The Tano River is one of Ghana's most sacred and economically vital rivers — a 400-kilometre waterway that rises in the hills north-east of Techiman in the Bono East Region and flows south through the Ashanti and Western North regions before emptying into the Aby Lagoon at the Ghana–Côte d'Ivoire border. For the Akan, it is not merely water: Tano is the great river deity (Tano Abenamu), the son of Nyame, and the spiritual father of the Bono and Asante peoples. The famous proverb holds that *"Tano kɔ akyi a, ɛnnyɛ Tano"* — when Tano flows backwards, it is no longer Tano — a warning about departing from one's true nature. The river's basin is the breadbasket of the middle belt. Its floodplains and tributaries — the Nsuo, Bia, and Amama among them — water some of Ghana's richest agricultural land. Around Techiman, Wenchi, Kintampo, Goaso, Sampa, Bibiani, and the Dormaa area, farming communities grow maize, cassava, plantain, cocoyam, yam, cocoa, oil palm, and cashew. Cocoa is the dominant cash crop in the Western North stretch, while the Bono East communities lean heavily on maize, yam, and cashew. Fishing and riverine gardening also sustain villages along the banks, and the Tano is central to the annual Tano Festival at Techiman, where the deity is honoured and the river's blessings sought for the coming harvest. The river faces serious pressure. Illegal small-scale mining (galamsey) in the basin has silted and polluted stretches of the Tano, threatening both drinking water and irrigation; cocoa swollen-shoot disease and illegal logging have degraded the forest zones around Sefwi and Bibiani; and climate variability has made rainfall less predictable for farmers who depend on the river's seasonal rhythm. The Tano Basin Board and the Water Resources Commission have long worked on protection, and recent years have seen renewed public campaigns to save the river — because as the elders say, *"sɛ wo nom Tano nsuo a, ɛnsɛ wo were fi Tano"* — if you drink Tano's water, you must not forget Tano. If you want, I can go deeper on any one thread — the Tano Festival at Techiman, the galamsey fight in the Western North, cocoa farming around Sefwi, or the deity's role in Bono and Asante royal history. Which angle interests you?