Up First from NPR - The Sunday Story: The Diaspora's Troubled African Dream

Episode Date: February 25, 2024

In the sleepy town of Asebu, a few miles inland from the Atlantic along Ghana's Cape Coast, a serene 5,000 acre rural settlement is rising out of the palm forests and farmland. Pan-African Village is envisioned as an idyllic haven for settlers from the African diaspora. It was established in 2019, after a local chief announced that anyone from the diaspora could have plots for free. Hundreds of people, largely from North America and the Caribbean, have accepted the offer and are in the midst of building large homes. They regard themselves as the first wave of settlers, carving a new life in their ancestral homeland, devoid of racism and repression. But while locals have tentatively welcomed returning diaspora, Ghana is also experiencing some of the worst economic conditions in decades. In Pan-African Village, brewing tensions over ownership and privileged access to the land are threatening to spill over into violence and unravel the promise of this diaspora haven. This week on The Sunday Story, producer Andrew Mambo speaks with Emmanuel Akinwotu, NPR's West Africa Correspondent, about the complicated relationship between the diaspora settlers and the place they see as their ancestral home.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

This is the Sunday Story. I'm Andrew Mambo, a producer on the show, sitting in this week for Aisha Roscoe. When I was a young man, I moved to Tanzania for several years to reconnect with my family. I'm from Canada originally, but my father was born in Tanzania and much of my family still lives there. So today's story really hit home for me.

It begins with another Canadian. My name is Lenval Ashley Skyers. So today's story really hit home for me. It begins with another Canadian. My name is Lenval Ashley Skyers. Skyers was born in Jamaica, but as a young man, he immigrated to Canada, and he lived there for more than 40 years. It was my home, but I didn't want Canada to be my retirement home. So in 2019, he cashed in his savings and moved across the Atlantic to a small coastal town in the West African nation of Ghana.

Skyers had found out that a local chief was giving away land to members of the African diaspora, specifically descendants of the formerly enslaved. Lots of people jumped at the chance, including Skyers. I went to the office. I acquired two lots and I started to build.

It was kind of a wild journey. Skyers says when he arrived at the land, there was nothing, not even a mud road. Nobody has ever lived here before. It was idle land. It was a forest, but I braved it. You know, I braved it. Skyers is one of over 1,000 diaspora settlers who've moved to Ghana in the last four years.

Their hope is to make a home on the continent of their ancestors. I feel welcome and I feel at home, and I intend to be here until my time is over. Today on The Sunday Story, the African diaspora and the contentious politics of their return. We'll be right back. This $2 commemorative circulation coin marks their storied past and promising future. Find the limited edition Royal Canadian Air Force $2 coin today. Welcome back to The Sunday Story. I'm Andrew Mambo, a producer on this show. And today I'm joined by Emmanuel Akinwotu, NPR's West Africa correspondent.

Emmanuel, thanks for being here. Hey, Andrew. Thanks for having me. So, Emmanuel, you've done a ton of reporting on the African diaspora and the return to places like Ghana. Just right from the beginning, can you explain to me how someone like Lenvo ends up in a rural village on the coast of Ghana? Well, there's a lot of ways to answer that question. But let me start with 2019 and the year of return. So that was a major initiative launched by the Ghanaian government and directed at the African diaspora, which is a really broad term, but in this context, it means people who are descended from formerly enslaved Africans who

live in foreign countries. And the government were urging them to come back to Ghana to explore and reconnect with their ancestral homeland. And they chose 2019 because it marked 400 years since the first slave ships left West Africa for Virginia in the United States. And that's a lot of history there. And it sounds like Ghana was welcoming anyone descended from slaves, not just people whose ancestors are from Ghana. Absolutely. They wanted everyone to come back. And it's worth noting that Ghana was a hub for the transatlantic slave trade

centuries ago. So lots of African people were forcibly taken and moved through the country. And also Ghana has had a long and proud legacy of Pan-Africanism, going back to President Kwame Nkrumah, you know, the iconic first leader of an independent Ghana. And he championed this vision of Ghana as a refuge and a homeland for people of African descent. So Ghana starts this campaign, the year of return, and I have to imagine it did well. I mean, I remember it. My brother-in-law went. I had friends that went. I was very jealous watching all of them on Instagram. Yeah, it was a huge deal. You know, Ghana received an extra 100,000 visitors that year than the year before.

