Flag: Togo Emoji

The flag of Togo. Five horizontal stripes alternating green-yellow-green-yellow-green, with a red square canton on the hoist containing a white five-pointed star. Adopted on April 27, 1960, the same day the country declared independence from France.

The flag was designed by Togolese artist Paul Ahyi (1930-2010), who had trained in Paris at the École nationale supérieure des beaux-arts. Ahyi tucked the pan-African palette (green for forests and hope, yellow for mineral wealth and faith, red for the blood of independence) into a layout that deliberately reads like an African inversion of the US flag: horizontal stripes plus a canton-and-star. The five stripes stand for Togo's five administrative regions.

Togo is one of West Africa's narrowest countries, a 600 km north-south sliver between Ghana and Benin, only 56,785 km² in total. Colonized by Germany (1884-1914), then split between Britain and France after WWI; the British half joined Ghana in 1956, the French half became the Republic of Togo on April 27, 1960 under first president Sylvanus Olympio. Olympio was assassinated on January 13, 1963 in the first post-colonial coup in sub-Saharan Africa; on the same date four years later, 1967, Gnassingbé Eyadéma took power. His son Faure Gnassingbé has ruled since 2005. The Gnassingbé family is Africa's longest-ruling dynasty, 58 years in power as of April 2026. The flag has not changed once across all those governments.

Emoji 2.0 (2015), regional indicator pair U+1F1F9U+1F1F9 + U+1F1ECU+1F1EC (T + G). Platforms without flag support fall back to TGTG.

Afrobeats and Toofan. The biggest ongoing driver of 🇹🇬 on global social is the Lomé-based Afrobeats group Toofan, formed 2005 by Master Just and Barabas. Their 2015 pan-African anthem 'Africa Hoyee,' released for the AFCON, and hits like 'Gweta' dominate West African DJ rotation. At the 2022 MTV Africa Music Awards in Johannesburg, Toofan's return to Lomé was a national-TV event. Before Toofan, Bella Bellow (1945-1973), who sang at the Olympia in Paris, set the foundation; the rock guitarist Jimi Hope kept Lomé's Francophone rock scene alive into the 2010s.

Vodun (Voodoo) heartland. About a third of Togolese identify with traditional African religion, almost all of it Vodun. Southern Togo and coastal Ouidah in neighboring Benin are the global Vodun heartland. The January 10 National Voodoo Day celebrated in Benin radiates across the border into Togo, and Togolese Vodun accounts on Instagram and TikTok have quiet but passionate followings in Haiti, Brazil, New Orleans, Benin, and among the African-American Hoodoo-and-Vodun communities. 🇹🇬 shows up on those feeds in ways it does not on general West African content.

Gnassingbé dynasty news cycles. The May 2024 constitutional overhaul shifted Togo from a presidential to a parliamentary system and created a new 'President of the Council of Ministers' role. Faure Gnassingbé was sworn in to that role on May 3, 2025, effectively extending his 20-year hold on power indefinitely. Opposition and international press called it a 'title swap' that erased presidential term limits; 🇹🇬 trended briefly on Africa-politics Twitter around each step.

Francophone West Africa diaspora. Togolese diaspora is mostly in France (Paris suburbs, Lyon), Germany (echoes of the colonial era), the US (New York, Washington DC, Houston), and Canada (Montréal). Lomé's former status as a regional banking and logistics hub gave the diaspora a slightly whiter-collar tilt than some neighbors. Posting peaks on April 27 (Independence Day) and around Les Éperviers AFCON runs.

Lomé as a regional logistics brand. Commodity, trade, and shipping accounts post 🇹🇬 around the Port of Lomé, one of West Africa's deepest (16.6 m) and with one of the best turnaround times (48 hours). Togo's long-cultivated image as a small, stable logistics hub between bigger volatile neighbors pulls disproportionate coverage on Africa-business feeds.

• 🏖️
  Capital: Lomé (6.17°N, 1.23°E), one of the few West African capitals built directly on a sand-and-surf Atlantic beach
• 👥
  Population: ~9.6 million (2025)
• 🗺️
  Area: 56,785 km² (smaller than Croatia); one of the narrowest country shapes in Africa, a 600 km north-south sliver
• 💵
  Currency: West African CFA franc (XOF, CFA); pegged 655.957 to 1 EUR
• 🗣️
  Official language: French. [Ewe](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ewe_language) in the south (including Lomé), [Kabiye](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kabiye_language) in the north (the Gnassingbé family's language).
• ⛪
  Religions: ~48% Christian, ~33% traditional African religion (mostly Vodun), ~18% Muslim
• 🧭
  Borders: Ghana, Burkina Faso, Benin. Plus a 56 km Atlantic coastline.
• 📞
  Calling code: +228
• ⏰
  Time zone: GMT (UTC+0), no DST
• 🌐
  Internet TLD: .tg

Foods that show up next to 🇹🇬

Landmarks and cultural sites

German Togoland (1884-1914). Germany colonized what it called Togoland in 1884 at the Berlin Conference, running it from the coastal port town of Anecho and later Lomé. The Germans built the region's first railways (the Lomé-to-Palimé line, 1905), expanded the palm-oil and cocoa economy, and called Togoland their Musterkolonie (model colony). The remnants of that period (cathedrals, administrative buildings, and a handful of surnames like Gnassingbé-era ministers named Müller or Schmidt) still sit in central Lomé.

