Paga is a town in

Upper East Region The Upper East Region is located in north Ghana and is the third smallest of the 16 administrative regions in Ghana. It occupies a total land surface of 8,842 square kilometers or 2.7 per cent of the total land area of Ghana. The Upper East regi ...

of Ghana, lying north of

Bolgatanga Bolgatanga ( Frafra: '), colloquially known as ''Bolga'', is a town and the capital of the Bolgatanga Municipal District and Upper East Region of Ghana, adjacent to the border with Burkina Faso. Bolgatanga has over 2012 settlement and a populat ...

. Paga is the capital of

Kassena Nankana West District Kassena-Nankana West District is one of the fifteen districts in Upper East Region, Ghana. Originally, it was formerly part of the then-larger Kassena-Nankana District in 1988, until the western part of the district was split off to create Kass ...

, a district in the

in the northern part 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 town is located on the

border Borders are usually defined as geographical boundaries, imposed either by features such as oceans and terrain, or by political entities such as governments, sovereign states, federated states, and other subnational entities. Political borders c ...

Burkina Faso Burkina Faso (, ; , ff, 𞤄𞤵𞤪𞤳𞤭𞤲𞤢 𞤊𞤢𞤧𞤮, italic=no) is a landlocked country in West Africa with an area of , bordered by Mali to the northwest, Niger to the northeast, Benin to the southeast, Togo and Ghana to the ...

and is 166 km south of

Ouagadougou Ouagadougou ( , , ) is the capital and largest city of Burkina Faso and the administrative, communications, cultural, and economic centre of the nation. It is also the country's largest city, with a population of 2,415,266 in 2019. The city's n ...

via the N5 highway, the main road linking Ghana and Burkina Faso. Majority of the people of Paga are kassena by tribe.

Overview

Paga is known for its sacred crocodile ponds, where most visitors are surprised that they can touch a live

crocodile Crocodiles (family (biology), family Crocodylidae) or true crocodiles are large semiaquatic reptiles that live throughout the tropics in Africa, Asia, the Americas and Australia. The term crocodile is sometimes used even more loosely to inclu ...

. Paga is a small town in the

, and has a population of about 10,000. However, the entire population of Paga – including its outskirts – is over 100,000. Most of the inhabitants are

farmers A farmer is a person engaged in agriculture, raising living organisms for food or raw materials. The term usually applies to people who do some combination of raising field crops, orchards, vineyards, poultry, or other livestock. A farmer mi ...

of the

Kassena The Kassena people are an ethnic group located along the northern Ghana and Burkina Faso border. They speak the Kasem language. Their king lives in the town of Tiébélé. The Kasenna are closely related to the people of Nankanni and were brough ...

ethnic group, whose settlements and familial ties stretch over the colonial borders of Ghana into what is now

. The idea of different nationalities mean little to these people, who see their shared ancestry and ethnicity before what is the recent concept of nationality or religion. Many Kassenas in this small town Paga are

multilingual Multilingualism is the use of more than one language, either by an individual speaker or by a group of speakers. It is believed that multilingual speakers outnumber monolingual speakers in the world's population. More than half of all E ...

, speaking their native Kasem and

English English usually refers to: * English language * English people English may also refer to: Peoples, culture, and language * ''English'', an adjective for something of, from, or related to England ** English national ide ...

among other languages.

Foundation

According to legend, Paga was founded c. 1400 by a young man named Naveh, who was saved by a crocodile while on a hunting expedition. He then left his village and settled in the place which is now Paga. The founder of the town, Naveh, when searching for a desirable place to settle, exclaimed 'Ayipaga' which means 'My eye is fixed on this land'. The place came to be called by that name, which in due course was shortened to 'Paga'.Kassena Nankana West District

References

External links

Ghana-pedia website - Paga
{{Upper East Region, Ghana Populated places in the Upper East Region