Many of them were coming to Ghana and Africa for the very first time. And one of them was none other than Lenvo Skyers. I decided, you know, I'm going to Ghana. I'm going to Africa, man. Okay, so Skyers heads to Ghana to be part of the year of return, but then he decides he wants to stay. How did he make that leap? There's so many parts to this. So to answer this question, I need to take you on a bit of a journey. So one rite of passage on any visit to Ghana for many Black people are the former slave ports that are dotted all along the coast. 12 million Africans were violently enslaved during the transatlantic slave trade.

They were sold, kept in inhumane conditions at ports like Cape Castle, and that's one of about 40 slave ports all along Cape Coast. Lenville told me that he visited when he first came to Ghana, and I took that tour too. Our guide led us into the basement of the castle, down this corridor. It got cooler and darker as we approached the dungeons where enslaved people were kept, naked, crammed together in chains, sometimes for months. We have five chambers within the male dungeons. The holes you see up there

was the only source of light and air in the dungeons. So the tour really tries to make you understand, as much as is possible, all the layers of the suffering that was inflicted there. The gutters you see on the floor never functioned. It got choked up. So over time, the entire floor was covered with excrement, mud, sand, blood. It got compacted.

We are at a crime scene right now. You know, my maternal ancestors were enslaved. And so going to slave ports like this, it's hard not to be affected. And we are standing on material evidence. And when I talked to Lenvor it was clear he felt the same. He doesn't know who his ancestors were but he always felt a connection to the continent and it was when he actually came to Ghana that it really hit him that this was his homeland. And you understand his decision even more when you think about the fact that he never really felt at home in Canada.

You know, I didn't want Canada to be my retirement home. He made a decent life for himself, but he said he had less dignity living in Canada than he did in his home in Jamaica. We as blacks and native people are regarded as second-class citizens. Yeah, you know, I grew up as a black man in Canada, and I will say that always growing up, to this day, when somebody asks me, where are you from? I'll say, oh, I'm from Montreal. And then, you know, you get the secondary question, which is like, no, where are you from? I'll say, oh, I'm from Montreal. And then, you know, you get the secondary question,

which is like, no, where are you really from? Yeah, absolutely. You know, there's a racism to that, to essentially reminding you that you're not from here. I feel as people whose ethnic origins and native origins are elsewhere, as a black person myself who was born and grew up in London, I feel like it's a very common thing in the diaspora to be negotiating your sense of belonging with this place

and to be thinking that, yeah, you know, I can spend my whole life here, I can have roots here, have friends here, a career, but do I truly feel like I belong here? We're stigmatised. We're demoralised. We're dehumanized. So black people don't feel 100% comfortable. It's easy to feel how someone like Len can spend 40 years of his life in a place like Canada, but always be wondering in his mind when he's going to leave, either to go back to Jamaica or to go somewhere where he can actually feel

as a black man that he truly belongs there. And we've reached a stage now where there is an option, an option to leave these countries. To find land, countries where you can be totally free. Okay, so, you know, you've got people like Lenville jumping at the chance of grabbing some free land. So tell me more about the place Lenville leaves Canada to go to. Well, he goes to this rural town called Asebu. It's a few miles inland from the Atlantic coast.

