Togo
A slender sliver from the Gulf of Guinea to the Sahel
Togo is a slim sliver of a country in West Africa, barely more than a hundred kilometers wide yet stretching some 550 kilometers inland from a short Atlantic coast to the savannas of the north. Wedged between Ghana and Benin, it owes its odd shape to the scramble for Africa, when it was carved out as a German colony and later split between Britain and France. Its roughly 9 to 10 million people sustain a busy port at Lomé, a phosphate-mining industry, and a rich blend of Ewe, Kabye, and other cultures, including pockets of Vodun practice along the coast.
From the palm-lined coast and its lagoons the land rises through fertile plateaus to the forested Atakora range, which crosses the country diagonally and includes Mont Agou, the highest point at about 986 meters. North of the mountains lie drier savanna plains sloping toward Burkina Faso. The Mono River runs along part of the eastern border. Togo's economy depends on agriculture, especially cotton, coffee, and cocoa, on the export of phosphates from one of the world's notable deposits, and on the autonomous port of Lomé, a key transshipment hub for landlocked Sahelian neighbors.
The coast was part of the so-called Slave Coast, and Germany declared the area its protectorate of Togoland in 1884, building railways and plantations before losing the colony in World War I, after which it was divided between Britain and France. The British portion later joined Ghana, while the French part became independent Togo in 1960. Politics have been dominated for decades by a single family, with Gnassingbé Eyadéma ruling for nearly four decades until his death in 2005, when his son Faure Gnassingbé succeeded him, sustaining one of Africa's longest-running political dynasties.