Salaga is a historic town in Ghana's Savannah Region (formerly part of the Northern Region until the 2019 regional reorganisation), and it holds one of the most significant — and most painful — chapters in West African history: it was one of the largest slave markets in the interior of the Gold Coast and the wider Sahel. **Where it sits.** Salaga lies in the East Gonja District, roughly 100 km east of Tamale and close to the confluence of the Volta's branches. Its position made it a natural crossroads — where the savannah trade routes from the north (Salaga means "the place of exchange" in the Gonja language, from *sala* = "to trade/exchange") met routes running south to the coast and east toward the Niger bend. **Why it became a great market.** Between roughly the 17th and late 19th centuries, Salaga was the commercial heart of the interior. Two great streams of trade converged there: - **Kola nuts** from the forest belt (Asante, Akyem, and the Volta basin) heading north to Hausa and Sahel markets. - **Livestock, salt, cloth, beads, and European goods** moving south from the savannah and the trans-Saharan routes. The kola trade was so central that Salaga was sometimes called the greatest kola market in West Africa. Asante, Gonja, Dagomba, Hausa, Mossi, and Wangara (Dyula) traders all had quarters in the town, and by the 1870s it was a cosmopolitan settlement of several thousand people with distinct ethnic wards. **The slave market.** Alongside legitimate goods, Salaga became a major entrepôt for the trans-Saharan and domestic slave trade. Captives — many taken in wars between Asante, Gonja, Dagomba, and neighbouring states, or raided from the Gurunsi, Grusi, and northern communities — were assembled, sorted, and sold at Salaga before being marched north across the desert or south to the coast. The market operated through brokers, and prices fluctuated with supply and demand much like any commodity. German traveller **G.A. Krause** visited in 1876 and left one of the most detailed eyewitness accounts of the market in full swing; other European and African travellers (including the likes of **Mungo Park's** era of explorers and later **Louis Binger**) documented its scale. **The end of the trade.** Salaga's commercial dominance collapsed in the last two decades of the 19th century for several overlapping reasons: - The **British–Asante wars** and the 1874 sack of Kumasi disrupted the southern kola routes. - The **German and British colonial partitions** (the 1880s–90s scramble) cut the north–south trade lines and shifted commerce to new colonial towns like **Kete-Krachi, Tamale, and Kumasi**. - The **abolition of the slave trade** by European powers and the gradual suppression of slave raiding removed a pillar of the economy. - The rise of **Kumasi and later Tamale** as rail- and road-linked hubs pulled trade away. By the early 20th century Salaga was a quiet district town — its great market days a memory. **What remains today.** Salaga is a place of memory and heritage: - The **Salaga Slave Market site** and the **slave wells** (deep cisterns where captives were held and where, by tradition, they were given their last water before being sold) are preserved as historic monuments. - The **Salaga Slave Cemetery** and the old market grounds are visited by diaspora Africans, especially during **Year of Return (2019)** and **Beyond the Return** pilgrimages. - The town is also known for its **Gonja** chieftaincy, its **Damba** and **Eid** festivals, and its role in the **Yaa Asantewaa** and **Babatu/Gonja** historical narratives — the notorious slave raider **Babatu** operated in the region in the late 19th century. **Cultural weight.** Salaga stands as a reminder that the trans-Saharan and domestic slave trades were not only a coastal (Cape Coast, Elmina) story — the interior was deeply implicated, and Salaga was its greatest marketplace. For Ghanaians and the diaspora, it is a site of reckoning: a place to confront what was lost and to honour those who passed through. If you're planning a visit, the Salaga heritage sites are best reached from Tamale (about 2–3 hours by road), and the Savannah Regional Coordinating Council and local Gonja traditional authorities can arrange guided tours of the market, wells, and cemetery.