And there's this 5,000-acre settlement. It's called Pan-African Village. And it's this large expanse of mainly farmland and palm trees, really dense. But there are homes being built there. Some of them are partly constructed, and some of them are fully built. And the settlement was donated, presented as a gift by this traditional ruler in a Cebu town called Okatachi Dr. Amanfi VII, who gave this to the African diaspora, basically to anyone who wants to come back and move to Ghana. His explanation for why he did this was really interesting. You know, he said for years, foreigners have been coming to former slave ports

all along Cape Coast to visit and to learn about the transatlantic slave trade. They come, visit the castles, weep a little, and then the next moment they are back on the plane back to the U.S. And so he said this was a way of tying them, of anchoring them back to places like Asebu, to give them a reason to stay. If we don't tie them down with anything concrete, they will come and they will go back.

So I decided that now I want to back your vision of a year of return by donating some land so that those who are willing and really interested to relocate to Ghana will have a piece of land, build their houses and stay here. I mean, that all sounds really fantastic. But at the same time, it sounds like wild. Like, if I'm being honest, I mean, Ghanaian chief, you know, handing out free land. I mean, it sounds a bit like a scam. I mean, is it really free?

Well, yes and no. I mean, the land is marketed as being free, but actually there's an administration fee that they have to pay. It's about $1,200. But for someone like Len with foreign currency, this is a steal. And it wasn't a scam. You know, he acquired two plots of land. He built this large, beautiful house and guest house. And he took me on a tour. Yeah, OK, let me show you around this house. That's the idea. All right, we start with room one. It has six rooms, these sweeping views of the village from his balcony.

And these rooms are what we call en suite. It's a French word. So he built this home for a fraction of what it would cost in Canada. These furniture are made in Ghana and they're made from bamboo. And he more or less has no bills to pay. You know, he boasts about that and about how he's self-sufficient now. Eventually, I will upgrade the solar and use the public electricity as a backup. That's the plan.

He felt like he was finally able to build his dream home and live in a country where he could feel at home. I got all kinds of trees down there. I have mangoes, avocado pear, cashew, bananas, plantains, sugarcane. But the caveat, the main thing, is that Pan African Village is exclusively for the Black diasporas who arrive here. So this offer isn't for everyone. And it's definitely not meant for the black diasporas who arrive here. So this offer isn't

for everyone. And it's definitely not meant for the locals. And there's this financial, this class disparity here, which is that most local Ghanaians from this area, this lower income town, would not be able to afford this in the way that he and others did. So did the black diaspora feel, you know, special or privileged in any way? They have access to all this land, but I imagine plenty of Ghanaians would love to have that land for themselves. For sure. But for Skyers and the other people who've settled there, it's not really their concern. You know, they're building their version of a paradise. But the more I spoke to him and other people in the village, the more I started to

realize that this project is not really benign, and actually, it's come at a cost. You're listening to The Sunday Story, talking with Emmanuel Akinwotu about the experiences of people from the Black diaspora moving to Ghana as a way of connecting to their ancestral home. So, Emmanuel, we've seen Pan-African Village through the eyes of Lenville Skyers, but you met other people there, right, who built homes? Yes, I spoke to quite a few people there with really interesting backstories, but one person in particular stood out. She's Len's neighbor in Pan-African village. It's like this garden was it for me. She arrived from Atlanta, Georgia a few years ago,

and her name was Moyen Vivili, but now she goes by a different name and has taken a royal title. My name is Na Wafoyena Oyen Mempese Tulu I. My title is Dairispro Development Queen for Ghana. Wait, like all of Ghana? All 16 regions. Wow. Okay. I met her at her home near Lembo's Place. You know, I walked into this large white living room,

and she was there at the far end of the room, sitting on a wooden throne, her feet on a wooden stool on a lion print rug, and she was dressed in traditional Kente fabric, adorned in gold and jewelry. When I saw her, I was actually thinking, how is this real? She says she was crowned by ethnic guard chiefs from Accra. And she showed me her chieftaincy certificates. They were actually mounted on the wall next to her. It was really odd.

