled for 38 years, one of Africa's longest-serving leaders, through a single party and rigged elections. On his death in 2005 the army installed his son, Faure Gnassingbé, whose disputed election that year was followed by violence that killed hundreds and drove tens of thousands into exile. He has won every election since. In 2024 a constitutional change replaced direct presidential elections with a parliamentary system, creating a powerful "President of the Council of Ministers" — a move critics call a strategy to extend the family's rule indefinitely.

Togo is ethnically diverse, with the Ewe and related groups dominant in the south, the Kabye and Tem in the centre and north, and the Batammariba, Moba, and others in the far north. This divide has a political edge, as the army and the ruling family are drawn heavily from the north while the south is the economic and demographic centre.

Togo, with neighbouring Benin, is a heartland of Vodun (voodoo), a structured religion of deities, ancestors, and spirit possession that coexists with Christianity and Islam and shapes healing, justice, and the calendar. The Guin festival of Epe Ekpe at Glidji, where priests draw a sacred stone whose colour foretells the year, is among the best-known ceremonies.

Extended family, respect for elders, and communal labour are central, and initiation rites — most strikingly the Evala wrestling that marks Kabye boys' passage to adulthood — remain important. Music and dance accompany every ceremony.

About 9 million people live in Togo, mostly in the south, and around Lomé, which sits right on the border with Ghana. Most people farm — maize, cassava, yams, sorghum, and cash crops of cocoa, coffee, and cotton — and informal trade, long dominated by the market women known as Nana Benz, is a pillar of the urban economy.

The Port of Lomé, the only deep-water harbour on this stretch of coast, is a major transhipment hub for the region and, with phosphate mining and clinker production, a main source of state revenue. Even so, Togo is poor, electricity and water supply are patchy, and many young Togolese emigrate. Politics remains tightly controlled, with periodic crackdowns on protest and the press.

Daily life runs on the market, the church, mosque, or shrine, the extended family compound, and the ubiquitous zémidjan motorbike taxis.

Togolese food is West African and starch-based. Pâte (a stiff dough of maize, cassava, or yam flour), fufu (pounded yam or cassava), rice, and akoumé are eaten with sauces — groundnut, tomato, adémè (jute leaf), gboma (spinach), okra, or palm nut — usually with fish or a little meat.

Coastal and Lomé specialities include grilled fish, djenkoumé (a spiced maize dish often served with chicken), ablo (steamed rice-corn cakes), and koklo mémé (grilled chicken with chilli). Fufu with peanut sauce and riz au gras (jollof-style rice) are common, and street food includes bean fritters, fried plantain (alloco), and brochettes.

Local drinks include tchoukoutou (millet beer) and sodabi, a palm-wine spirit important in Vodun ritual, alongside bottled beer and ginger or bissap (hibiscus) juice.

Lomé, right on the beach, has the sprawling Grand Marché, the notorious Akodessawa fetish market with its stalls of skulls, skins, and charms for Vodun practice, the national museum, and a palm-lined ocean boulevard. Just inland, Lake Togo and the stilt-and-shrine village of Togoville, a Vodun centre, make an easy trip.

Kpalimé, in the forested hills near the Ghanaian border, is the base for waterfalls, butterfly-rich forest, coffee and cocoa plantations, and the climb of Mount Agou, Togo's highest point at 986 metres. The Atakpamé area and the Fazao-Malfakassa National Park lie further north.

The far northeast holds Koutammakou, the "Land of the Batammariba", a UNESCO-listed cultural landscape of takienta — two-storey mud tower-houses with granaries and conical roofs, built without right angles and integrated with the fields, shrines, and ceremonies of a society that famously resisted outside rule. The nearby Kara region is the setting for the Evala wrestling festival.