‘A few lesser peoples’: the Central Togo minorities and their Ewe neighbours

Abstract

The public debate surrounding the outbreak of ethnic conflict in northern Ghana in 1994 was intriguing, not least because it highlighted just how patchy the knowledge of southerners was when it came to the complexities of politics north of the Volta. Although most southerners would probably claim greater familiarity with the Volta Region, the inaccuracy of popular perceptions is in this case even more surprising. One commonly encounters the blanket assertion that the region is populated by Ewe or, according to a slightly more sophisticated version, that it is made up of Akan communities in the north and Ewe in the south. However, these apparently straightforward categories prove, on closer inspection, to be highly problematic. Equally, the existence of the so-called ‘Central Togo minorities’ (itself a problematic term) is scarcely ever recognised by those who do not hail from the region.