African Roads to Prosperity: interview with Akinyinka Akinyoade

The book African Roads to Prosperity: People en Route to Socio-Cultural and Economic Transformations, the latest volume in the African Dynamics Series, describes the movement of people in Africa on their way to better socio-economic prospects. In this interview, co-editor and ASCL researcher Akinyinka Akinyoade talks about Africans en route to greener pastures, many of whom get stuck halfway.

How did the book originate?
‘It is one of the results of our Collaborative Research Group ‘Roads to Prosperity and their Social Zones of Transit’. This research group wants to understand the rise and transformation of certain places in Africa that have become areas of transit for people who were or are in search of better socio-economic prospects. For this book, we had to make a choice: a lot has been written about migration from Africa to Europe or the West; thus we decided to focus on South-South migration, particularly migration between developing countries within Africa.’

What are ‘zones of transit’?
‘In the past as well as today, when people travel long distances from home to a destination that is expected to put them on the road to prosperity, many get stuck halfway, voluntarily or not. These places become zones of transit, with a particular social-economic life of their own. Some of the migrants intermarry with the locals, they decide to start a business and raise a family, and settle there. Hence, the places are not zones of ‘transit’ any more, but have become places of transference, from one social ladder to the other. Sometimes, one could say that intra-regional diasporas develop.’

Can you give an example about this type of migration from Nigeria, the country you are from yourself? 
‘For the last 150 years, it was mainly the Yoruba from Southwest Nigeria that travelled to Ghana. Under the British colonial administration, Nigerian labour force was used to build railways from the coast to the Ghana’s hinterland. These labourers were even specially taxed by the colonial administration. Some of the rail construction workers got wind of gold availability in Ghana; sent feedbacks to family and friends in Nigeria, who expressed interest in laying hands on the gold, as a third generation descendant recalled during in-depth interview in Ghana. In order to avoid the special tax levied on those going to Ghana to work on rail lines, many Yoruba started to travel to Ghana on their own, through the north. On arrival in northern Ghana, two transit settlements developed and opportunities for petty trade and eventually prospered with the establishment of medium size enterprises.
Fast-forwarding to contemporary times, the Ibo from Southeast Nigeria are now the ones travelling to Ghana. They are long distance traders and have found new trading space in Ghana. Social acceptance is tricky, but the trading goes well. Some marry a local and construct a Ghanaian identity, for example by changing their name a little bit so that it sounds more Ghanaian.’

Would you say migration within Africa is happening now more than in the past?
‘Movement of people has always been there, no matter what background people had: traders, pastoralists, agriculturalists. It has often been motivated by environmental conditions, and it became bigger with the process of massive labour migration engendered by colonial rule from 1870 onwards. Jan Bart Gewald, for example, looks at the melting pot in the far North-Eastern corner of Namibia, at the tip of Caprivi, where the frontiers of Zambia, Zimbabwe, Botswana and Namibia come together. Here, from 1936 until the 1960s, the Witwatersrand Native Labour Association (WENELA) recruited migrants from Southern African countries to work in the mines in South Africa, where they could earn comparative wealth. But not all miners went home after their contract work. Some chose to stay in Katima Mulilo, the administrative centre of Caprivi, because of personal motivations or because of the wars of liberation in Southern Africa that changed their walk of life. They are now old men who have raised a family there. They work in the market or have other small jobs. Other men started to live in the new urban centres at the frontiers of the South African empire. Those areas have become melting pots of many African nationalities.’

Does geographical mobility indeed lead to upward social mobility?
‘Rijk van Dijk describes the migration of Ghanaians to Botswana. He takes the example of a Ghanaian hair salon owner who moves to Botswana, looking for a brighter future. The hairdresser falls in love with a local woman and eventually, through the marriage, he moves into a higher socio-economic status, most likely higher than he could have achieved by staying in West Africa. Not that the process is easy, think of getting to know all the steps within the marital process in Botswana (of which he as a Ghanaian had little knowledge) and other adaptations he had to make in order to be accepted in the new area. Think of the question of what nationality their children should get. But this all shows that upward mobility is definitely possible.’

Fenneken Veldkamp

African Roads to Prosperity: People en Route to Socio-Cultural and Economic Transformations is the latest issue in the African Dynamics Series, the annual publication series of the African Studies Centre Leiden published by Brill. Each year, a different theme is discussed from various perspectives by scholars from all over the world. This latest volume was edited by ASCL researchers Akinyinka Akinyoade and Jan-Bart Gewald, and many ASCL researchers and Community members contributed to it. Order the book.