French and British partition (1914-1960). With the outbreak of WWI, Anglo-French forces invaded in 1914, and after the war the League of Nations split Togoland into a British-mandated west and a French-mandated east. The western third voted in a 1956 plebiscite to join Ghana at independence in 1957. The eastern two-thirds became French Togoland, a trusteeship with increasingly democratic internal politics, dominated by Sylvanus Olympio's Comité de l'Unité Togolaise (CUT).

April 27, 1960 and Paul Ahyi's flag. Togo declared independence from France on April 27, 1960, with Olympio as president. The new flag, designed by Paul Ahyi, was raised the same day. Ahyi, trained in Paris, drew on both the pan-African palette (championed a few years earlier by Nkrumah's Ghana next door) and the US flag's horizontal-stripe-and-canton structure to produce a design unlike any of Togo's immediate neighbors.

The Olympio assassination (January 13, 1963). Sylvanus Olympio was assassinated on January 13, 1963 in what is sometimes called sub-Saharan Africa's first post-colonial coup. The coup was led by army sergeants, including a young Kabiye non-commissioned officer named Étienne Eyadéma (later Gnassingbé Eyadéma), reportedly over Olympio's refusal to integrate French-Algerian war veterans into the Togolese army.

The Eyadéma era (1967-2005). After four years of rotating governments, Eyadéma seized full power on January 13, 1967 (four years to the day after Olympio's death) and built one of Africa's most durable one-man regimes. He ruled for 38 years, restyled the RPT party around his personality, survived (and sometimes narrowly escaped) multiple coup attempts, and developed Lomé as a quiet regional finance and logistics hub while pocketing phosphate revenues.

Faure Gnassingbé and the 2024 constitutional pivot. Eyadéma died in office on February 5, 2005. The army immediately installed his son Faure Gnassingbé in a maneuver ECOWAS and the African Union both condemned; Faure won a hasty election six weeks later and has ruled since. In March 2024, parliament adopted a new constitution shifting Togo from a presidential to a parliamentary system, with a new 'President of the Council of Ministers' role. On May 3, 2025, Faure Gnassingbé was sworn into that new post (in practical terms an uncapped prime-ministership), and the largely ceremonial presidency went to Jean-Lucien Savi de Tové. International observers called it a title swap that effectively removed term limits. The flag has not changed once across all this.

• 🪖
  January 13: Liberation Day: A loaded date: [Sylvanus Olympio was assassinated](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sylvanus_Olympio) on January 13, 1963, and Eyadéma took full power on January 13, 1967. Public holiday.
• 🎉
  April 27: Independence Day: The biggest civic day. Presidential parade on Boulevard du Mono in Lomé. The [current flag was raised for the first time](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flag_of_Togo) on this date in 1960.
• 🛠️
  May 1: Labour Day: Public holiday.
• 🕯️
  June 21: Day of the Martyrs: Commemorates civilian deaths in various 20th-century pro-democracy protests. Low-key observance.
• 🌙
  Korité and Tabaski: Muslim holidays for the ~18% Muslim population, mostly observed in the north.
• 🧿
  January 10 (Benin Voodoo Day): Not an official Togolese holiday, but the Ouidah (Benin) Vodun festival 80 km from Lomé radiates across the border.

• •The current flag was designed by Togolese artist Paul Ahyi (1930-2010), who studied at the École nationale supérieure des beaux-arts in Paris. It was raised for the first time on April 27, 1960, the same day Togo declared independence.
• •The five horizontal stripes stand for Togo's five administrative regions: Maritime, Plateaux, Centrale, Kara, and Savanes.
• •Togo is the only sub-Saharan African country to have been a German colony (1884-1914), a French trust territory (1922-1960), and an independent republic, all within two human generations. Lomé still has German-built colonial architecture downtown.
• •The Gnassingbé family has ruled since 1967, making it the longest-lasting dynasty in post-colonial Africa. Gnassingbé Eyadéma ruled 1967-2005; his son Faure Gnassingbé has ruled since.
• •Togo's January 13 'Liberation Day' carries a heavy coincidence: it is both the date of the 1963 Olympio assassination and the 1967 Eyadéma coup.
• •Togo reached its one and only FIFA World Cup in Germany 2006. The 2010 team bus attack in Cabinda killed three Togolese staff and remains one of the darkest moments in African football history.
• •Togo is a top-10 world phosphate producer; phosphate rock is one of the country's largest export earners alongside cotton and the Port of Lomé's trans-shipment revenues.
• •The Port of Lomé has a 16.6 m draft, among the deepest on the West African coast, and moves containers with a 48-hour turnaround time that is rare for the region. It is Togo's quiet economic superpower.
• •Koutammakou, a UNESCO World Heritage site in northeast Togo, is famous for the Takienta, two-story earth-tower houses built by the Batammariba people; each house is also a granary and a household shrine.

• •🇹🇬 is a regional indicator sequence: U+1F1F9U+1F1F9 (T) + U+1F1ECU+1F1EC (G). ISO 3166-1 alpha-2 code: TGTG.
• •Unsupported platforms render it as the letters TGTG. Common in older Windows chat clients.
• •The .tg.tg top-level domain is administered by CAFE (Centre Autonome de Formation Electronique) in Lomé.
• •Shortcode: :flag_tg::flag_tg: or :togo::togo: on most messaging platforms.

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