dozo

thumb|right|260px|A traditional hunter (in this case, a Bambara people|Bambara in [[Mali), showing the distinctive brown hunting suit and gris-gris amulets worn around the neck.]] The Dozo (also spelled Donzo or Donso, Bambara for hunter, pl. donsow) are traditional hunters in northern Côte d'Ivoire, southeast Mali, and Burkina Faso, and members of a co-fraternity containing initiated hunters and sons of Dozo, called a Donzo Ton. Not an ethnic group, the Dozo are drawn mostly from Mandé-speaking groups (including the Dyula-speaking communities), but are also found among Dogon, and most other ethnic groups in Côte d'Ivoire. Dozo societies increased in the last decades of the twentieth century, and Dozo groups came into political prominence during the Ivorian Civil War.

== Donzo Ton == The Donzo Ton (tɔn is a Manding word for age-group, religious, or vocational associations) are one of a number of hunting fraternities common in Mandé-speaking areas of West Africa. Similar, and in the case of West Africa closely related groups, exist as the Kamajor in Sierra Leone, Poro in Liberia, the Mayi-Mayi in Democratic Republic of the Congo, and the Karamojong in Uganda. Sons of Dozos, as well as new adherents, are able to be initiated into the Ton and undergo a series of secret rituals. There has been a long history of these hunter collectives (the Segu Bambara empire is said to have grown from such a Ton) and hunters were often viewed by farming or pastoralist neighbours as possessing special power, wisdom, and strength. Collective organisations, as with many vocations in West Africa, existed in part to train and pass on needed skills. Hunters, though, are found in every community, and are not a strictly inherited role.