Dagara people

The Dagaare (also spelled Dagare, Dagarti, Dagaran or, Dagao) are an ethnic group in the West African nations of Ghana and Burkina Faso.

History

The evidence of oral tradition is that the Dagara are a stock 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 due to geographic reasons. They consist of ten clans encompassing over one million people. Arbitrary colonial borders placed them in northwestern Ghana and southern Burkina Faso. Until the latter part of the nineteenth century when institutional chieftaincy evolved, the Dagara had a council of elders form of governance. In modern Ghana, the Dagara inhabit the following paramouncies in the Upper West Region: Nandom, Lawra, Jirapa, Kaleo, Nadowli, Daffiema and Hamile. ["A Dagaare-Cantonese-English Lexicon for Lexicographical Field Research Training", Rüdiger Köppe Verlag, Cologne] In Burkina Faso they inhabit the Sud Ouest Region.

Notes

External links

* [http://www.ethnologue.com/show_language.asp?code=dga Ethnologue report for Dagaare, Southern]
* http://www.hku.hk/linguist/staff_ab.DagaareLinguist.html
* [http://www.panafril10n.org/wikidoc/pmwiki.php/PanAfrLoc/Dagaare PanAfrican L10n wiki page on Dagaare]