Togo

From the Ewe exodus out of walled Notsé and the mud tower-houses of the Batammariba to the German 'model colony', a partitioned mandate, and a half-century ruled by one family.

A narrow ribbon of land running inland from a short Atlantic coast, Togo was peopled long before its borders existed: the Ewe, who by tradition fled the walled town of Notsé to disperse across what is now Ghana, Togo and Benin; the Kabye and related farmers of the rugged north; and the Mina and Guin of the coast, refugees from the wars of the Gold Coast who founded trading towns such as Aného. That coast was the western 'Slave Coast', where Aného served as a slaving and commercial port in the Atlantic trade. In 1884 the German explorer Gustav Nachtigal secured a protectorate treaty on this shore, and at the Berlin Conference the powers recognised the German colony of Togoland, later promoted as a 'model colony' but in reality sustained by taxation and forced labour. At the outbreak of the First World War in August 1914 a swift Anglo-French invasion ended German rule, and the territory was partitioned into British and French mandates of the League of Nations. British Togoland voted in 1956 to join the soon-independent Ghana, while French Togoland became the independent Republic of Togo on 27 April 1960 under Sylvanus Olympio. Olympio's assassination in January 1963 — often called the first coup of post-independence Africa — opened the way to the long rule of Gnassingbé Eyadéma from 1967 to 2005, after which his son Faure Gnassingbé took power.