Akofena, the sword of war, is drawn as a stylized ceremonial sword, and Willis records its meaning as courage, valour and legitimate state authority, a reading grounded directly in the sword's historical role as a central object of Akan state regalia rather than as a weapon in ordinary combat use by the time the symbol's meaning had stabilized. Ceremonial swords of the type Akofena depicts were, and in reduced ceremonial form remain, central to Akan chieftaincy: they are used in oath-taking, in the formal installation of chiefs, and as a mark of an office holder's legitimate authority to act on behalf of the state, so the symbol's association with valour is inseparable, in Willis's account, from its association with the specifically legitimate, state-sanctioned use of coercive force rather than force in general.
Willis distinguishes the ceremonial ekyempim and related state swords that Akofena's design generalizes from ordinary edged weapons of the same historical period, noting that a ceremonial sword's blade is typically less suited to combat use than to display and ritual function, so the ceremonial object the ram symbol of courage draws on was already, by the time its meaning stabilized, more a mark of office than a working weapon.