The Ashanti Empire was a West Africa state of the Ashanti people now in Ghana. The Ashanti are a major ethnic group in Ghana, a powerful, militaristic and highly disciplined people of West Africa. Their military power, which came from effective strategy and an early adoption of European Firearms, created an empire that stretched from central Ghana to present day Benin and Côte d'Ivoire, bordered by the Dagomba kingdom to the north and Dahomey to the east. The Ashanti Empire was one of the most powerful African kingdoms to resist European domination during the Scramble for Africa.