West African ethnicity indicates genetic origins in western Africa, from Mauritania, Mali, and southern Morocco in the north to the Cape Verde islands in the west and the Congo in the south, including parts of the Central African Republic and Chad in the east. Lying in the northwestern section of the African continent, bordered by the Sahara Desert to its north and the Atlantic Ocean to its west and south, the region of West Africa comprises the countries of Benin, Burkina Faso, Cape Verde, Gambia, Ghana, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Ivory Coast, Liberia, Mali, Mauritania, Niger, Nigeria, Senegal, Sierra Leone, and Togo. West Africa hosts hundreds of ethnic groups, each with its own language (or dialect) and culture. The largest ethnic groups are the Hausa, inhabiting southern Niger and northern Nigeria, as well as other West African countries; the Yoruba, found mainly in Nigeria and Benin; the Igbo, whose homeland straddles the lower Niger River; and the Akan people, largely concentrated in Ghana and the Ivory Coast. Due in part to the dark history of the Atlantic slave trade, as well as to waves of modern global and inner-continental migration, people of West African descent can be found in all parts of the world, including the Americas, Europe, and other parts of Africa. As a consequence of the historical erasure of slave pasts, many descendants of West Africans are tragically unaware of their familial roots and origins.
West African history
While human settlement in West Africa dates back at least 8,000–10,000 years, settled farming societies appeared around the 5th millennium B.C.E. The oldest known organized society in West Africa is the Nuk culture (500–200 B.C.E.), renowned for its distinctly-styled terracotta figurines. It has been suggested by researchers that elements of Nuk cultural legacy persist in Nigeria to this day. The archaeological site of Djenné-Djenno (250 B.C.E.–50 C.E.), located in the Niger River Valley in modern-day Mali, represents one of the oldest known urbanized centers in sub-Saharan Africa. The domestication of camels allowed caravans to cross the Sahara Desert and trade with Carthage and Amazigh tribes in North Africa, linking West Africa to the broader Mediterranean world.
An increased trans-Saharan trade in salt and gold facilitated the emergence of the Ghana Empire (Sixth-thirteenth centuries) in northern West Africa — the first major empire of the region. Upon the Ghana Empire’s decline, the trans-Saharan trade was inherited and expanded by the Mali Empire. Muslim merchants attracted to the region’s trade converted Mali rulers to Islam, who then disseminated the religion through noted learning centers such as Timbuktu. The subsequent Songhai Empire (fifteenth-sixteenth centuries) expanded the Mali Empire’s territory to include large parts of modern-day Mauritania and Mali. Ripped apart by civil wars, around the year 1591, the last of the great empires that had dominated West Africa was ultimately absorbed into the Sultanate of Morocco.
By the eighth century, Arab geographers had made note of the Kanem Empire — the first empire of southern West Africa — ruling over areas in modern-day Nigeria, Chad, and Libya. By the fourteenth century, the Kanem Empire had been broken apart and the Bornu Empire was established in its wake. In the northwestern plains, during the first millennium C.E., a collection of centralized polities established by the Hausa people consolidated and formed the Hausa Kingdom, a polity which persisted until the nineteenth century. In the southwest, the Yoruba kingdom of Ife sprang up between The eleventh and twelfth centuries. Ife is heralded by many as the geographical and spiritual ancestral home of the Yoruba people. Ife was ultimately supplanted by the Kingdom of Oyo: in its peak during the seventeenth to early eighteenth century, Oyo was able to extend its influence from western Nigeria to modern-day Togo. At the same time, southern Nigeria was ruled by the Kingdom of Benin: established as early as the eleventh century, the powerful kingdom gave its name to the Bight of Benin in the Gulf of Guinea. Various forms of forced servitude had existed in West Africa prior to the sixteenth century, including the trans-Saharan slave trade which saw bonded West Africans sold to Arab traders along the Mediterranean and Indian Ocean coasts. However, the arrival of Europeans to the West African coast ushered in a sea-change in practices of bondage: between the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries, millions of West Africans were captured, sold, and sent to toil on European plantations in the Americas and the Caribbean as part of the Atlantic slave trade. The Bight of Benin (in modern-day Nigeria) was the central hub of the regional slave trade, its shores known as the Slave Coast of West Africa. Besides the personal tragedy of enslaved West Africans and their families, the Atlantic slave trade also had a devastating effect on the region's economy and population, stripping the region of almost two-thirds of its inhabitants. Several local states emerged which capitalized on the slave economy, such as the Asante Empire (modern-day Ghana), Bambara Empire (modern-day Mali), and the Kingdom of Dahomey (modern-day Benin), which traded slaves in exchange for European goods, such as firearms.
