🇹🇬 The colours of Togo

Togo’s flag features green, yellow, and red, the pan-African colours, along with a white star. Green stands for forests, farming, and hope; yellow for resources, faith, and maturity; red recalls the blood of independence fighters; and the white star means peace, intelligence, and light.

Where no official value is given, the swatch shows the colour family, not the exact shade.

• The five stripes represent Togo’s five regions.
• Green stands for forests, farming, and hope.
• Red recalls the blood of independence fighters.
• The white star means peace, intelligence, and light.
• The flag was designed by Paul Ahyi in 1960.

The colours of the flag of Togo

Togo’s flag has five horizontal stripes in green and yellow, with a red square in the top left corner that holds a white five-pointed star. The green stripes stand for the country’s forests, farming, and hope for the future. Yellow is said to represent the land’s natural resources, as well as faith and maturity. The red square is a reminder of the blood shed by those who fought for independence. The white star in the canton stands for peace, intelligence, and light. These meanings are given by the office of the Togolese president.

How the colours were chosen of Togo

Before independence, Togo used flags of its colonial rulers, first Germany and then France. As an autonomous republic within the French Union from 1956, Togo’s flag was green with the French tricolour in the corner and two yellow stars, symbolising the northern and southern regions. The current flag was designed by Paul Ahyi in 1960, just before independence, and adopted on 27 April that year. The colours were chosen to reflect pan-African unity and the country’s own landscape and history.

Official shades and rules of Togo

The flag’s design is set out in the Togolese constitution, but its proportions are not fixed there. Sources disagree on the exact width-to-length ratio, with some saying 3:5, others 2:3, and some claiming the golden ratio was used. There is no official specification for the shades of the colours.