But either way, she truly believes that this is what she is. Wow. And she talked to me about how people in Ghana understand her true worth and how she feels special there. It was a salvation for me. I felt free. I felt appreciated, you know, wanted. There's no one type of person in Pan African Village, and clearly she's at one end of the spectrum. But at the same time, she symbolizes this divide. And some of the things she said to me were so revealing. In Ghana, people are humble.

They don't need much to live. Okay, so they don't even need a fork. They use their hands. They have no problems sleeping flat on the ground, okay? She repeats this trope that people in poor communities like in Assebo are living in a kind of primitive paradise where they have really little but they're content and happy and somehow even have it better than people like her did in the US. You know, I mean, it sounds like poverty, but when you think about it, how much do we really need to survive to live? Wow.

I mean, she's sitting there saying this to you and she's sitting on a throne? Exactly. It also shows that she fundamentally misunderstands this place. She's built up this great life for herself, but it comes at the expense of the local people around her that she lords over. How do you mean? Well, let me give you an example. Like Len and the other diaspora that I spoke to around there, she's really evangelical about her mission to bring development to Asebu. But some of the projects that they talk about, they seem strange. You know, she proposed one plan to build public toilets across the town,

but they will be paid to use. And then she'll lobby the local government to make this law against public defecation, urination. And she says the law has to be heavily enforced with a harsh fine for anyone found to be breaking it. And the fine will be high. So when they think of the fine, it's cheaper to use the bathroom. And then that's how the diaspora is going to make up the money. Wow. So her idea of development is so problematic.

And then things get even deeper when we start to look at the growing tensions around the land itself. So the land itself, the chief set aside 5,000 acres of land for Pan African Village. And I mean, that's a lot of land in a small town like Asebu. How did the local people feel about that? Well, the land was marketed as being free and unoccupied, so that no one was dispossessed. At least that's what the chief Okotachi, Dr. Amanfi VII, told me. But it was a virgin land. And that point was repeated to me over and over by different diaspora. But then when I spoke to local people in Asebu, in and around Pan-African Village, I realized that this wasn't true.

One of those families is the Akowa Ananas, and they're a large family of mainly farmers, who told me that they used to cultivate limes, oranges, coconuts, and other crops on 120 acres of land that's now a part of Pan-African Village. My family has owned this very land for about 100 plus years. The head of the Akonona family is a man called Kodjobadu. We met at his home on the outskirts of the town, and he unfurled a map on the ground. So this is the map of the land? Yes, this is the map of the land. He told me that when he first heard about the plans for Pan African Village,

he initially thought it was a great idea. He actually called the diaspora his brothers and sisters and said that they were welcome in Asebi town. But things changed when he heard about the amount of land that would be given away and that his own land would be a part of it. So Kodjobadu told the chief that his family's land can't be taken without his consent. We met so many times about this village land. The chief tried to convince him and others to make a sacrifice for the project. He argued that it would benefit everyone

and bring development to this lower-income town. But Kodjo Badu told him never. The land doesn't belong to you. It belongs to a particular family. That is my family. He said that the land has been in his family for generations and that he can't just part with it without being paid and paid fairly. The talks eventually collapsed and the chief, as the traditional ruler of the town,

he said that he had the authority to take the land. We talked over it for a long time, but he was resisting. So the chief seized it and their land became a part of Pan-African village. So after four generations, the land is just taken away from them. How has this affected Kojo Badu and his family? Well, it's been profoundly hard for them and for all the farmers, about 150, whose livelihoods were tied to the land. Most of them can't look after themselves. For some of them, their livelihoods have been cut by 60, 70 percent. They can't pay their medical bills.

Kodrobadu said that since Pan African Village started, five members of his family, including some of his own siblings, who used to farm on the land, have actually died. Five of them, because of this very project. He said that they had long-term health conditions that deteriorated after they lost their livelihoods, so they couldn't properly look after themselves and they couldn't afford proper medical treatment. Koguseki is gone. Kwaimidui is gone. Mami Amambla is gone. Her younger sister, Kuesua, is gone because of this project. He told me that it hurts him deeply to speak about the Pan-African Village project, because he says if it wasn't for the project, he feels his family members would still be alive. Don't they have any legal recourse? When I talk about this valley land, it makes me boil up.

