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The Ancient Mud Mosques of Ghana: All Nine, Region by Region

Savannah · Upper West · Upper East

The Ancient Mud Mosques of Ghana

Nine earth-built mosques are on the official list. One of them was demolished around 2010. One collapsed in 2023 and was rebuilt by its own town. Two stood abandoned for years before a restoration project took them on in 2023–24. And the list still files all nine under a region that none of them has belonged to since 2019. This is the honest status report, region by region.

Why there are mud mosques in Ghana at all

Long before Europeans built their forts on the coast, northern Ghana was connected to the great Muslim cities of the Sahel. Mande-speaking traders, known as Dyula, moved south from Djenné and the Niger bend towards the gold and kola of the forest. Scholars and missionaries came with them, and wherever a Muslim community settled along these routes, it built a mosque in the way it knew: sun-dried earth over a timber frame.

Those buildings still stand along the old routes: in Gonja country around Larabanga and Bole, in the old Waala kingdom around Wa, and in one village near Garu in the far north-east. In 2000 the Ghana Museums and Monuments Board put them forward to UNESCO as the "Trade Pilgrimage Routes of North-Western Ghana". Twenty-six years later the entry is still only on the tentative list.

Every one of these buildings depends on people, not on a list. Rain washes away part of the outer coat each year, and the community has to renew it in the dry season, often climbing the projecting timbers to do so. Where that work stopped, or where the walls were covered in cement, which traps moisture inside, the mosques fell into ruin within a few years.

Two ways of building a mosque in earth

The Sudanic type

A timber frame with a flat mud roof, walls braced by conical buttresses crowned with pinnacles, projecting timber ends, and usually two pyramidal towers: one over the mihrab, one as the minaret. Whitewashed at Larabanga, earth-coloured elsewhere. Eight of the nine mosques follow this pattern.

The Djenné type

Rectangular, without exterior buttresses, carried by load-bearing walls up to a metre thick and by columns inside, with a single tower over the mihrab. UNESCO's nomination names only one example in Ghana: Wuriyanga, near Garu.

Savannah Region — five mosques

Four of the five stand along the old route from Larabanga south-west towards Bole. Until 2019 this was the Northern Region; since then it has been the Savannah Region, with Damongo as its capital.

  • Larabanga — the oldest and most famous, beside the road to Mole. Traditionally dated to 1421, with a competing tradition placing it in the seventeenth century. In use, maintained by the village.
  • Bole — said to be about four hundred years old. Partly collapsed in the rains of 17 September 2023, rebuilt in earth by the townspeople with their own money. In use again.
  • Banda Nkwanta — eighteenth century, with the tallest towers of any earth mosque in Ghana, about 13 metres. In use.
  • Maluwe — on the Bole road, credited by tradition to a missionary from Mali. In use.
  • Dakrupe — nineteenth century, between Bole and Larabanga. Demolished around 2010 for a cement mosque, yet still on the official list.

Upper West Region — three mosques

The mosques of the old Waala kingdom, around Wa. The Upper West has been a region of its own since 1983.

  • Nakore — a few kilometres south-west of Wa, the best kept of the three. In use, maintained by its community.
  • Wechiau — founded by Imam Fali, probably in the late eighteenth century. Abandoned in the 1990s, then restored in earth in early 2024 under a Mellon Foundation-funded project.
  • Dondoli — nineteenth century, in Wa itself. Badly damaged by an incompatible repair in 2005 and left in ruins. Taken into the same 2023–24 restoration project.

The GMMB archaeologist Dr Mahmoud Malik Saako names a fourth earth mosque of the Waala kingdom, Nyouli Paani. It is not on the official list and barely appears in any published source.

Upper East Region — one mosque

  • Wuriyanga — about 14 km east of Garu, near the Togo border. The only mosque of the Djenné type, built by Mossi Muslims from the Bobo-Dioulasso area, probably in the nineteenth century. In daily use. It lies beyond Bawku, where a curfew has been in force since 2021: read the security note on its page before planning a visit.

The official list, and what it gets wrong

The Monuments Board's page is still titled Ancient Mosques of the Northern Region. Not one of the nine is in the Northern Region today. The five Gonja mosques moved to the Savannah Region in 2019. The three mosques around Wa have been in a separate region since 1983. Wuriyanga has not been part of the north's old administrative region for more than sixty years.

The same list still includes Dakrupe, which has not stood for about sixteen years. It does not mention that Bole collapsed in 2023, or that the community, not the Board, rebuilt it. The UNESCO entry, submitted by the Board in January 2000, still speaks of a "Brong Ahafo" region that no longer exists.

There is credit to give too. In the Upper West, a Board archaeologist researched and published on Wechiau and Dondoli, and the Board was the implementing partner when both were restored in earth with foreign funding in 2023–24. Whether that work holds through the rainy seasons is the next thing worth checking.

Read: Nine ancient mosques, and not one of them is in the Northern Region

Visiting — the same rules everywhere

  • These are working mosques, not museums. Go to the imam or the elders first, explain why you have come, and ask permission before you photograph anything.
  • Non-Muslims are normally not admitted inside. At Larabanga this is firm. Elsewhere, assume the same unless you are clearly invited.
  • Bring cash in small notes. Fixed fees exist only at Larabanga. Elsewhere, a contribution to the mosque is expected, and it goes into exactly the maintenance that keeps these buildings standing.
  • Dress modestly, avoid prayer times and Friday midday, and ask before photographing people.
  • Travel in the dry season. The rains that brought Bole's mosque down also washed away a bridge in the district.

A route through the mosques

Day 1 — Tamale to Larabanga

From Tamale west via Damongo to Larabanga. Stay near Mole National Park.

Day 2 — the Gonja mosques

Past Dakrupe, where the old mosque is gone, to Maluwe, Bole and Banda Nkwanta. A long day on slow roads, best with your own driver.

Day 3 — Wa

On to Wa: Nakore first, then Dondoli in town, and Wechiau together with the hippo sanctuary.

Wuriyanga — a separate journey

Wuriyanga lies at the other end of the north, beyond Bawku. Treat it as its own trip from Bolgatanga, and only when the security situation allows. Flights to Tamale and Wa on ghanaflights.info, accommodation on ghanahotels.biz.

Combine it with

Guided tours in Ghana

The mosques of the north are visited independently and arranged locally. For the wider country, the tours below are bookable in advance.

The honest verdict

These nine buildings are among the oldest standing structures in Ghana, and the only ones that tell the story of the north's centuries-long ties to the Muslim Sahel. Most visitors see one of them, at Larabanga, for twenty minutes on the way to the elephants.

Of the nine, one is gone, one fell and was rebuilt by its town, and two were rescued at the last moment. The rest survive because villages keep re-plastering them every year. The official list has not kept up with any of that. If you want to see these mosques, go soon, go respectfully, and leave something behind for the people who keep them standing.

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