Tag: Africa and Africa-American relations

Ancestry

Webster professor connected to African roots in Nigeria by ancestry test

This month, Dr. Cummings will travel to Nigeria, where many of her ancestors came from.

By Carol Daniel

A Webster University professor has long been an amateur genealogist but her discoveries took a huge leap forward with her recent ancestry.com test. Because family ties were severed by slavery in the United States, most African-Americans had little hope of finding relatives in Africa.

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Opinion

The Trip I Hope All African-Americans Can Take

By Mercedes Bent

At a naming ceremony in the home of my host family in Lagos, Nigeria, I wore brightly colored traditional clothing — a long, rectangular skirt tied tightly around my waist and an off-the-shoulder top withshort, flared cuffs, all in a pink ankara pattern with a matching head wrap.

“Please stand,” said my host, who had graciously offered to tailor the ceremony — which is normally performed for babies — for me, her adult visitor from the United States.

“I hereby give you the name Esosa; it means ‘God’s gift.’ You are now Esosa Oloke. Welcome to the family. You will always have a family here in Nigeria.”

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Ancestry, News

‘Year of return’: Hundreds of African-Americans resettle in Ghana

Ghana was one of the main West African departure points for the transatlantic slave trade.The government has launched a campaign to reach out to the descendants of those Africans who were forcibly removed from their homelands.

It has dubbed 2019 the “Year of Return”.

Several hundred people have already put down roots in Ghana, many of them African-Americans. 

The programme is prepared by Patrick Lovett and James Vasina.


Ancestry

For African Americans, DNA tests reveal just a small part of a complicated ancestry

By Eli Chen

African Americans often have scant knowledge about where their ancestors are from, so many are using DNA test kits, like 23andMe and Ancestry, to trace their roots. The transatlantic slave trade erased a lot of information about family history and countries of origin for many people descended from African slaves.

It took nearly 30 minutes for Eric Depradine to extract a saliva sample from his dying grandmother. Depradine, 35, of Kansas City, wanted to have his grandmother’s DNA tested to confirm his suspicions that her ancestors came from Madagascar.

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News

Delaware State U. working with African Union to connect African Americans to Africa  

By Ryanne Persinger

Delaware State University has partnered with the African Peer Review Mechanism to help bridge the gap between Africa and its “Sixth Region” — people of African heritage who live outside the continent.

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Ancestry, Visit to Africa

NAACP Announces Memorial Trip to Ghana
  • Jamestown to Jamestown memorial trip to Ghana announced to commemorate 400 years of African diaspora
     

The Jamestown to Jamestown Memorial Trip to Ghana, an official event of Ghana’s Year of Return, was announced at the 50th NAACP Image Awards in Hollywood, California by Diallo Sumbry, Ghana’s first Black American Tourism Ambassador, in partnership with the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP).

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Visit to Africa

Why an African American Free Masons group “returned” to one of slave trade’s darkest places
By Joy Notoma

When a group of Prince Hall Masons from North Carolina arrived in Cotonou, Benin last month for the inauguration of a new grand lodge in Cotonou, the cultural significance wasn’t lost on the masons from Benin.

After The American Revolutionary War (1775-83), a formerly enslaved man from Massachusetts who had fought in the war for independence, was attracted to Freemason ideals like brotherly love, justice, and liberty, but the exclusively white group wouldn’t allow a black man in its ranks. The man, Prince Hall, wasn’t one to take no for an answer, though.

With all the traditional tenets of masonry, he decided to start his own group of masons.

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Religion

West African religions like Ifa and Vodou are on the rise in Maryland, as practitioners connect with roots
By Jonathan M. Pitts

They gathered in a clearing by a stream in Baltimore County one chilly early-spring day, some in the colorful African head ties known as geles, others wearing bracelets trimmed in shells or carved in wood.

One by one, they stepped forward to toss offerings into the Gwynns Falls – a pineapple, four oranges, a bouquet of tulips.

And when the lead priestess of these African-American women dropped a handful of shells to the ground and scrutinized their pattern, a message came through: Their celebration of the spring equinox was blessed by the divine.

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Embassies

Ghana’s US Ambassador Calls On African Americans To Visit Ghana   

Ghana’s ambassador to the United States, H.E. Dr. Barfuor Adjei-Barwuah, has called on the African American community in Baltimore to visit Ghana their mother land yearly.
Dr. Adjei-Barwuah was speaking at the 203rd Session of the Baltimore Annual Conference at the Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Baltimore, Maryland.

Sharing with them the good message of the Year of Return, Dr. Adjei-Barwuah touched on Ghana’s open door community to the African Diaspora, particularly, the African American community.

