Diaspora tourism, focused on reconnecting with ancestral roots and cultural heritage, is becoming a rapidly expanding sector within Africa’s travel industry.
Unlike conventional leisure tourism, this emerging trend highlights the importance of cultural exploration, offering members of the African diaspora a meaningful way to engage with their history and traditions.
According to amsterdamnews.com, black people in the United States are booking more trips outside of this country and traveling to other nations to learn about and be part of diverse diaspora Black communities. In places like England, they can meet with the group Black History Walks, which offers bus tours, talks, river cruises, and walking tours to inform people about Britain’s Black history.
Mexico recently observed its Afrodescendencias Festival in the center of Mexico City. On August 10, the eastern Mexico state of Veracruz held its Yanga Carnival, its annual celebration commemorating the creation of the first self-liberated Black city in the Americas.
In Argentina, local activists from Lunfarda Travel conduct tours of Afro Argentina’s past and present. In Brazil, the self-styled Afrotourism platform Guia Negro provides local news on its website, sponsors walking tours, and promotes local Black-owned businesses.
READ: Africa: Ghana Launches 46-Day Visa-on-Arrival Initiative, Strengthening Ties with Diaspora and Boosting Tourism in Alignment with ‘Beyond The Return’ GH Campaign
This type of heritage-oriented tourism is being touted as bringing more socio-economic benefits to communities by creating a wider range of local jobs. In many African nations, tourism was principally geared toward entertaining visitors in the past who wanted to go on wild animal safaris and hunting trips. Heritage tourism steers visitors toward local restaurants, cultural sites, and businesses, and encourages more interaction with local residents.
Diaspora travel in the spotlight
Ghana’s successful Year of Return campaign in 2019 put the idea of diaspora travel in the spotlight. When the Adinkra Group, a U.S.-based cultural resource organization, joined forces with the Ghana Tourism Authority to promote what it calls birthright journeys, it opened up explicit spaces for Black people in the Americas to reconnect with the continent.
READ: Tourism: Ghana Takes the Lead In Advocating for a Concrete Action Plan on Slavery Reparations in Africa
Year of Return metrics show that the effort was financially successful for Ghana. “According to Ghana’s Ministry of Tourism, Arts and Culture, about 1.1 million people arrived in Ghana in 2019, compared to 956,372 in 2018,” according to the United Nations’ digital magazine Africa Renewal. Ghana’s Diaspora Affairs Office added that some 1,500 Black Americans have moved to the country since 2019. The Ghana government found the venture so successful that it created a 10-year “Beyond the Return” project so it could continue promoting tourism to the country until the year 2030.
Mari Conyers Taylor is in awe of Ghana.
She had worked as a healthcare professional in New York City, and when she moved to Georgia, she and some friends established a successful event planning agency. When the COVID-19 pandemic hit, she put her healthcare hat back on and did her part to contribute her expertise to helping people pull through. As the pandemic neared its end, Conyers Taylor said she was still feeling a wave of depression from all the pain she’d witnessed — but then her daughter invited her to take a trip with her to Ghana, where she was going to be part of a wedding.
“I went to Ghana and my life has not been the same,” Conyers Taylor said. “I could not find peace. I had traveled to Georgia, I had traveled to North Carolina, I traveled to my grandparents’ grave, I traveled everywhere in the States to try to find peace –– to places that used to bring me peace …the moment I landed in Ghana, it was as if my spirit took a breath, if that makes sense. I didn’t know what had happened. I felt this new feeling of happiness.”
Now the director of Culture Seekers and Culture Seekers Africa, Conyers Taylor said that even though she owned a travel company, she had never thought of traveling into Africa any further than Egypt or Morocco, even though that was something her grandmother had always spoken of wanting to do. Then Conyers Taylor lost her grandmother to COVID.
“It was amazing to be there,” she said, “and I know my daughter for a moment thought that I had lost my mind because I was talking to myself. But I was really speaking to my grandmother, because my grandmother taught me that our ancestors stay with us and whenever I walk into a room, my ancestors walk in with me. So, as I got off the plane, I said, ‘Hey, Grandma, here we go. We’re in Ghana.’”
With Culture Seekers Africa, Conyers Taylor has partnered with Ghanaians and locals in countries like Nigeria, South Africa, Cape Verde, Benin, Uganda, Kenya, Morocco, Senegal, Seychelles, Mauritius, Tanzania, Togo, Ivory Coast, and Botswana to offer personalized itineraries for visitors who want a curated guide throughout their journey, or to be taken to historic sites.
Tourism is a culture
“Over the last couple of years, we’ve been really promoting a lot of the heritage tours because the demand is high,” said Richard Cox of the Harlem Tourism Board. “Folks would like to discover their ancestry and a lot of the folks who booked the tours really like to ‘start at the exit routes,’ as we say.
“The exit routes are in Ghana and the castle at Elmina, or some people like to go through the other door of no return, which is in [Gorée Island,] Senegal. Those two locations, whether you’re exiting out of Ghana or Senegal — that’s where folks like to see: the exit points.”
The Harlem Tourism Board is currently promoting a 10-day trip to Ghana on its website that it’s co-hosting with the Taste of Afrika for this November. The trip is being marketed as “More than a trip, it’s a legacy … This journey isn’t just about ticking off destinations; it’s about leaving your mark. Visit community projects, engage with local businesses, and be part of a collaborative effort that empowers and uplifts,” the promotion states.
Wakanow, a technology-driven African travel company based in Nigeria, deals with every aspect of tourism, but its core business is providing flights and hotel services to customers across the continent. Although it can offer tour, hotel, and airline reservations to people worldwide, most of its customer traffic remains internal, mainly from users on the African continent.
Gbenga Onitilo, vice president of Wakanow’s B2B business, noted that more governments in Africa –– in countries like Morocco, Egypt, Ghana, Tanzania, South Africa, Côte d’Ivoire, Senegal, Namibia, Kenya, and Rwanda –– are trying to divert money to revenue streams and invest more in tourism.
“Tourism is a culture in most of these countries,” he told the Amsterdam News. “The government is making major investments to ensure that the people are part of the ecosystem and [that] whatever is happening anywhere in the world does not impact that, because Africa is still trying to catch up with the rest of the world in terms of economic growth and development. Tourism is what some of these countries have talked about and are trying to use to rebrand themselves and also to position themselves. Tourism is key for most of these countries.”
