Togo

A narrow strip between Ghana and Benin, the eastern remnant of a German colony, and the site of the first coup in postcolonial Africa. German Togoland was taken in three weeks in 1914 and partitioned; France received the east and Britain the west, cutting the Ewe homeland into pieces that remain in different countries. The British portion voted to join Ghana in 1956 and the French portion became independent on 27 April 1960 under Sylvanus Olympio, a former Unilever manager who kept his distance from France and refused to join its monetary and defence arrangements. He was shot dead in January 1963 by demobilised soldiers returning from the French army in Algeria whom he had declined to enlist - the first coup in independent Africa, and the beginning of a pattern that spread. Gnassingbe Eyadema, implicated in that killing, took power in 1967 and held it for thirty-eight years, one of the longest rules on the continent, and his son succeeded him in 2005. Phosphate is the principal export. Lome, the capital, sits directly on the Ghanaian border. The country is one of the narrowest in Africa. The country has about nine million people and runs about five hundred kilometres inland. Koutammakou, with its fortified mud tower-houses, is a World Heritage site. French is official, with Ewe and Kabye national languages. Lome's port serves several landlocked neighbours. The country qualified for the football World Cup in 2006, one of the smallest nations ever to do so. Its name comes from a Ewe phrase meaning behind the lagoon.

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