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Visit to Africa

US civil rights legend, Andrew Young, gives South Africa some DIY advice
Don’t count on governments to end poverty – they’re all broke
By Peter Fabricius

US civil rights legend Andrew Young jolted many in his audience at the University of Johannesburg last week when he advised them to stop counting on the government to eradicate poverty and to rely instead on themselves – and the private sector.

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Appointments

Meet Ghana’s first African-American Tourism ambassador, Diallo Sumbry

By Michael Klugey
Diallo Sumbry, the founder of the Washington D.C. based The Adinkra Group, an African Cultural Edutainment Resource, and Consulting Company, and organizer of the Back2Africa Festival and Tour has been appointed as Ghana’s first African-American Tourism Ambassador by the Ghana Ministry of Tourism, Arts and Culture.

Mr. Sumbry will join Ghana Tourism Ambassadors including Afrobeats Star Fuse ODG, Ghanaian Rap Star, Sarkodie, Ghanaian British Singing Sensations, Reggie N Bollie, and Singer Wiyaala to transform and promote tourism as a leading sector of the economy in Ghana.

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Events

African-Americans in Ghana remember their African roots

The African American Association of Ghana celebrated their roots in Africa with an event during last Black History month.

The celebration dubbed “Black Migration: Exploring Our Roots and Beyond” focused on the 400 years anniversary of the arrival of the first enslaved Africans in the United States in 1619 and the next wave of returnees to their homelands took place in Accra.

This year has been recognised in Ghana as the “Year of Return”, and Ghana is the first African country to organise a concerted effort to commemorate the 400 years anniversary.

Mrs Stephanie S. Sullivan, the United States (US) Ambassador to Ghana, who launched the program said, she was proud to join the Government of Ghana and other officials to celebrate the event as it signified the bond between the two countries.

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Health

U.S. hopes to send more experts to Congo as Ebola outbreak rages
By Lena H. Sun

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention hopes to send experts to Congo in the next few weeks to train international and local personnel in the fight against a raging Ebola outbreak that has killed nearly 600 people and is far from under control, the CDC director said Thursday in an interview.

Because of the worsening security situation, the CDC experts would not be based in the epicenter of the outbreak, in conflict-ridden parts of eastern Congo. Armed attacks against Ebola treatment centers in North Kivu province have increased in recent weeks. One attack took place hours before CDC Director Robert Redfield and World Health Organization Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus arrived last week as part of a WHO delegation to assess the situation on the ground.

Three CDC personnel are on temporary assignment about 200 miles south of the epicenter, in the city of Goma, the capital of North Kivu, Redfield said.

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Policy

Escalation in Somalia Is a Foreign Policy Failure in Progress

U.S. intervention quietly escalates in Somalia.

While the Trump administration has very visibly made and modified plans to reduce U.S. military intervention in Syria and Afghanistan, it has quietly escalated the fight in Somalia. U.S. airstrikes in the North African nation are on the rise, The New York Times reported Sunday, and that higher pace of bombardment has contributed to increased civilian displacement and all the turmoil that comes with it.

This is a foreign policy failure in progress. If the last two decades of missteps in the Middle East and North Africa have demonstrated anything, it is that secretive wars of choice are prone to mission creep and rife with unintended consequences. Rather than expand, U.S. military intervention in Somalia should be shut down before it spirals into another needless generational conflict.

The United States has had some military presence in Somalia for the better part of three decades, and the current campaign began in 2007. But U.S. strikes were few—zero to three per year—until 2015, when former President Barack Obama started an upward trend the Trump team has continued. Last year, U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM) reported 47 strikes. The first two months of this year put us on track to triple that by December.

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News

US Army captain killed in Ethiopia plane crash   

By: Kathleen Curthoys

Army Capt. Antoine Lewis was one of eight Americans killed when an Ethiopian Airlines plane crashed on Sunday, news reports say.

Lewis was on the flight from Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, to Nairobi, Kenya, when Flight 302 crashed, killing all 157 people aboard, according to aCBS report from Chicago.

Lewis was stationed in Ottawa, Canada, and he was on a vacation to Africa, his family said.

“I will say that plane went down with him doing what he wanted to do most, and that was to stretch out and embrace our mother country,” his mother, Antoinette Lewis, said in the CBS report.

His family, from the Chicago suburb of Matteson, Illinios, knew he was on the plane, tried calling him and didn’t get an answer, the report said.

Lewis, 39, had served in Afghanistan and South Korea during his military career, ABC 7 in Chicago reported. He was in Africa to do missionary work, the report said.

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