Nalerigu is the capital of the North East Region of Ghana and the seat of the Mamprugu Traditional Area, home to the Overlord of Mamprugu, the Nayiri (the paramount chief of the Mamprusi people). It sits in the savannah country of the far north-east, close to the Burkina Faso border, and it is one of the most historically layered towns in Ghana — a place where traditional Mamprusi statecraft, Islamic scholarship, and Western medicine have all left deep marks. The town's fame rests heavily on its healing institutions. The **Baptist Medical Centre (BMC)** at Nalerigu is the best-known hospital in the region — founded by Southern Baptist missionaries in the mid-20th century (the hospital work began in the 1950s and grew into a full medical centre), it became the referral hospital for the whole north-east long before government facilities caught up. It is famous across West Africa for its surgical work — especially hernia and cataract surgery — and for training nurses and midwives. Generations of people from Ghana, Burkina Faso, Togo and beyond have travelled to Nalerigu for treatment they could not get anywhere nearer. Nalerigu also has a **colonial-era hospital legacy** — the town was an early administrative and medical outpost in the Northern Territories, and the old government hospital and missionary facilities together made Nalerigu a medical hub for the north long before the North East Region was even carved out. When the region was created in 2019 (split from the Northern Region), Nalerigu became its capital, and the old mission-and-government medical infrastructure became the backbone of the new region's health system. Culturally, Nalerigu is the heart of **Mamprugu**, one of the great Mole-Dagbani states alongside Dagbon (Yendi) and Nanung. The Nayiri's palace is here, the **Damba** and **Bugum** festivals are celebrated with horse-riding and drumming, and the town has a strong tradition of Islamic learning and Mampruli-language culture. The Gambaga Escarpment and the old Gambaga witches' camp lie just to the west, and the landscape of baobab, shea and guinea-fowl country surrounds it all. So Nalerigu is really three towns in one: the **royal capital of Mamprugu**, the **missionary-medical capital of the north-east**, and now the **administrative capital of the North East Region**. If you're building out the GhanaMann directory, Nalerigu deserves entries under traditional authority (the Nayiri's palace), health (Baptist Medical Centre, the regional hospital), festivals (Damba, Bugum), and North East regional government — it's a small town carrying an outsized share of northern Ghana's history. As the Mamprusi would put it, a town is not its walls but its people — and Nalerigu's people have been healing the north for seventy years.