The Spread of Adinkra
How the Ghanaian symbolic language went from a textile adornment to an architectural motif to an internationally recognized symbol of diasporic resilience
Coomassie, Part of Adam Street (1819) by Thomas Edward BowdichWorld Monuments Fund
A prominent feature of Asante architecture is the inclusion of patterned reliefs on the exterior walls. Motifs can range from the simple to the complex, from abstract geometries to figures and scenes.
Importantly, many of them derive from adinkra, a body of symbols that correspond to proverbs and other aspects of traditional knowledge.
Courtyard of Besease Shrine
The word “adinkra” derives from the Twi word for goodbye, a reference to the fact that the motifs have long been used to adorn funeral garments.
Adinkra textiles are still used today, often made using calabash stamps dipped in ink derived from the red inner fibers of the tree Bridelia ferruginea.
Adinkra can also be seen in a variety of other media, such as traditional Ghanaian gold weights and furnishings such as stools, which have special significance in Akan culture because of their symbolic connection to political power.
Adinkra in Traditional Asante Architecture
The scholars Eric Appau Asante, Steve Kquofi, and Stephen Larbi have identified a number of the adinkra symbols that adorn the walls of the ten surviving traditional Asante shrines and linked them to their corresponding proverbs.
The symbol of a crocodile catching a fish, visible at shrines like Edwenease, is called dɛnkyɛm and is related to adaptability due to the animal's ability to thrive both in water and on land.
This latticework at Tano Abenamu Subunu Shrine takes the form of the mmoatia adwa motif, which indicates friendship between the shrine's deity and mmoatia, forest-dwelling beings from Ghanaian folklore. The stylized stool (adwa) shapes indicate that these beings are welcome.
The swirling motifs below these lattice screens have been identified as nkinkyim, whose twists and turns symbolize the importance of versatility.
Other adinkra in reliefs and signs at Asante shrines today
The Symbolism of Sankofa
One especially popular adinkra element is sankofa, which corresponds to the aphorism “Se wo were fin a wo Sankofa a yenkyi.” Often rendered in English as “go back and get it,” the proverb refers to the need to look to the past in order to construct a just and prosperous future.
Sankofa usually takes the form of a bird craning its neck to pluck an egg off its back. Sometimes it is doubled and mirrored, a variant that has given rise to a more abstract rendition that resembles a heart.
With its exhortation to return to one’s roots and revive ancestral knowledge, Sankofa’s layered meanings continue to find resonance among African diasporic communities.
Adinkra in Architecture Today
One notable example of the recent use of adinkra in architecture can be found in the memorial park dedicated to Kwame Nkrumah, a leader of the Ghanaian independence movement who became the country’s first president and prime minister.
The park’s museum features a façade that mixes adinkra with Egyptian-inspired friezes, a continent-spanning combination of artistic influences that reflects Nkrumah’s Pan-Africanist political beliefs.
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Exterior of the Museum at the Kwame Nkrumah Memorial Park
In North America, architect Rodney Leon incorporated adinkra into his design for a memorial on the spot of Manhattan's African Burial Ground, a cemetery for free and enslaved Black people with burials dating to the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.
Map of New York City from 1755 (1755) by Francis MaerschalckWorld Monuments Fund
After the burial ground's closure in 1794, the site was largely forgotten until 1991, when a team of construction workers uncovered a number of graves at the planned site of a new building for the General Service Administration.
The separate burial ground had arisen because of a church edit prohibiting Black people from being buried in some of New York’s earliest graveyards.
Protests and campaigns from the local community saved the site from being built over, and studies by archeologists at Howard University eventually uncovered the bodies of 419 people, who were subsequently reinterred in hand-card coffins made in Ghana.
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Today, the African Burial Ground is a National Listed Monument.
Adinkra at the African Burial Ground National Monument.
View of the African Burial Ground National Memorial (2008) by Rodney Leon and Nicole Hollant-DenisWorld Monuments Fund
One of the adinkra motifs Leon included in his design is sankofa, whose meaning in some sense distills the significance of the sight as a whole.
Rodney Leon
Architect of the African Burial Ground National Monument
View of the African Burial Ground National Memorial (2008) by Rodney Leon and Nicole Hollant-DenisWorld Monuments Fund
Shrine outside of a traditional building (2014)World Monuments Fund
Heritage preservation is itself another type of return to traditional knowledge, another way of looking backwards in order to ensure a prosperous future.
In 2022, World Monuments Fund (WMF) selected Asante Traditional Buildings for inclusion on its Watch in order to raise awareness of this endangered architectural heritage and the rich symbolic vocabulary of its decoration.
Looking to past and reviving traditional techniques of maintenance and renewal will help ensure that the Asante shrines that have survived until today can thrive in the future.
Learn more about Asante Traditional Buildings
Asante, Eric Appau, Steve Kquofi, and Stephen Larbi. “The Symbolic Significance of Motifs on Selected Asante Religious Temples.” Journal of Aesthetics & Culture 7, no. 1 (2015).
Ghana Museums and Monuments Board. “Asante Traditional Buildings.” Accessed May 25, 2022.
Bowdich, T. E. Mission from Cape Coast Castle to Ashantee (1819). Routledge, 2013.
Lentz, Carola. “Ghanaian ‘Monument Wars.’” Cahiers d’études Africaines, no. 227 (September 1, 2017): 551–82.
Witte, Marleen de, and Birgit Meyer. “African Heritage Design.” Civilisations. Revue Internationale d’anthropologie et de Sciences Humaines, no. 61–1 (December 22, 2012): 43–64.
