City under the water in Ganvie Aftica

Ganvié is a water town situated on the northern edge of the Lake Nokoué in southern Benin. Marketed as the ‘Venice of Africa’, Ganvié is probably the most well-known and foremost among other lacustrine villages in the same region. Ganvié is a favourite among tourists to Benin with the government policy aimed at transforming the town into a major tourist attraction. As Ganvié is considered a rarity on the African continent, due to the fact that the town was built on a lake, information on socio-economic activities, the physical environment and the modern-day ecological effects of human settlements on the surrounding Lake Nokoué is readily available. Incidentally, I learnt of Ganvié from a magazine article on the impact of climate change on the region. Less information is readily available on Ganvié’s fascinating history; Ganvié was founded by people in an effort to escape captivity and enslavement in the Americas.

According to Elisée Soumonni, “little attention is paid to the ways in which local African populations resisted enslavement, giving the impression that any form of resistance began on board slave ships or in the Americas.” I believe this also fuels erroneous suggestions that all African ethnic groups were comfortable with slavery and enslavement, not knowing what they were heading to in the Americas and only revolting after their enslavement. The existence of Ganvié stands as a testament to resistance to the transatlantic slave trade within African shores.

The people of Ganvié are today known as the Tofinu. Today they are recognised as a unique and homogenous ethnic group; however, historically several groups of people across ethnic lines moved to the areas and marshlands around Lake Nokoué as refugees. They fled to escape slave raiding armies from the kingdom of Dahomey. Nowadays Dahomey is recognised as a powerful West African kingdom and is well-known among those who are interested in African history. Admiration is usually held for the kingdom, especially for the women that served in the Dahomean army, commonly referred to as ‘Dahomey Amazons’. It seems that the effects of the transatlantic slave trade to the kingdom of Dahomey is largely unnoticed for the most part; Dahomey was an important supplier of captives for enslavement in the Americas. It has been suggested that the Aja-speaking peoples, the people from which both the Tofinu and Dahomeans descended from, were among the largest captives in the transatlantic slave trade.