The Guinea Coast Culture Area

The Guinea Coast covers the southern portion of west Africa.It is long and narrow,and essentially covers the forest belt, giving way to the western Sudan area as the savannah that lies between it and desert. Like the Congo area,it is agricultural in its basic economy.there is great ammount of specialization and marketsare well developed.The degree of agricultural productivity in the area has made possible a surplus over subsistence needs of the people.Based on the use of money,the economy took a better shape and richer in form than the Congo systems where there was limited intertribal trade and commodities were used as common denominators of value.specialization in the Guinea Coast was to some extent far greater on the professional level than anywhere else in Sub-Sahara Africa,except peehaps in certain parts of the Western sudan.cowries were used as money in most part of the culture area. Specialization in labour touched all aspects of the technological competence. Specialist organisations were in guids,which controlled both modes of production abd distribution, and derived their cohesiveness from supernatural as well as a social sanction.In Benin,we find organized groups of iron workers,weavers,cloth sewers,carvers,potters, basketry markers,brass workers,wood carvers, hunters and traders.Priests and diviners are also specialists here.In Africa, however,there is practically no inter-industrial specialization,such as marked system of the production based on the machine.The craft specialists grow some of their own food and in some instances build,thatches,and repair their own houses.But,the difference between Europe and West Africa woth regards to broad patterns of economic activity must be considered to be degree and not of kind.There are markets which reflect this specialization in the ities and towns of the central portion of the area.Notable among such marketing centres were Kumasi,Dahomey,Ibadan,and Onitsha which represented substantial operations of any items. The village is the integer of the society and all- larger groupings whether social or political reflects this fact.Their buildings are of rectangular type amd the materials of which houses are built are more permanent than in the other parts pf the continet.The residential unit is the compound and consists of the group of dwelling and storage huts, usually enclosed by a wall,where a man,his wife or wives,his children and his younger brothers and their children reside.Avillage is thus an aggregate of compound rather than of individual houses. In the Guinea Coast Area,as in the Eastern and Central Africa, descent is counted on one side of the family and in most cases, it's of the father.The Akan people of Ghana and Cote D'Ivoire are usually held to be an exceptional to this rule.Double descent ia generally on one side or the other, though relation with the family of the parent with which an individual is not institutionally affiliated are close on personal,and at times on a religious level.As elsewhere in Africa,plural marriages is sanctioned.This does not mean that polygymy is universally practiced;the number of wives a man has largely depends on hos aocial and economic status.Bride wealth must be paid to radiate marriage,though in absolute value it is much less than in other areas. The symbolic importance is however, undiminished and the passage of it, however defined,ia essential to control of children by the father's kin group.Bride wealth in this area,is also distinguished by the fact that a part of it consist of payment in kind,addrd to which is a continuing duty to perform certain tasks annually for thw wife's parents and to meet specific obligation when a death occurs in her family.