Coming of Age in Akan Culture
A look at traditional coming of age ceremonies in Akan cultures.
Location: Ghana
Coming of Age in Akan Tradition
In historic Akan societies, children typically grew up to fill the same roles as their parents. Girls studied how to manage a home, including the arts of cooking, cleanliness, and raising children. Most boys of the lower classes took up farming, often paired with another skill like fishing or textiles. Boys entered manhood between the ages of 16 and 18. This was not marked by any particular event, but instead by his readiness to join the adult world. Children did not always live with their fathers, sometimes staying with their maternal family instead.
Female initiation rites, or bragoro, were more elaborate. They reflected the importance of women as the foundation of each new generation. When a young woman began to menstruate, her family took her to the local queen mother. They collected beads, cloth, shea butter, and a new stool for her, as well as putting together a feast in her honor. Once the queen mother confirmed her new status, her public induction into adulthood began.
Early the next morning, the young woman and her female relatives went down to a nearby stream to wash. Her mother and aunts used this time to teach her proper hygiene and the value of chastity. She was shaved clean of all hair and decorated with beads, shea butter, white clay. She then sat on her new stool before the rest of the village, who greeted her as a woman of marrying age. Prayers and libations thanked the gods and spirits for her survival. At last, she ate a bowl of eto, or 10 boiled eggs served with mashed plantain. The eggs, symbols of fertility, must be swallowed whole.
Growing up in the Colonial Era
Akan culture along the Gold Coast is closely tied to European colonial history. The Europeans brought new trade and technology to the region, but they also brought a global market hungry for slaves and foreign goods. A child's fortune in life was, in many ways, determined by luck of birth. Some rose to power, decked in gold. More were captured and taken as slaves across the Atlantic, and still more lived ordinary lives as farmers and craftsmen.
Young men of the Asante Empire could seek to raise their status in life by leaving their farms for the capital, Kumasi. There, they served the Asantehene in tasks ranging from tax collection to memorizing laws. Servants of the king were known as asomfo. If they performed well, they could expect advancement in the court and greater wealth than the common man. In this way, the Asantehene surrounded himself with loyal chieftains rather than hereditary nobles. The price for failure, however, was steep. Incompetence and immorality in an asomfo could be punished by death.
Coming of Age in Modern Akan Regions
Today, Akan traditions exist alongside those of Ewe and other peoples, all within the larger context of Ghana and Cote d'Ivoire. The importance of maternal aunts and uncles, remain central to many Akan families. Coming of age ceremonies like bragoro are no longer common, but adulthood is still celebrated in smaller ways. Widespread poverty continues to foster a system of child labor in the region. A 2014 survey found that around 2 million or 22 percent of Ghanaian children are employed in child labor.
Bibliography
Ivor Wilks, Asante in the Nineteenth Century: The Structure and Evolution of a Political Order (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), 446-468.
Christabel Addo, "About Two Million Ghanaian Children Affected by Child Labour," Ghana News Agency, June 08, 2017, Ghana News Agency, accessed July 05, 2017.
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