“Oil Palm Branch to Oil Palm Branch”: Festivals, Borders, and Trans-Border Ewe Ethnic Identities on the Ghana–Togo Border

Abstract

ABSTRACT This paper examines how Deza (oil palm festival) of Dzodze on the Ghana–Togo border reflects socio-cultural relations between Ewe communities in Ghana and Togo and what it means for the border itself and Ewe identities on the borderlands. Drawing from participant observations of Deza from 2016–2019 and 2022, interviews, festival memorabilia, and archival sources, the paper argues that while Deza remains an identifiably relatively new Ghanaian festival, it is a site for Ewe border-crossing that traverses and undermines the reality of the border as a barrier through temporal and spatial performances. Also, the paper demonstrates that trans-border Ewe identity, through the codification of a common Ewe history and culture, produces multiple national identities. Thus, it simultaneously denies and affirms the border by highlighting the importance of festivals for bordering and the complex identities and identification that these festivals produce on the borderlands.