As we discussed about earlier, Ghana played a big role in the transatlantic slave trade. Many of the slaves that crossed the ocean did so through Ghana, and the vast majority of them never made it back home. The relation of the slaves of centuries past to modern-day Ghanaians is not so clear-cut, however. This subject is best explained through the lens of something called Pan-Africanism. Pan-Africanism has several different definitions and the term means something a little different to every African or person of African descent that you ask, but I can give you a basic idea of what Pan-Africanism is all about. It’s about uniting Africans and people of African descent into a common cause and a common people, encouraging the belief that those who have been dispersed across the globe are still Africans and can still call Africa their home.
Another helpful term to learn here is the word diaspora; it’s a word used to describe the spread of a people (in this case, Africans) away from their homelands. For African Americans, this often dates right back to the transatlantic slave trade. Pan-Africanism and the African diaspora are very closely related.
Many of the classes that I’ve taken this semester in Ghana dealt with this very topic.
