History
Excerpt from book: Philip Atsu Afeadie and John Mark Kwame Worclachie, Foundations of Agbozume: The Keta-Sómeawo, A.D. 1000 – 1930 (forthcoming).
Many handicrafts are produced in Sóme Traditional Area of Ghana, headquartered at Agbozume. But kete weaving is particularly famous. As with other Ewe people of southeastern Ghana, kete weaving is an occupation which the people brought with them from Hogbe, the centres of emigration including Ketu in Yorubaland and Ŋɔtsie in modern Togo. Accordingly, kete weaving was well known among the Sómeawo at Keta by the end of the seventeenth century. In April 1718, for instance, Philip Eytzen, an official of the Dutch West Indies Company observed:
I found here at Quitta [Keta] a large number of children and men constantly busy spinning cotton on little sticks of about a foot length… Cotton can be found everywhere and a large quantity could be had if the Negroes did not use it themselves for weaving of cloths of various quantities.
