Akpafu-Todzi is a village in the
Akpafu
Akpafu-Mempeasem is a town in the Volta Region of Ghana. The town is known for the Akpafu Secondary Technical School. The school is a second cycle
The second (symbol: s) is the unit of time in the International System of Units (SI), histori ...
traditional area of the
Jasikan Municipality District in the
Oti Region
The Oti Region is one of the six newly created regions of Ghana in December 2018. The region was carved out of the northern part of the Volta Region and will be in fulfillment of a campaign promise made by New Patriotic Party. Prior to the 2016 G ...
of
Ghana
Ghana (; tw, Gaana, ee, Gana), officially the Republic of Ghana, is a country in West Africa. It abuts the Gulf of Guinea and the Atlantic Ocean to the south, sharing borders with Ivory Coast in the west, Burkina Faso in the north, and To ...
. The inhabitants of Todzi (around 600–700 in total) call themselves the Mawu and speak
Siwu, a
Kwa language that is quite distinct from the dominant regional languages
Ewe and
Twi
Twi () is a dialect of the Akan language spoken in southern and central Ghana by several million people, mainly of the Akan people, the largest of the seventeen major ethnic groups in Ghana. Twi has about 17-18 million speakers in total, includ ...
. The Siwu name for the village is ''kaa i kato'', or "home up high". The oldest of the five Akpafu villages, Todzi functions as the capital of the traditional area and its chief is the paramount chief of Akpafu.
In the past, Akpafu-Todzi was one of the sites of the traditional iron industry of the Akpafu people. Some ancient mines can still be visited in the vicinity of the village, but the iron industry collapsed in the late nineteenth century. Nowadays, the inhabitants of Todzi are mostly peasant farmers.
References
* Plehn, Rudolf (1899) 'Beiträge zur Völkerkunde des Togo-Gebietes', in ''Mittheilungen des Seminars für Orientalische Sprachen'', 2, part III, 87–124.
* Rattray, R.S. (1916) 'The Ironworkers of Akpafu', ''Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute'', 46, 431–435.
* Pole, L.M. (1982) 'Decline or survival ? Iron production in West Africa from the 17th to the 20th centuries', ''Journal of African History'', 23, 4, 503–513.
External links and sources
Jasikan District brochure{Dead link, date=October 2018 , bot=InternetArchiveBot , fix-attempted=yes See page 15
Populated places in the Oti Region