Zuarungu is a town in Ghana’s Upper East Region, located east of Bolgatanga. Today serves as the capital of the Bolgatanga East District — established in 2018 when the district was split off from the larger Bolgatanga Municipal District, with Zuarungu as its capital town, created by Legislative Instrument (L.I.) 2350 and inaugurated on March 15, 2018.

The town’s people are part of the Frafra ethnic group (also known as Gurune), whose oral traditions hold that the people of Zuarungu migrated from Wuarungu in Burkina Faso — the name “Zuarungu” is believed to derive from “Wuarungu,” and links between the two communities persist to this day. The Frafra are traditionally an agrarian people, historically organized through lineage rather than centralized chieftaincy, with chieftaincy structures introduced later under colonial administration. Frafra and English are the languages commonly spoken in Zuarungu today.