Togo

Before Europeans drew lines, the area was a crossroads rather than a state. The Ewe, according to their own tradition, migrated from Notsé in the 17th century after escaping a harsh king by walking backwards so their footprints seemed to lead in. Guin and Mina groups from the Gold Coast settled around Aného, and in the north the Kabyè, Tem, Moba and Batammariba farmed the hills and savanna.

The coast between the Volta and Lagos was part of the Slave Coast. Aného (Little Popo) and Glidji were trading towns where European ships bought captives from inland wars; Afro-Brazilian families returned after abolition and left their names and houses in Aného and Lomé.

The north stayed largely beyond the reach of coastal kingdoms. The Kabyè built dense terraced farming on stony hills, and the Batammariba of Koutammakou built fortified two-storey earth houses that protected families and granaries from raids.

Many of these groups straddle today's borders: Ewe live in both Togo and Ghana's Volta Region, and the Batammariba extend into Benin's Atakora, where their houses are called Tata Somba.

In July 1884 the German explorer Gustav Nachtigal signed a protection treaty with Mlapa III, a chief at Togoville on Lake Togo, and the name of that village became the name of the colony. Germany pushed the borders north and made Lomé the capital in 1897.

German Togoland was called a 'model colony' in Berlin: it paid for itself, built railways from Lomé to Aného, Kpalimé and Atakpamé, a wharf and a cathedral. It did so through forced labour and head taxes, and the railways were built to carry cocoa, coffee, cotton and palm oil to the port.

British and French troops took the colony in August 1914, the first Allied victory of the First World War. After the war the League of Nations split it: the western third went to Britain, the eastern two-thirds, with Lomé, to France. The split cut the Ewe in two.

In a 1956 plebiscite British Togoland voted to join the Gold Coast, which became Ghana in 1957; that is why the Volta Region is Ghanaian. French Togo moved towards self-government, and Ewe nationalists long dreamed of reunification.

Togo became independent on 27 April 1960 under Sylvanus Olympio, an Ewe businessman who resisted French influence. In January 1963 he was shot at the gate of the US embassy in West Africa's first post-independence coup, carried out by former French army soldiers, among them Étienne (later Gnassingbé) Eyadéma.

Eyadéma took power himself in 1967 and ruled for 38 years, a one-party state built on the army, dominated by officers from his Kabyè north, and backed by France. The 1990s brought protests, a national conference and multiparty elections that he kept winning amid violence and boycotts.

When he died in 2005 the army installed his son Faure Gnassingbé; after regional pressure an election confirmed him amid deadly unrest. He has won every election since. A 2024 constitution moved Togo to a parliamentary system and in May 2025 he became President of the Council of Ministers, a post without term limits, which triggered protests in Lomé.

Meanwhile Lomé has grown into a logistics hub: its deep-water port and ASKY airline's base make it a gateway for landlocked Sahel states. Since 2021 jihadist groups have attacked the Savanes region in the far north.

Togo has about 9.5 million people and around 40 ethnic groups. The Ewe and related Mina and Ouatchi dominate the south; the Kabyè, second largest, come from the Kara hills; the Tem live around Sokodé; the Moba and Gourma near the Burkina border.

French is the official language, with Ewe and Kabiyè promoted as national languages. In Lomé people switch easily between French, Mina and English picked up from Ghana next door.

Markets are run largely by women. Lomé's Grand Marché became famous for the 'Nana Benz', wholesalers of Dutch wax-print cloth who grew rich enough in the 1970s to drive Mercedes-Benz cars. Their power has faded with Chinese competition, but cloth trading remains a respected female career.

Rural life follows the farming year and festivals such as Evala in the Kara region, where young Kabyè men prove themselves in wrestling bouts before becoming adults, and the Epé Ekpé ceremony in Glidji, where a sacred stone predicts the coming year.

Togo shares Vodun with Benin and Ghana's Ewe. Shrines to Legba stand at village entrances, and Vodun convents train initiates. Along the coast, festivals honour sea and lagoon spirits, and Togoville has sacred sites beside its Catholic church.

The Akodessewa market in Lomé sells ingredients for traditional medicine and charms: dried animals, skulls, herbs and carvings. It is a working pharmacy for believers and a much-photographed curiosity for visitors; many products come from protected species.

Christians make up the largest share of the population, especially in the south, with Catholic cathedrals from the German era and many Pentecostal churches. Islam is strong in Sokodé and the north, where the Adossa festival, with its knife dance, marks the Prophet's birthday.

As elsewhere on the coast, most people combine faiths, consulting a Vodun priest or diviner while attending church or mosque.

Togo runs 550 km north from a 56 km coastline. Behind the sandy coast and lagoons, the Plateaux region rises into the Atakora hills, the country's greenest part, with Mount Agou at 986 m, coffee and cocoa farms and waterfalls around Kpalimé and Badou. Further north the land opens into savanna.

The Batammariba tower houses of Koutammakou, called takienta, are built of earth with a ground floor for animals and an upper terrace with granaries and rooms. Each house faces west and is a model of the Batammariba universe; the landscape was listed by UNESCO in 2004.

Food follows the coastal pattern: maize dough (akoumé), pounded yam fufu and gari with sauces of okra, spinach, jute leaves or peanut, fish on the coast and goat inland. In the north, millet and sorghum dominate, and tchoukoutou sorghum beer is brewed by women.

Kpalimé is Togo's craft centre, with batik, pottery, woodwork and weaving, and the country's small arts scene thrives in Lomé's cultural centres and festivals.