Don't they have any legal recourse? I mean, can the chief really just take their land like that? So the family have now taken the chief to court. And last fall, the High Court granted them an injunction suspending all construction on the disputed part of the land. But the construction hasn't stopped. And so far, nobody's enforcing this injunction at all. Some of the farmers, they even tried to stop the construction themselves. They actually showed me a video of them going to the construction sites in Pan African Village

and confronting the workers who were building the homes on their land. In the video, one of the diaspora settlers is asking a farmer if he's a lawyer. In the video, one of the diaspora settlers is asking a farmer if he's a lawyer, and he demands to know who some of them are as they take pictures of the site. You are the landowners. Go get the police to bring it to me. One of them was furiously waving the injunction, and others were trying to forcibly turn off the machinery. The police eventually showed up, but when they did, they actually arrested the farmers.

Hold on, they arrested the farmers? I mean, they're the ones that had the injunction, so I don't really understand. It's really messed up. To the diaspora, these farmers are trespassing. But to the farmers, the diaspora are the trespassers. A few days later, the farmers were released without charge. And one of them, Daniel Kweku, he told me that when he got out of jail, he went back to the construction site on their family land.

And when he got there, one of the diaspora settlers threatened him. Some of the diasporans told us they have guns. So if they went there again, they will shoot us. He has a gun? He has a gun, a pumping action gun. A pumping action gun? Yes, pumping action. So we have our land, and then diasporans get power to buy guns for someone

and to hunt us from the land. I imagine for the villagers, that's really scary. Absolutely. You know, this is stunning, especially because you have to remember, this is a sleepy town where not much happens. People I spoke to in Asebu, they told me this isn't a town where people generally have guns. But they also told me that many of the diaspora settlers

have bought guns recently. How does that make you feel? When you see some of them taking guns? I feel bad, bad, bad, bad, bad. You kill me, let's say my brother sees that you have killed me, and he will iterate. It will be war.

It was so striking to hear him. He said that the idea of the diaspora coming back was a good one, but the way it's materialized in his town has really hurt him. If they take the correct course to acquire the land, there will be no problem. They are from here, they have been to somewhere, and they are coming back to their roots. That is nice. Yes. You don't have any hatred for them, but they should take the correct channel.

And he said that he doesn't see how this situation will end well. They won't have peace to stay. And I want them to have peace to stay. It seems like this settlement where the diaspora were supposed to come together in their ancestral homeland really has actually turned into a bit of a powder keg. Absolutely. And you know, there's a precedent for this. There's a cautionary tale in Ghana about another diaspora settlement called Fiankra. It was founded in the late 90s, actually, just a few hours away from Pan-African Village. And a land dispute there led to a brutal murder of two members of the diaspora. And that's got to be something that's on the minds of people over in Pan-African Village because, you know, you mentioned more people are moving there still.

Exactly. In Pan-African Village, there's currently about 30 people who've settled there. But it's growing. Every week, more and more people visit, interested in moving there. Actually, almost 600 people have acquired land there. And they're building homes and businesses. And many of them are planning to settle. So as more people arrive, it just increases the chance of more conflicts. So, you know, you've got problem after problem,

and now it's like some of the diaspora are walling themselves off from the locals, which is kind of crazy because one of the reasons they moved there in the first place is to be part of a community where they feel at home. The thing is, many diaspora settlers were really drawn to Ghana as a place to escape racism and discrimination. But what they didn't realise is that class is actually a huge factor. And the locals see diaspora settlers not necessarily as fellow black people, but as a class of rich foreigners with more means than them and an entirely different culture.

