The Gambian Creole people, or Krio or Aku, are a minority ethnic group of Gambia with connections to and roots from the Sierra Leone Creole people.[1][2] In Gambia the Aku account for about 2% of the population. Some estimates put the figure higher. However, according to the 2013 Gambian Census, the Aku make up 0.5% of the population or around 8,477 people.[3]
Gambian Creoles are partly an extension of the Sierra Leone Creole community, and some Gambian Creoles have roots in the West Indies, North America, England, and various African communities. Some Gambian Creoles also have some European heritage through intermarriage and through their connections to Sierra Leone Creoles who settled in the Gambia between the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.[2]
Many Gambian Creoles speak the Krio language, an English-based creole also spoken by Sierra Leonean Creoles.[5][2]
Krio is spoken by 96 percent of Sierra Leone's population,[6][7], especially in their trade and social interaction between ethnic groups.[8]
Aku Marabouts
In Sierra Leone, the term 'Aku Marabout' or 'Aku Mohammedan' refers to the Oku people, while in the Gambia, the term 'Aku' refers to the Creole people,[9] who are Christians residing mainly in and around Banjul.[2] The Aku Marabout people of the Gambia are a non-Creole migrant community descended from the Oku people of Sierra Leone.[10][11]
^Bassir, Olumbe (July 1954). "Marriage Rites among the Aku (Yoruba) of Freetown". Africa: Journal of the International African Institute. 24 (3): 251–256. doi:10.2307/1156429. JSTOR1156429. S2CID144809053.
