Festivals
Hogbetsotso: the Anlo-Ewe festival of the exodus from Notsie
Volta Region
Hogbetsotso
Photo: JY midey / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)
Anloga’s biggest day of the year re-tells the seventeenth-century escape of the Anlo-Ewe from the walled city of Notsie, with a coastal clean-up, peace rites and a grand durbar.
Hogbetsotso means festival of exodus, and commemorates the Anlo-Ewe people’s flight from the walled city of Notsie, in present-day Togo, under the rule of a tyrant king, Agokoli. Tradition holds they escaped by tricking the guards, in one version walking backwards through the wall to disguise their tracks.
The festival week includes a peace-making period during which community disputes are formally settled, purification rites for ancestral stools, and a symbolic clean-up of the shoreline running from the Volta estuary toward the Mono River. It closes with a grand durbar of Anlo chiefs and queen mothers, with Agbadza and other Anlo-Ewe drumming and dance.
Anloga is a small coastal town near Keta, and the durbar day is the accessible, public part of the festival — worth combining with a wider look at the Volta coast and the Keta lagoon.
When it happens
When it happens
What to see
- The symbolic coastal clean-up re-enacting the journey from Notsie
- The Anlo peace-making rites that precede the public celebrations
- Agbadza and other Anlo-Ewe drumming and dance performed at the durbar
- Chiefs and queen mothers of the Anlo state assembling in procession
Quick facts
- Region
- Volta Region
- Host town
- Anloga, on the coast near Keta
- When
- First Saturday in November
- Who celebrates
- The Anlo-Ewe people
- Origin
- Commemorates the seventeenth-century flight from Notsie under King Agokoli
Getting there
- Anloga is on the coast road east of Ho, roughly three to four hours from Accra.
- The coastal route runs through Keta, a short drive from Anloga.
- Most visitors combine it with a night around Keta or the Volta estuary.
Get directions
Visitor tips
- Book accommodation in Keta or Ho ahead of festival weekend — options in Anloga itself are limited.
- The durbar ground can get hot and exposed at midday; bring water and shade.
- Wli Waterfalls
Volta Region
- Independence Square, Accra
Greater Accra
