Dagaaba people

The Dagaaba people (singular Dagao, and, in northern dialects, Dagara for both plural and singular) are an ethnic group inhabitating north of the convergence of Ghana, Burkina Faso and Côte d'Ivoire. They primarily rely on small-scale agricultural farming plots and speak the Dagaare language, which consists of several dialects. There are over a million Dagaaba people across West Africa.

One historian, describing the former usage of "Dagarti" to refer to this community by colonials, writes: "The name 'Dagarti' appears to have been coined by the first Europeans to visit the region, from the vernacular root dagaa. Correctly 'Dagaari' is the name of the language, 'Dagaaba' or 'Dagara' that of the people, and 'Dagaw' or 'Dagawie' that of the land."

Although sometimes divided into Northern and Southern Dagaare speakers, their combined population was estimated in 2003 at over one million spread across the Northwest corner of Ghana The Southern Dagaare are a people of around 700,000 living in the western part of Upper West Region. In modern Ghana, the Dagaaba homeland of the Upper West Region includes the Districts and towns of Nandom, Lawra, Jirapa, Kaleo, Papu, Nadowli, Daffiama, Wechiau and Hamile. Large communities are also found in the towns of Wa, Bogda, Babile, Tuna, Han, Zambo, and Nyoli.

The source of Dagaaba communities in the pre-colonial era remain a point of debate. The evidence of oral tradition is that the Dagaaba are an outgrowth of the Mole-Dagbani group which migrated to the semi-arid Sahel region in the fourteenth century CE. They are believed to have further migrated to the lower northern part of the region in the seventeenth century. The colonial borders, demarcated during the Scramble for Africa, placed them in northwestern Ghana and southern Burkina Faso, as well as small populations in Ivory Coast.