Walls of Clay and Color: The Kassena-Nankani of Upper East Ghana and Their Living Architecture

## The Upper East and Its Ancient Peoples

Ghana's Upper East Region, tucked into the northeast corner of the country where Ghana, Burkina Faso, and Togo converge, is a landscape of red laterite soil, baobab trees, and the low granite hills that break the horizon of the Guinea savannah. It is also home to one of the oldest-documented settled communities in West Africa: the Kassena and Nankani peoples, whose compound architecture and painted walls constitute a living cultural heritage of international significance.

The Kassena-Nankani, as the two closely related ethnic groups are collectively known, speak languages of the Gur family, distinguishing them linguistically from both the Akan peoples of the south and the Dagomba-Gonja peoples of the Northern Region. Their ancestors settled the Bolgatanga-Navrongo corridor many centuries before European contact, adapting to the harsh seasonal rhythms of the savannah — long dry seasons and concentrated rainy seasons — through sophisticated agricultural and social systems.

The primary towns of Kassena-Nankani settlement include Navrongo (home to the famous Navrongo Cathedral), Paga (site of the sacred crocodile ponds), Chiana (center of traditional chieftaincy), and the regional capital Bolgatanga. Together, these communities form a cultural landscape recognized internationally, with the Kassena-Nankani compound architecture listed by UNESCO among the significant heritage sites of sub-Saharan Africa.

## The Compound as Cosmology: Architecture and Social Organization

The Kassena-Nankani compound — called a 'zuri' in Kassem language — is far more than a dwelling. It is a physical expression of the family's social structure, spiritual beliefs, genealogical memory, and aesthetic sensibility. A traditional compound is an organic, evolving structure that grows over generations as family members marry, have children, and add new rooms to the existing formation. The oldest compounds in Navrongo and Chiana have been continuously inhabited and expanded for six or more generations.

The compound's architecture is fundamentally round: rooms are built with circular walls of packed earth, roofed with conical thatched domes that shed the heavy tropical rains efficiently. Unlike the rectangular compounds of southern Ghana, the circular forms of Upper East architecture reflect a cosmological preference for the circle — a symbol of completeness, continuity, and the eternal cycles of birth, death, and rebirth. The configuration of rooms within a compound also follows social logic: the oldest man's room typically faces the main entrance; women's rooms are arranged in relation to their husbands' rooms; granaries occupy prominent positions reflecting the family's wealth and generosity.

The entrance to a traditional compound passes through a small vestibule room called the 'naab' — a transitional space between the public world outside and the private world within. This threshold is considered spiritually significant: the ancestral spirit of the compound's founding patriarch is believed to reside near the entrance, and libations are poured to this spirit during family ceremonies. The 'naab' often contains wooden figurines (tangwana) and other shrine objects that embody the compound's spiritual protection.