One thing that separates this wave of African pride from the ones that came before is social media.<\/p>\n
Dennis Howard, an entertainment and cultural enterprise lecturer at the University of the West Indies, says a “significant” amount of Jamaicans are connecting with Africa through platforms such as TikTok.<\/p>\n
“People are learning more about black history beyond slavery,” he tells the BBC from his home in the Jamaican capital, Kingston.<\/p>\n
Mr Howard also points to the global rise of Afrobeats, a musical genre from Nigeria and Ghana.<\/p>\n
He feels that in Jamaica specifically, the popularity of Afrobeats is partly down to a desire to reconnect with the continent.<\/p>\n
“Through the music videos, [Jamaicans] are seeing certain parts of Africa are similar to Jamaica and are developed. We had a concept of Africa as this place where it is backward and it’s pure dirt road… the music is changing that.”<\/p>\n
Asked about the view of some Jamaican commenters online – that islanders do not need to reclaim their African heritage as they have an equally valid, hard-won Jamaican heritage of their own – Mr Howard stresses that the two are not distinct.<\/p>\n
“Our whole culture is African, with a little sprinkling of Indian and European and Chinese. But for the most part it is African-derived. It is the most dominant part of our culture,” he says.<\/p>\n
Those leaning into their African heritage are not just consuming the culture, but actually getting on flights and exploring the continent first-hand.<\/p>\n
The tourism authority in Ghana – once a major departure point for enslaved Africans being shipped to the Caribbean – told the BBC there had been a “notable increase” in holidaymakers from the islands in recent years.<\/p>\n
Similarly, Werner Gruner, South Africa’s consul to the Bahamas, says that over the past two or three years, his office has seen a rise in local people travelling to South Africa, Ghana and Kenya.<\/p>\n
“I see a lot of interest in safaris and I think people also start to realise that South Africa and other African countries are actually very well developed,” Mr Gruner says.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"One thing that separates this wave of African pride from the ones that came before is social media.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":353271,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[12,26],"class_list":{"0":"post-353270","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world","8":"tag-news","9":"tag-world"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115047778592823096","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/353270","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=353270"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/353270\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/353271"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=353270"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=353270"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=353270"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}