Slavery may have ended over 400 years ago, but Ghana is milking its anniversary for what it’s worth. This year it expects to rake in almost $1 billion from tourists visiting the country to mark what it calls the year of return.
Yet Ghana is not the only African country with a history of slavery. Nigeria has even more colourful stories but Ghana has been the most strategic about marketing its potential for tourism and is clearly emerging the smartest about turning it into an opportunity for economic boom.
The Ghanaian tourism Authority expects 500,000 visitors this year, up from 350,000 in 2018. Of those, 45,000 are estimated to be seeking their ancestral roots, a 42% increase from last year according to a Reuters report.
Ghana has packaged its tourism around ancestral heritage to cash in on renewed interests in people traveling to places connected to their ancestry. Reuters report that U.S. genetics company African Ancestry says its sales of DNA tests tripled after last year’s release of the superhero film “Black Panther,” an Afro-centric blockbuster with a predominantly black cast. The company is launching an ancestry-based travel service later this year.
There is also a surge of interest in Africa from “Chinese officials who work hand in glove with Africa’s dictators during the day and dine and wine with them at night, and American officials who criticize African dictators during the day and dine and wine with them at night,” according to one analyst.
Ghanaian officials see it as an opportunity to entice some much-needed foreign investment into their economy that is struggling with high inflation and public debt that has needed an International Monetary Fund lending program to fix.
Reuters estimates that with an average spend of $1,850 per tourist, Ghana could see revenue rise over $925 million, a 50% increase from 2018, and almost half of the $2billion the country generates from selling cocoa.
Ghana packaged its “slave river,” and the Elimina Castles where captured Ghanaians submitted to a final bath before being shipped across the Atlantic into slavery centuries ago, never to return to the land of their birth.
The Elmina Castle was important in the early European slave trade. Africans were herded into small spaces throughout the castle, where there were no windows for fresh air or light. It contains shackles, whips and other devices used on slaves before they were taken away on boats.
These iconic sites have drawn celebrities including Steve Harvey who regard it as a place of sombre homecoming for the descendants of those who spent their lives as someone else’s property. Former US president Barack Obama and family visited in 2009 and were moved.
This month’s anniversary of the first Africans to arrive in Virginia has caused a rush of interest in ancestral tourism, with people from the United States, the Caribbean and Europe seeking out their roots in West Africa.
Awuracy Butler, who runs a company called Butler Tours told Reuters that business has doubled as African diaspora tracing their family history return. Some Nigerians who are planning holidays say on social media posts that they have had to cancel because literally all the hotel rooms in the country have been booked some over three months ago.
As in Ghana, Nigeria has physical representations of its cultural heritage including palaces, architecturally sophisticated city walls and gates, shrines, smelting furnaces, arts and crafts, pottery making, traditional foods and drinks but could do more to promote them despite petro dollars.
Sites commemorating the slave trade exist in the coastal town of Badagry and artefacts including chains used to shackle slaves are spread across the museums, two of which are small single-story buildings with corrugated iron roofs but visitors are few and far between largely due to the poor state of the road.
Last year, Yemi Kale, Statistician-General of the Federation and Chief Executive Officer, National Bureau of Statistics said tourism sector which Nigeria has competitive advantage accounted for 34 per cent of GDP and about 20 per cent of the country’s employment creation in 2017.
“The art, entertainment and recreation, trade, transport, accommodation and food services, administrative, support and other services account for 34 per cent of GDP in 2017 and about 20 per cent of employment.”
To achieve Ghana’s success Nigeria’s cultural heritage including slave trade relics in Badagry, museums and monuments like the National War Museum, Osun-Osogbo Sacred Grove, Long Juju of Arochukwu, Eyo Masquerade Festiave and Argungu Fishing and Cultural Festival should be professional packaged and sold involving private sector partnerships, according to Adeyinka Bankole, of the department of Behavioural Studies, College of Management Sciences, Redeemers University, Ogun State.
ISAAC ANYAOGU
