The Ashanti (or Asante) Empire (or Confederacy), also Asanteman (1701–1896) was a West Africa state of the Ashanti people, the Akan people of the Ashanti Region, now in Ghana. The Ashanti (or Asante) 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. Due to the empire's military prowess, sophisticated hierarchy, social stratification and culture, the Ashanti empire had one of the largest historiographies of any indigenous Sub-Saharan African political entity. Today the Ashanti monarchy continues as a constitutionally protected, sub-national traditional state in the Republic of Ghana.

The ancient Ashanti may have migrated from the vicinity of the north-west Niger river at some point during the Ghana Empire. Linguists have substantiated the migration by tracing word usage and speech patterns along West Africa. Between the 10th and 12th century AD the Ashanti and other Akan peoples migrated into the forest belt of present-day Ghana and established several states. At the height of the Ghana Empire the Akan people became wealthy through the trading of gold mined from their territory.