During my reporting, there were times that I even heard a few farmers referring to the black diaspora settlers as the whites. The whites? I mean, that's got to be a bit of a gut punch to members of the black diaspora who moved there to hear themselves being referred that way, given their history. So from everything you've learned in your reporting, is there anything that gives you hope that people who come to Ghana from the diaspora can make a real home there and be a part of that place? To be honest, within Pan-African Village, I don't have that much hope.

I mean, even the way Pan-African Village was designed, you know, exclusively for the African diaspora, it makes them outsiders. I think the tensions are probably going to build and build over time, at least until you resolve the history of land ownership and the land disputes that are just brewing there. But at the same time, outside of Pan-African Village, I did meet some other diaspora settlers who are having a very different experience

that seemed really quite hopeful. Can you tell me about one of them? Yeah, in my reporting, I met a man named Nana Kofi. He's originally from St. Louis, and he moved to Ghana in 2010. St. Louis is awful cold. In wintertime, it gets so cold. He doesn't live in Pan-African Village,

but in a place called Elmina, a town along Cape Coast. And him and his wife bought plots of land from a family in Elmina for just $200 per plot. You felt so much more at home. You didn't go through the problem of discrimination and integration and all that kind of thing. When you got here, you were just a human being. Then what happened was another part of the family came to him and said that they were not consulted or compensated from the land sale. It was a really contentious issue,

and Nanakofi could have put his foot down, but what happened was he paid them. So consequently, I wound up paying twice for the land. Nanakofi told me it wasn't much money for him in the end, but it meant a lot to those people. You know, there's no amount of money you can take from us that's going to make us want to go back to do something different. And he said that some of the people who come to settle in this region

don't have enough compassion or understanding for the local dynamics, but that coming in a different way, with more openness and awareness, is so much more gratifying in the end. You get to the real African, the real Ghanaian people, real Ghanaian family. And once they take you in, they are like your shield. Nana Kofi doesn't live in his own private, gated community. He lives openly in the town, where he has neighbors. And on top of that, he came through on the development promise he made neighbors. And on top of that, he came through on the development promise he made. He set up a clinic with his daughter and it offers subsidized

health care. This is actually where the babies are being born in. As a matter of fact, we got a couple of children that's going to be due here shortly. He took me on a tour of the place and he was trying to show me how he's so intent on making sure that his presence there has a public good for all the people that surround him. We got a pharmacist, a herbalist. You have a herbalist? Yes, you know you can't come and just give western medicine, you know you have to give them ocean of the herbs that we have here. Okay. I mean, that sounds like a much different experience than at, you know, Pan-African Village, where they've really kind of set themselves apart from the town.

Absolutely. And the truth is, unfortunately, people like Nana aren't that common. When you look at what's happening in Ghana, maybe across West Africa, what you see more and more are developments modelled on Pan-African village. You know, people coming to gated communities, starting their own businesses, building their own houses, guest houses, so that they can rent to even more potential diaspora settlers. You start to see where it can lead. And I feel like stories like this are a cautionary tale. It's important to say that for the diaspora,

moving back to Africa or moving to Africa doesn't have to be a bad thing. It can be a great thing, something that's really moving. You know, I'm a diaspora who moved from London to Lagos, in part to understand Nigeria more and connect with my family and my culture. But there's a way that moving back when it's not thoughtful can go from being a benign thing, even like a good thing for you personally, to being something that exacerbates inequality, that leads to people being ripped off, dispossessed, marginalized. Emmanuel, thank you so much for sharing this absolutely fascinating story with us. Thank you for having me.

That was Emmanuel Akinwotu, NPR's West Africa correspondent. This episode of The Sunday Story was produced by Nick M. Nevis. It was edited by Jenny Schmidt and Tara Neal. The engineer for this episode was Josh Newell. Our team includes Jacine Yan and Liana Simstrom. Our executive producer is Irene Noguchi. We love hearing from you all, so please feel free to write us at thesundaystoryatnpr.org.

Up First is back tomorrow with all the news you're going to need to start your week right. I'm Andrew Mambo. Ayesha Roscoe is back next week. Enjoy the rest of your weekend.