Pikworo Slave Camp, Paga

The chain south

Pikworo was a collection and holding point, not an endpoint. People were taken in raids across the north and from further north still — into what is now Burkina Faso — and brought here to be held and auctioned. Accounts put an average of around two hundred people at the camp at any one time.

From here they walked. Roughly 150 kilometres south to the market at Salaga, on foot, chained. At Salaga they were sold again. From Salaga the route ran on south through further holding points to the coast, to the forts, and onto ships.

The whole route, in order: Pikworo and the northern raiding grounds → Salaga → Assin Manso → Cape Coast and Elmina → the Atlantic. Four of those five links are on this site. If you are travelling for heritage reasons, this is the sequence, and it runs north to south. Most itineraries sold to the diaspora start and end in the last two.

The Ghana Tourism Authority has itself made this argument. Its regional leadership has publicly described Pikworo as the root of the enslavement of Ghanaians and argued that PANAFEST should begin there rather than on the coast. That has not translated into visitor numbers, funding or road access, and Pikworo remains one of the least developed significant heritage sites in the country.

Who was selling

Pikworo was operated as a collection outpost by African traders, who sold to English, French and Dutch buyers. The raiding that filled it was carried out by African raiders — the Zabarima under Babatu and others, mounted, armed, and taking captives from communities that had no cavalry and no firearms.

This is not a revisionist point and it does not reduce European responsibility by a single degree. The Atlantic demand created the market, the ships were European, the plantations were European-owned, and the scale was set in Europe. But the supply chain ran on African capture and African sale, and the people at the top of it grew powerful on it.

The reason to say so at Pikworo specifically is geographic. The victims were overwhelmingly northern. The profits were overwhelmingly not. The wealth built by the trade accumulated among the coastal states and the forest kingdoms that sold on to the Europeans. The Upper East and the Northern regions supplied the people and kept none of the proceeds — and they are still, by every development indicator Ghana publishes, the poorest parts of the country.

That pattern did not end when the trade did. Heritage tourism revenue in Ghana flows almost entirely to the coastal castles. Pikworo, where the same story starts, has a dirt approach road and a handful of guides.

Who Sold Whom — the full argument→

Getting there

Paga Nania, roughly three kilometres west of Paga, in the Kassena-Nankana West District of the Upper East Region. Paga sits directly on the Burkina Faso border — the frontier post is in the town.

Paga itself, and the uncomfortable comparison

Paga is known nationally for one thing, and it is not Pikworo. It is the crocodile ponds — sacred crocodiles which by long local tradition do not harm people, and which visitors are invited to sit beside and touch for a photograph, with a live chicken involved in the arrangement.

It is genuinely interesting, the taboo protecting the crocodiles is real and has kept a population alive, and it is the reason most Ghanaian and foreign visitors come to Paga at all.

It also draws considerably more traffic, revenue and attention than the slave camp three kilometres away. Both sites are in the same small town, on the same afternoon, for the same visitor. One is a photograph with a reptile. The other is where the people in the coastal dungeons were taken from.

We are not suggesting you skip the crocodiles. We are suggesting you notice the allocation.

Connected reading

• Salaga Slave Market — the next link south, 150 km on foot, and the largest market of the northern trade.
• Assin Manso Ancestral Slave River — the last wash before the coast, and where the diaspora return begins.
• Who Sold Whom — the northern origins of the trade, and where the money went.
• Forts and Castles of Ghana — Cape Coast, Elmina and the forty-odd others, where the route ends.
• The History of Ghana — the Zabarima raids, the northern kingdoms, and the century before colonisation.
• Festivals of Ghana — Feok at Sandema, which commemorates the resistance to the raiders, and PANAFEST on the coast.
• Public Transport in Ghana — getting to Tamale and Bolgatanga, and why you should fly the long leg.
• National Parks & Protected Areas — Mole and the northern reserves, if you are already making the journey.

Practical details last verified 15 August 2026. The 1704–1845 operating dates are the account given by the Ghana Tourism Authority and repeated across published sources without attribution to a primary record, and are presented here as received tradition rather than established fact. Descriptions of the eating bowls, punishment rock, cemetery and lookout are drawn from published guide accounts and visitor records, which differ in detail and are noted where they do. The 1762 date and the Samori Touré and Babatu account reported in 2022 are chronologically inconsistent with the documented lives of both men and are discussed on that basis. Fees, guide arrangements and road conditions change — confirm locally before travelling.