Togo is the narrow remainder of a divided colony

Lomé touches the border with Ghana. For a capital, that is the country's situation, not an edge. Togo is a narrow corridor from the Gulf of Guinea north to Burkina Faso, squeezed between Ghana and Benin. This shape is the remainder of a colony that was divided after the First World War.

In the south lies the coast, with Lomé, the port and the market that reaches the Ghanaian barrier. Behind it the country rises over hills into the interior, toward Atakpamé and Sokodé, and ends in the north at the savanna of Burkina Faso. To the east lies Benin, once called Dahomey and under French rule. To the west lies Ghana, which took in the British part of old Togoland. On 56,785 square kilometres live 8,591,626 people. From east to west there is little room. From south to north the whole country is one route.

A corridor, not an area

Look for Togo on the map and you find a strip, not a compact mass. The capital sits at the southwestern end of that strip, where the coast meets the border. The port of Lomé therefore does not serve a wide hinterland of its own to the west. The west is already Ghana. The hinterland lies to the north. Governing here means holding that line.

The narrowness has consequences for every neighbour. A dispute on the Ghanaian border is a dispute at the capital. A dispute with Benin is a dispute on the other long side, not in a far corner. Burkina Faso touches only the northern end. Togo cannot withdraw into the depth of a continent. It is the depth, from the coast to the savanna, and that depth is narrow. The area of 56,785 square kilometres says this only if one also sees the shape.

The division that left the country narrow

Until the First World War, Togoland was a German colony between British influence to the west and French influence to the east. The League of Nations then divided it into a British and a French mandate. In 1956 a plebiscite in the British trust territory decided union with the Gold Coast, which became Ghana. The French part became independent on 27 April 1960 as the Republic of Togo. The border with Ghana is that cut, not an old cultural line ending by chance at Lomé.

That is why the capital sits on the cut. Lomé was the seat of the French administration on the coast, directly beside the territory that went to Ghana. The market grew on this seam, not in a protected middle. Cross the border today and you change country, currency and official language in a few steps: from the CFA franc and from French into the English of Ghana. The colonial division is still a set of directions inside the city.

The border with Ghana begins at the port. That is how narrow the country is.

— TerraTally · Countries desk

French and the union's franc

The official language is French, the language of the mandate that became the state. In the south Ewe is widespread, in the north Kabiyé, along with other languages of the street and the village. The constitution does not make them official languages. It makes French the language of the laws and promotes the others as languages of the country. Drive from Lomé to Sokodé and the daily language changes while the official French stays the same. The narrow state is not narrow in language.

Payment is in the CFA franc of the West African monetary union, issued by the BCEAO. Togo shares it with Benin and other member states. Ghana, beyond the barriers, does not. The border is therefore also a treasury border. The narrow remainder of the German colony hangs on the French language and currency area, while the capital sticks to the English-speaking neighbour. Shape from the division, money from the other half of the colonial story: that is Togo.

Togo has been told fully when Lomé stands on the Ghanaian border and the north still belongs to the same state. The strip is not an accident of the drawing. It is the cut of 1956 and the independence of 1960, laid one on the other.