Kete Krachi
| Kete Krachi | |||
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| Coordinates | 7 ° 48 ′ N , 0 ° 3 ′ W | ||
| Basic data | |||
| Country | Ghana | ||
| Oti region | |||
| ISO 3166-2 | GH-OT | ||
| Residents | 3000 | ||
Kete Krachi (formerly also Kete-Kratschi ) is a village in the west of the Oti region in Ghana with about 3000 inhabitants. The village is located on a headland on the northern shore of Lake Volta with a port for inland waterways. A ferry connects Kete Krachi with Kwadjokrom , the road connections to Bimbila and Dumbai are poorly developed.
Due to the isolation to the south, the population in Kete Krachi lives from trade with the neighboring villages to the north, which use Kete Krachi as a small trading post for the delivery of goods across Lake Volta. In addition, the people live from fishing and are subsistence farmers .
history
Kete Krachi belonged to the German colony of Togo until 1914 , then was occupied by the British during World War I , who administered it from 1919 as part of their League of Nations mandate British Togoland . In 1958, this area decided in a referendum to join the independent Ghana.
Originally the village was much further south, but the place had to be relocated to a higher location in the course of the dam project, i.e. as part of the construction of the Akosombo dam and the damming of Lake Volta.
The old Kete Krachi was the location of one of the oldest Islamic universities in West Africa. Its founder, Alhaji Oumarou Titibrika , was a famous and sought-after marabout and Muslim scholar of his time . His work can be seen today in Ho . The place had an important trading position in the slave trade . The enslaved people from the deeper inland were brought together centrally in Kete Krachi, in order to be later transported further south to the European slave traders, which happened exclusively via the Volta .
In the 19th century, Kete Krachi was the center of one of the most important national protective cults and oracles of Ghana, the Dente cult . Dente was the highest god of the Krachi and claimed to protect against all kinds of harm. His shrine was in a cave and the oracle was consulted directly through a priest. The deity responded through a voice that came from this cave. Towards the end of German colonial rule, in 1912, the German district manager of Kete Krachi, Werner von Rentzell, had the shrine blown up and the obosomfo , the priest, hung up. He feared that Dente was "one of those troubled witch-repellent cults" who at that time worried the colonial masters in the neighboring British colony of Gold Coast and Togo.