Ghana

Official title: Republic of Ghana

Capital city: Accra

Official language: English, although Akan, Ewe, Ga and Dagbani are widely spoken

Currency: Cedi (C) = 100 pesewa

Cash crops for export: Cocoa, coffee, palm oil, capra, cola nuts, sheanut-butter and kenaf (the fiber is used like jute), limes

Food crops: Cassava, maize, millet, sorghum, rice, plantains, yams, poultry and domestic fish.

Total land area: Approximately 240,000 sq km

"The Legend of the Golden Stool "

The Ashanti are part of a larger group of Akan-speaking people. Centuries ago wars periodically broke out between the different kingdoms of these people and the custom was for the loser to send a member of the royal household to serve the victor in his kingdom.

The kingdom of Denkyira annexed the budding Ashanti kingdom and the Ashanti prince, Osei-Tutu, was sent to wait upon the Denkyiran king Nana Boa Amponsem. In Denkyira Osei-Tutu was befriended by a fetish priest Okomfo Anokye who had come from the kingdom of Akwamu.

As the Ashanti was and still is, a matriarchal society, when the king of the Ashanti died, Osei-Tutu, his maternal nephew, was called home to assume the throne. He asked to be allowed to take Okomfo Anokye with him. In time Okomfo Anokye became the most influential high priest of the Ashanti, giving spiritual protection to the kingdom.

To cement his friendship with King Osei-Tutu, Okomfo Anokye decided to conjure from the heavens, a solid gold stool with the power to make the Ashanti invincible.

As part of the eight-day ritual he took two saplings of a native "kum" tree and planed them some distance apart, proclaiming that whichever lived would mark the site of the new capital of the kingdom.

He then took the "akonfena" the sword of the state, and marked a spot where a hole was to be dug in which he would be buried. While entombed he would consult the tribal elders who had preceded him and would be given supernatural powers to pass on to the Ashanti.

He charged everyone not to cry if he did not return within eight days for, he explained, he could only return if no tears were shed. Before his burial he promised that on the third day the golden stool would descend from heaven.

Legend has it that this is exactly what happened, but tragically, when Okomfo Anokye had not reappeared by the eighth day, the Ashanti women began to wail and he was lost forever.

The sapling that lived marked the capital of the new kingdom which was called Kuamasi (meaning under "kum") and which is still the capital of the Ashanti today. The place where the other sapling died marks the present-day town of Kumawu. The sword of state remains to this day inextricable from the ground into which Okomfo Anokye thrust it, and the golden stool, the symbol of the power of Ashanti, many believe rests at the Ashanti place.