Kete Krachi

Region

Kete Krachi is a village in the west of the Volta Region of Ghana with about 3000 inhabitants. The village is situated on a promontory on the north bank of the Volta Lake with a port for inland waterway vessels. A ferry connects Kete Krachi with Kwadjokrom, the road link to Bimbila and Dumbai are poorly developed.

The population in Kete Krachi lives, due to the isolation of the south, from trade with the north adjacent villages, use the Kete Krachi as a small trading post for the supply of goods on the Volta Lake. In addition, the people live from fishing and are subsistence farmers.

History

Kete Krachi belonged until 1915 to the German colony of German Togo, was then occupied in the 1st World War by the British, who managed it from 1919 as part of their League of Nations Mandate British Togoland. In 1958, this area decided in a referendum for connection to the independent Ghana.

Originally, the village was located much further south, the place, however, had in the course of the dam project, ie in the context of the construction of the Akosombo dam and the supervisor thawing of the Volta Lake, be moved to a higher position.

The old kete Krachi was the site of one of the oldest Islamic universities in West Africa. Their founder, Alhaji Oumarou Titibrika, was a famous in its time and demand Marabout and Muslim scholars. His work can be seen today in Ho. The place held a significant trading position within the slave trade. The enslaved people from the deeper inland were merged centrally in Kete Krachi to be transported later in the south to the European slave traders on what happened exclusively via the Volta.

In the 19th century Kete Krachi center of one of the most important national protection cults and oracles of Ghana, the Dente cult. Dente was the highest god of Krachi and claimed to be protected from any kind of harm. His shrine was located in a cave and the oracle was asked directly about a priest. The deity replied a voice that resounded from this cave. Towards the end of German colonial rule in 1912, was the German district manager of Kete Krachi, Werner von Rentzell, blow up the shrine and the obosomfo the priest hang. He was afraid that Dente a " troublemaker that cause witches defense cults " was that troubled at this time in the neighboring British colony of the Gold Coast and Togo - German colonial masters.