[1][3] One historian, describing the former usage of "Dagarti" to refer to this community by colonials, writes: "The name 'Dagarti' appears to have been coined by the first Europeans to visit the region, from the vernacular root dagaa.

"[4] Although sometimes divided into Northern and Southern Dagaare speakers, their combined population was estimated in 2003 at over one million spread across the Northwest corner of Ghana[2] and Sud-Ouest Region in Southwestern Burkina Faso.

In Ghana, several waves of internal migration, beginning with the demand for labour in mines and cocao farms in the early 20th century, have brought a sizable Dagaaba population to towns in the southern part of the nation, notably Brong Ahafo Region.

[6][7] In modern Ghana, the Dagaaba homeland of the Upper West Region includes the Districts and towns of Nandom, Lawra, Jirapa, Kaleo, Papu, Nadowli, Daffiama, Wechiau and Hamile.

The evidence of oral tradition is that the Dagaaba are an outgrowth of the Mole-Dagbani group which migrated to the semi-arid Sahel region in the fourteenth century CE.

Ethnological studies point to oral literature which tells that the Dagaaba periodically, and ultimately successfully, resisted attempts at conquest by states in the south of modern Ghana, as well as the Kingdoms of Dagbon, Mamprugu and Gonja in the north.

[9] The colonial borders, demarcated during the Scramble for Africa, placed them in northwestern Ghana and southern Burkina Faso, as well as small populations in Ivory Coast.

The latter, in alliance with the Wassoulou Empire of Diola Samory Toure, conquered much of Dagawie in the late 1890s, under the generalship of Sarankye Mori[11] but was later defeated by the kaleo naa Some of the southernmost Dagaaba villages were in the early 1890s under the authority of the Kingdom of Wala but then rebelled in 1894 and asserted their independence.

Traditional Dagaaba communities are based on the "Yir" subclan or household group, a series of which are clustered into the "Tengan", an earth deity shrine area.

[13] Until the latter part of the nineteenth century when institutional chieftaincy evolved (and was later imposed by colonial administration),[14] broader Dagaaba communities functioned under a system of councils of elders.