Akan religious concepts and practices, including libation and specific theological ideas about the relationship between the supreme creator, lesser deities and ancestral spirits, contributed alongside Yoruba, Kongo and other West and Central African religious traditions to the broader religious heritage carried by enslaved Africans to the Americas, and scholars of African diaspora religion trace specific Akan influence within various New World Afro-diasporic traditions, though generally as one contributing strand within traditions more dominantly shaped by other specific African cultural sources such as Yoruba or Kongo influence in most of the specific traditions catalogued elsewhere in this atlas.
Within Ghana and Akan communities themselves, traditional religious practice, including libation, continues today in active coexistence with the substantial presence of Christianity and, to a lesser extent, Islam among Akan populations, with libation in particular remaining a recognized and often uncontroversial part of formal ceremonial life, including at events with an otherwise Christian religious character, reflecting a degree of everyday integration between traditional and introduced religious practice that varies across different African societies. This entry's general descriptive treatment reflects both this internal diversity and the specific, occasion-dependent nature of actual libation prayer content.