Gurma

The Gurma, who call themselves Gourmantché, are a Gur-speaking people of the eastern Burkina Faso savanna around Fada N'Gourma, with communities also in northern Togo and Benin and south-western Niger. They are close kin of the Mossi, whose oral tradition makes Diaba Lompo, eldest son of the hunter Ouédraogo, the founder of Fada N'Gourma, called Nungu in the Gulmancema tongue.

The Gurma kingdom of Nungu is traditionally dated from 1204, its rulers bearing the title nunbado. Local tradition also records later ruling clans, the Beriberi, arriving from Bornu to win power by conquest and marriage. Gurma villages combine millet farming with cattle pastoralism, and traditional belief sets a creator god, Tienu, above a world of invisible spirits.