Ghana and Diaspora Reconnection

Ghana occupies a particular place in diaspora travel, and it is not an accident of marketing. The country holds the largest concentration of the European trading forts on the West African coast, and it has spent decades deliberately inviting the descendants of the people taken through them to come back.

The historical connection

UNESCO inscribed the Ghanaian forts and castles as a single World Heritage property in recognition of what they were and what they became. Founded between 1482 and 1786, they run about 500 kilometers along the coast between Keta in the east and Beyin in the west, and were built and occupied in turn by traders from Portugal, Spain, Denmark, Sweden, Holland, Germany and Britain.

They were built for gold. UNESCO is careful about this, and so are we: for much of their history they were the machinery of a commerce between Africans and Europeans conducted on terms of rough equality, and only later did they become central to the trade in people. Both things are true of the same walls, and the inscription describes them as a monument to both.

Programs and initiatives

Ghana has built policy around this. The Year of Return marked four centuries since the first recorded arrival of enslaved Africans in Virginia and brought a very large number of visitors of African descent to Ghana, and the government followed it with a longer program intended to turn a commemorative year into a standing relationship. Emancipation Day commemorations and Panafest are held on the coast.

There are also routes to a longer stay, including provisions for people of African descent to be granted the right of abode, and naturalization for those who settle. These are legal processes with requirements and costs, administered by Ghanaian authorities, and they change. If that is your interest, take advice from the authorities themselves rather than from an itinerary.

Planning a reconnection journey

The practical advice from people who have done it is consistent and worth repeating. Give the coast more time than an itinerary suggests. A castle is commonly sold as a morning and is very often not one. Two sites in a day is possible and frequently a mistake.

Go in the order the history went, if you can: inland at Assin Manso first, then the coast at Cape Coast or Elmina. It is the route that was walked, and taking it in that sequence changes what the coast feels like when you reach it.

Take a guide, and take one who is willing to answer questions rather than perform a script. Build in a day afterwards with nothing scheduled. People who have traveled this way generally say the difficulty arrives later than they expected, and that having somewhere quiet to be when it does matters more than another site.