August 18, 2025
From travel to trade, African and Caribbean communities are unifying for a greater purpose.
Across the Caribbean, Black people are reconnecting with their African pride through food, culture, and more. This cultural immersion has taken new heights, with one Nigerian resident of St. Lucia already seeing the effects.
Augustine Ogbo works as a doctor, treating communities across the Caribbean nation. His other passion, however, lies in his Nigerian food spot, Africana Chops. Customers from across the island have come to taste some of his homegrown dishes, from egusi soup to jollof rice.
While the food sparks a different flavor than what is customary to St. Lucia, Ogbo thinks his restaurant is a hit because it bridges the gap between the cultures.
“They know that we all have the same ancestral origin. So most of the time, they want to get in touch with that,” explained Dr Ogbo to BBC News.
The roots between Africa and the Caribbean mainly stem from the Atlantic slave trade, but racism and oceans have failed to keep the diaspora disconnected. While Africans forcibly transported to the Caribbean developed their own identity and culture over the centuries, what still remains is an ancestral tie to one another.
Black and African pride has spread globally, often coinciding with liberation and the civil rights movements. It has surged in recent years, thanks to digital innovations playing a major role in connecting global communities.
The rise of TikTok has introduced these communities to shared interests in music and dance, especially with Afrobeats gaining traction in the global music scene. Furthermore, social media across the Caribbean and Africa has dissolved assumptions of how each lives.
“Through the music videos, [Jamaicans] are seeing that 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,” added Dennis Howard, an entertainment and cultural enterprise lecturer at the University of the West Indies.
Travel to West African nations, especially during the celebratory “Detty December” period, is also helping boost tourism between the regions.
Trade is also on the rise, with talks of a single digital currency arriving to make a “truly global Africa” that can compete in the markets. Countries from Grenada to Ghana continue to engage in future trade talks that incorporate a shared mission to uplift Black people.
Alongside the dismantling of stigma and stereotypes, building a unified community within and beyond Africa hopes to increase cultural connectivity while providing economic advantages to throughout the diaspora.
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