Akua'ba Fertility figure

Fertility dolls and mother-and- child are the most frequent themes in the sculpture of Asante. Thus ideas about fertility can be conveyed by all sort of variation of the classic Akua'ba figure. This figure is depicted as a pregnant female with full breasts holding her belly. In traditional Asante's society, in which inheritance was through the maternal line, a woman's essential role was to bear children, preferably girls expressing Asante idea about the continuity of the cycle of life through the Matrilineage (MacLeod 1918a:164)