PM calls for fresh Africa ties as Liberian monument unveiled

Prime Minister Mia Mottley has called for stronger ties with Africa at a ceremony marking Liberia’s lineage to 19th-century Barbados.

Mottley unveiled a plaque in Bay Street on Thursday to mark this year’s Sankofa Pilgrimage, as hundreds of Liberians visited the island this week to explore their ancestral roots.

She told attendees that while the two nations share historical connections – Barbados produced two former Liberian presidents – this relationship has not been fully embraced over the years.

“The fact that we were able to formally establish those linkages only recently is regrettable, but what must matter is not that these two voyages stand as exceptions but they must simply be seen as foundations,” she said.

Stressing the importance of improving relations, the prime minister added: “It’s about time, as we have said, and Barbados stands ready to work with our African partners to build that transportation bridge, and that bridge of the sharing of information, and the bridge of the common curriculum that would allow our people to be able to know our common history.”

She called for both nations to move past historical, social and political achievements and instead pursue equal justice, especially for those overlooked by the west too often.

“I say to you publicly, that you own as Liberians, part of the pride that we own as Barbadians for making this final step of charting our destiny,” Mottley said. “The story of Liberia is also the story that Barbadians must come to understand because it is also a story of life, the story of humans and the story of civilisation.”

She urged both countries not to take stability and prosperity for granted, warning: “As we traverse this path of nation-building in both countries, let us not take stability and prosperity for granted. Because, like a house, if we don’t maintain it each and every day, as easy as it has come to us would be as easy as it shall be taken from us.

“Today signals that they are on both sides of the Atlantic, people who are willing to cement themselves together in unity, to fight the battles not just in our individual countries, but in our regions, and our planet.”

Two of Liberia’s presidents – Arthur Barclay, the 15th president who ruled from 1904 to 1912, and Edwin Barclay, the 18th president from 1943 to 1944 – were descendants of a single voyage of Barbadians in 1865.

Liberia was founded in 1822 by freed Blacks from the United States and became a destination for the repatriation of formerly enslaved people, achieving independence in 1847.

In 1865, 27 years after emancipation, a group of 346 Black Barbadians boarded a ship named The Cora at the Bridgetown wharf for a 34-day Atlantic voyage to the West African nation.

Among the passengers on board The Cora was Anthony Barclay, the leader of the repatriation group, and his wife Sarah Ann Bourne-Barclay, daughter of London Bourne, the ex-slave who became a wealthy merchant and abolitionist. Among the Barclays’ 11 children was the youngest, Arthur Barclay who would become president.