Gurunsi

The Gurunsi are not a single people but an umbrella of loosely related Gur-speaking village communities, among them the Kassena, Nankani, Nuna and Sisaala, spread across southern Burkina Faso and northern Ghana around Wa and Léo. Oral tradition traces them to the western Sudan, and they are thought to have reached their present lands by 1100.

Their villages were built as defensive strongholds, for after the Mossi kingdoms arose to the north in the fifteenth century, Mossi horsemen repeatedly raided Gurunsi country for slaves without ever fully conquering it. The Kassena are known for their flat-roofed clay houses, whose walls the women paint with geometric patterns.