Salaga

Salaga is a town and is the capital of East Gonja district, a district in the Northern Region of north Ghana. Salaga has a 2012 settlement population of 25,472 people.EtymologyThe name Salaga comes from the Dagomba word "salgi" which means "To get used to a place of abode".HistoryIn the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, Salaga served as a key market town particularly for the busy regional kola trade and controlling Salaga gave a monopoly over trade to the North and trade to the South. Situated in the southernmost reaches of the Sahel, Salaga was referred to as "the Timbuktu of the south" for its cosmopolitan population and varied trade. Gonja, a powerful warrior kingdom, ruled Salaga and several other towns. However, Salaga being a cosmopolitan town was inhabited by the indigenous Gonja as well as Hausas, Wangaras, Dagombas, Gurmas and other groups from the region.Salaga was central to the emergence of the Zabarima (emirate) as a power in the area that is now northern Ghana, when the scholar Alfa Hano and the warrior Gazari migrated here from their former homes south-east of Niamey in the 1860s.

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