ChakaBars on The Global Importance of Ghana as a Homeland for Black Unity and Empowerment

We're going to talk about Ghana as far as investing and business and all this, but I do think that it's important to highlight the historical importance of Ghana specifically because it does play a tremendous role as far as black people in America and black people in just the western hemisphere in general.

Right because we talk about the slave dungeons Then we talk about Kwame and Kuma who was actually I think he was educated in Lincoln University Lincoln University Yeah, which is the first HBCU my sister actually went to Lincoln So there's a lot of cross connections between Ghana and America. So give us some history, please Please and blessings family. I think that this

is of importance significance because it is a, a closing of a circle that was broken, because Africans, indigenous people had had always traded amongst each other and always traveled.

Mansu Musa, everybody's familiar with Mansu Musa, but Abu Kari II had sent 2,000 ships over to America before Columbus had even got there. I think it was Mansu Musa's uncle and that trade had always happened. We saw that that trade had been going on for

thousands of years when you look at Ramesu or Rameses a second they did a test on his on his tissue because they had his his body and they found that he had cocaine in his body because of the coco leaf that the Bolivians the Peruvians used to chew so there's always been this this back and forth but i think um

The kingdom of Ghana, the empire of Ghana, was essentially for the Europeans when they arrived there. It became this bread basket and then they renamed it the Gold Coast. So until 1957 it was called the Gold Coast until Kwameen Krum actually took the country back. And during that period of time,

while it was the Gold Coast. What happened was Europeans were taken as much out of Ghana as possible in terms of gold. They had the gold mines that they were

basically Robin for many, many years. But before that, when they first were colonizing there, they were Robin people. And a lot of our ancestors came from Ghana. And a lot of people, they had this idea that a lot of people now have this idea because we want to follow success.

They have this idea that people always came from the Americas. But there's a lot of people in North America, in Brazil, in the Caribbean, who look like our brothers and sisters from Ghana. They look like our brothers and sisters from Cameroon, from Congo, from Angola, et cetera, et cetera. And because there is this idea that what happened in Africa, the enslavement of Africans, the colonization,

is something that is not successful. People don't want to look at actually Africa as a place to go and invest and a lot of people are now trying to pretend like they never came from Africa or they never had any connection with Africa and that just doesn't make good business sense let alone any kind of spiritual sense because

Everybody who is educated and everybody who wants to have economic mobility around the world would always trade with equal partners in different spaces. And if you look at anywhere along that coastline of Ghana, you can find castles where enslaved people

who were essentially prisoners of war, because there were different rival ethnic groups who were fighting each other. And when they would win that battle, they would take people as essentially indentured servants, indentured laborers to mine gold for them, to clean their house, concubines, et cetera, et cetera.

The Europeans saw that as an opportunity to exploit this relationship that we've always had this indentured servitude, indentured laborers, and slavery in Africa. But then Europeans said, hey, we're going to take these people. I'm going to take them across the water. And they're never going to come back. And that is how my ancestors were.

Harvesting sugar cane, your ancestors were harvesting cotton, people in Brazil were harvesting gold, copper, tin, etc. And that was going on for

hundreds of years. So the year of return in Ghana was basically an opportunity to reconnect the diaspora with the motherland because it was 1619 I think the first 18 enslaved Africans arrived in Jamestown and then it was 2019 we had this this government of Ghana calling for that people to come home

But just to give you some context, there was an empress in Ethiopia called Empress Zeweditu. I think that's how I say her name, Z-E-W-D-I-T-U, who in around 1920 was writing letters to African-Americans, Afro-Brazilians, Afro-Caribians, and saying, hey, come home to Ethiopia. This was the first time that

any African, she was an empress, any African leader, had said to the diaspora, come back home. That actually inspired Marcus Garvey to create the UNIA, the United Negro Improvement Association. And Marcus Garvey was actually speaking with her back and forth. And Marcus Garvey created this huge community, many chapters and business, the Black Star Liner, to try and bring Africans home and bring resources from Africa.

So Marcus Garvey was actually the inspiration for Kwame and Krumah to have the Black Star in the flag of Ghana, and many other African countries. Marcus Garvey was a Pan-African, he was a Jamaican, and in Rasta he's hailed as one of the greatest leaders within the community of Rastafari, who's one of the first Pan-African

And where you have Kwame and Krumah now who's inspired by Marcus Garvey and then in 1957 leads a revolution to decolonize Ghana. Ghana was the first country in Africa to decolonize little Ghana. The time was very way smaller than it is now. It was the first to fight and say no more and we're kicking Europeans out. And

now we're in an amazing space where people are starting to want to come home and they're starting to want to see where they're from. In 2019, I had the pleasure of being part of a delegation to bring the Prime Minister of Barbados to Ghana and we brought the bones and some remains of ancestors from Barbados and buried them because I was born in Barbados and buried them

back in Ghana and at the same time we created a bilateral trade agreement between Barbados and Ghana but this should exist for all African countries and all of its diaspora and so now I think we're in a position.

where if we want people to come home, not only do we have to invite them, but we also have to provide them with homes, we have to provide them with economic opportunity, we have to provide them with legality and citizenship, and actually next week, I'm part of a citizenship, which I'm very proud of, because being born in Barbados and having family from Barbados and Jamaica,

Now I actually get to go home because when our ancestors were being stolen and being taken across the ocean, they weren't trying to be American. They weren't trying to be Brazilian. They weren't trying to be Jamaican. They were trying to get back home. And so now we can truly say that we are ancestors wildest dreams because now our ancestors

have coders forward and our family and Ghana has coders forward and now we can move home, we can get passports, we can get houses and we can finally not have to deal with any of the other problems that are existing in the West. I hope I've provided some context but I feel like now is the perfect time. Ghana is the perfect place. We have the opportunities that

God has provided for us and the government has provided for us, and our own entrepreneurial tenacity has provided for us. So now it's just time to put that bridge back together and live in the spirit of Marcus Garvey, Malcolm X, Yara Centua, Nanny of the Maroons and all of these greats that came before us because

I don't know what else anybody else is doing, but y'all just got somebody elected and I don't know about him. Where are we going to go? It's time to go home.