Time for a new – voluntary – Middle Passage

As China braces itself for a population meltdown that will result in China losing its most populous nation status to India, a demographic revolution is taking place on the continent of Africa.

According to the American Statistical Association, a population explosion is occurring on the African continent. Africa’s population is expected to rise from its current 1.2 billion to between 3.4 to 5.6 billion by the end of this century. Nigeria, which is now the sixth most populous nation globally, is expected to overtake the US and become the third most populous nation by 2050.

The UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs Population Division’s demographers anticipate that half the global population growth globally between now and 2050 will occur in Africa. According to this source, the fastest population growth globally will occur in India, Nigeria, Congo, Pakistan, Ethiopia, Tanzania, the United States, Uganda and Indonesia. UN demographers also expect the populations of 26 African countries to double during the same period.

The population explosion in Africa is occurring in tandem with a significant decline in fertility rates in 83 countries. Europe, interestingly enough, has the lowest fertility rate of around 1.6 births per woman. Europe’s current fertility rate falls well below the 2.1 births needed for population replacement. Europe, like China, therefore is experiencing a population meltdown. Fewer births mean fewer young people and an expanding aging population with all that is implied in such a demographic shift.

As the US and Europe prepare to tighten security at their borders to stem the flow of immigrants fleeing their home countries in search of a better life, Africans are often targeted for some of the most brutal treatment at the borders of European nations and the US. African migrants are being beaten and drowned trying to enter Europe. During the Trump presidency, Blacks from Haiti and Africa were told that people from ‘faeces-filled countries’ like theirs were not welcome in America. The Trump administration made it very clear that America had a clear preference for melanin-challenged ethnic groups, preferably from Europe.

African and Caribbean people should be mindful of the ‘persona non grata’ status of Black would-be immigrants seeking entry to Europe and America, and the less-than-humane treatment dished out to Black people in Asia and the Arab world. The African continent and the Caribbean are the two Black regions of the world. Therefore, African and Caribbean leaders and people need to be totally committed to the development of these two regions.

Caribbean countries that are currently experiencing demographic shifts favouring Asian majorities should consider encouraging African migration into the Caribbean to ensure that people of African origins continue to be a majority in the islands of the Caribbean. This new voluntary Middle Passage of Africans to the Caribbean and vice versa would go a long way in uniting a family divided for centuries by the Atlantic Ocean. Maybe the time has come for Black politicians on both sides of the Atlantic to stop paying lip service to the Pan-African concept and actually create a sea or air bridge to move people and products between Africa and the Caribbean. European slave traders did it between the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries and reaped phenomenal monetary rewards.

Our great and venerated ancestor and prophet, the Right Honourable Marcus Garvey, left an example with his Black Star Liner project. Prophet Garvey envisaged Black people owning ships that could move people and products throughout the Black world. If one man with a vision could accomplish what our esteemed ancestors achieved, then the 67 supposedly independent nations of Africa and the Caribbean have no excuse for not being able to build on the accomplishment of just one man.

It is a scandal that the Caribbean is a lucrative cruise ship destination but to date, none of the cruise liners plying the Caribbean route are owned by Caribbean or African governments. With a little imagination, Caribbean and African governments could open up a new Middle Passage cruise service travelling between the Caribbean, Brazil, and the African continent. The ancestors of Black people in Brazil and the Caribbean were transported by ships from Africa and we their descendants can be transported back to the African continent by ships. This is a part of the Garvey vision that still awaits fulfilment.

Current demographic trends clearly suggest that the future will be both Black and Yellow. Africans and Asians will be the most numerous ethnic groups globally. As Europe’s population declines, Caucasians may decide to form new alliances with other ethnic groups, especially those possessing less melanin than Africans. Chinese, Indians, Japanese, and Hispanics may be grafted into the Caucasian camp in the US and Europe. Anti-Blackness could be one of the unifying factors that brings all these ethnic groups into a working coalition.

African and Caribbean nations can continue to shoot themselves in the foot by building alliances with their historic enemies or we can complete the work of our great Pan-African ancestors by forging greater cooperation and unity among the global Black collective. We can either continue to spend our hard-earned money building up other ethnic communities or we can start building a manufacturing base to supply ourselves with the goods we need to survive.

We can allow ourselves to fall further behind in the knowledge revolution or we can upgrade our learning institutions to a world-class level thus empowering our young people to be innovators and inventors of new goods and services.

Lastly, we can continue to be suicidally naïve in thinking that history cannot repeat itself and that there cannot be another scramble for Africa and the Caribbean or we can avail ourselves of some of the state-of-the-art military hardware available to defend our land masses from foreign aggression.

Lenrod Nzulu Baraka is the founder of the Afro-Caribbean Spiritual Teaching Centre and the author of ‘The Rebirth of Black Civilization: Making Africa and the Caribbean Great Again’.