Daboya smock weaving community

Daboya is a weaving village in northern Ghana, described by Visit Ghana as the most famous of the country's fugu (smock) weaving communities. Fugu is hand-woven in the manner of kente, but in narrower strips and with stripes rather than kente's geometric patterns. According to Visit Ghana, nearly all of the village's several thousand residents take part in fugu production, which makes a walk through Daboya less a single attraction than a working settlement organised around cloth.

Visitors can tour the village with a guide and follow the process from start to finish: preparing dyes, dyeing cloth, creating designs, weaving and joining strips, and the final sewing. Beyond The Return Travel & Tours, a Ghana Tourism Authority-licensed operator, lists the site as the Daboya Local Textile Centre, also known as Daboya Fugu Weaving Village, and describes fugu — also called batakari — as the traditional smock associated with northern Ghanaian identity, leadership and ceremony. The same operator suggests allowing one to two hours for a weaving visit, and longer if the visit is combined with community touring or river experiences, and notes that visitors can buy textiles directly from the producers.

Daboya is the capital of the North Gonja District in the Savannah Region of northern Ghana, at approximately 9°31'49"N 1°22'56"W, at an elevation of about 103 metres. Wikipedia records that it was previously called Burugu by the Dagomba people and was important on the trade route from Yendi to Bouna, that it was an important salt trading settlement in the Kingdom of Dagbon, that it was invaded in the late 1600s and is now under Gonja control, and that it was attacked by the Ashanti Empire in 1844.

Visit Ghana also notes boat tours and cruises on the river beside the village, birdlife, a fishing demonstration with a hand-thrown net, and a beach where salt is harvested, reached by a hand-made boat paddled by villagers. Sources disagree on which river this is and on the region: some refer to the White Volta and the Savannah Region, while one article places Daboya on the banks of the Black Volta in the Northern Region. Visitors should treat the river name as unsettled and confirm details locally.