The economic prospects of controlling the region’s abundant resources — including diamond, gold, silver, and copper mines — prompted European empires to exert colonial rule over West Africa: following the Berlin Conference of 1884–85, Britain controlled Gambia, Sierra Leone, Ghana, and Nigeria, while France unified modern-day Senegal, Guinea, Mali, Burkina Faso, Benin, Ivory Coast, and Niger into French West Africa. Portugal founded the colony of Guinea-Bissau, while Germany colonized Togoland (modern-day Togo and Ghana). After decades of systematic neglect, starting in the 1940s, Britain and France drew up comprehensive development plans for the region: a series of political, administrative, and educational reforms which increased African representation in the colonies, resulting in the formation of West African independence movements led by educated local elites.
The colonial period came to an end between 1957–1976, with all the former colonies gaining their independence. However, the post-colonial era did not yield the peace and prosperity envisioned by West African nationalists. Political instability and resurgent ethnic conflicts spiraled into protracted and bloody civil wars in countries like Nigeria, Sierra Leone, Liberia, and Ivory Coast. Ghana and Burkina Faso experienced a succession of military coups. In 1975, an Economic Community of West African States was established, with its stated mission being the promotion of economic integration across the region.
West African culture
West Africa’s long history of diverse cultural encounters has resulted in a rich and flavorful culinary tradition. European explorers and slavers introduced New-World foods that became staples of West African cuisines, including chili peppers, tomatoes, peanuts, corn, cassava, and plantains. While spices and herbs like ginger, coriander, and thyme reflect a Moorish North African influence, flavoring dishes with soubala (packed balls of fermented néré seeds) is a truly local West African practice. The ethnic diversity of West Africa is reflected in its cuisine, with each country and region having its own unique kitchen: popular dishes include cachupa from Cape Verde (a stew of slow cooked corn, cassava, sweet potato, and fish or meat), fufu from Nigeria (boiled starchy food crops like cassava, yams or plantains, commonly served with peanut or palm-nut soup), ndole from Cameroon (a flavorful dish of cooked bitter leaves, stewed nuts, crushed spices, and fish or beef), and kedjenou from the Ivory Coast (a slow-cooked guinea fowl or chicken stew), to name but a few.
West Africa boasts a range of highly accomplished artistic traditions. The Great Mosque of Djenné in Mali represents the peak of the Sudano-Sahelian architectural style — characterized by the use of mud bricks and adobe plaster with large wooden-log support beams protruding outward — and is one of the most recognizable structures in the world. West Africa developed a rich storytelling and praise-singing tradition, in which bards serving as historians were charged with transmitting information about royal lineages from generation to generation. Employing wood, brass, and terracotta, the sculptural practice of the Yoruba people is considered to be one of the finest artistic traditions in all of Africa. Music and dance are integral to West African cultures, and each ethnic group has its rhythmic and melodic traditions, produced through an assortment of instruments including various types of flutes, trumpets, xylophones, and many varieties of drums.
In recent times, West Africans have left their mark on the world stage, including the internationally esteemed Nigerian musician Fela Kuti (1938–1997), pioneer of the Afrobeat music genre. Perhaps no other field has offered as prominent a stage for West Africans as soccer, where players like Didier Drogba of the Ivory Coast (b. 1978), Samuel Eto’o of Cameroon (b. 1981), and Sadio Mané of Senegal (b. 1992) have been among the most honored and influential figures in world soccer over the past two decades.
West African languages
West Africa’s ethnic diversity is reflected in the plethora of languages and dialects spoken across the region — numbering in the thousands — derived from Africa’s three major language families: Afroasiatic, Nilo-Saharan and Niger-Congo. Corresponding to the region’s large ethnic groups, Niger-Congo languages predominate West Africa, the most common being Hausa, Yoruba, Igbo, Fulani, and Akan. In reflection of the region’s historic zones of influence, colonial languages, such as French, English, and Portuguese are common to coastal areas, while varieties of Maghrebi Arabic are common to the inland northern stretches of the region.
Explore more about ethnicity estimates
- MyHeritage DNA at MyHeritage
- Ethnicities around the world at MyHeritage
- What Is My Ethnicity? How MyHeritage Estimates Ethnicities at MyHeritage Knowledge Base
- Where's My Ethnicity?!: Why An Ethnicity Might Not Show Up In Your DNA (and How To Find Evidence Of It Anyway) at MyHeritage Knowledge Base