{"id":20304,"date":"2025-05-27T15:31:21","date_gmt":"2025-05-27T19:31:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/africanstudies\/?p=20304"},"modified":"2026-09-08T16:53:13","modified_gmt":"2026-09-08T20:53:13","slug":"voices-of-the-african-diaspora-building-the-africa-we-want","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/africanstudies\/2025\/voices-of-the-african-diaspora-building-the-africa-we-want\/","title":{"rendered":"Voices of the African Diaspora: Building the Africa We Want"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<section class=\"w-screen px-6 cu-section cu-section--white ml-offset-center md:px-8 lg:px-14\">\n    <div class=\"space-y-6 cu-max-w-child-5xl  md:space-y-10 cu-prose-first-last\">\n\n            <div class=\"cu-textmedia flex flex-col lg:flex-row mx-auto gap-6 md:gap-10 my-6 md:my-12 first:mt-0 max-w-5xl\">\n        <div class=\"justify-start cu-textmedia-content cu-prose-first-last\" style=\"flex: 0 0 100%;\">\n            <header class=\"font-light prose-xl cu-pageheader md:prose-2xl cu-component-updated cu-prose-first-last\">\n                                    <h1 class=\"cu-prose-first-last font-semibold !mt-2 mb-4 md:mb-6 relative after:absolute after:h-px after:bottom-0 after:bg-cu-red after:left-px text-3xl md:text-4xl lg:text-5xl lg:leading-[3.5rem] pb-5 after:w-10 text-cu-black-700 not-prose\">\n                        Voices of the African Diaspora: Building the Africa We Want\n                    <\/h1>\n                \n                                \n                            <\/header>\n\n                    <\/div>\n\n            <\/div>\n\n    <\/div>\n<\/section>\n\n<p class=\"ember-view reader-text-block__paragraph wp-block-paragraph\">I remember the red soil of Tamale, my hometown in Ghana and our elders\u2019 stories of past kingdoms. Years later, I stood on Carleton University\u2019s campus in Ottawa, a humble student carrying those African dreams. In the cold Canadian winter, as I studied Economics far from home, I realized that being African in Canada means carrying two worlds at once. In that dual identity \u2014 African by birth, Canadian by choice \u2014 I learned our diaspora is a powerful force.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"ember-view reader-text-block__paragraph wp-block-paragraph\">We are part of a global family of over 200 million strong, each of us a storyteller, a mentor, an entrepreneur. In Ottawa and across Canada, Afro-Canadian communities gather at churches, mosques, cultural clubs and startup incubators to uplift youth and share skills. We plant the seeds of capacity building: coding camps taught by diaspora engineers, business networks connecting Accra and Toronto, and mentorship circles nurturing young leaders. We know that an African in Ottawa shares the same hopes as one in Nairobi, as we work toward the same goal of lifting our people. <a href=\"https:\/\/www.linkedin.com\/pulse\/voices-african-diaspora-building-africa-we-want-sumaila-gariba-3kmue\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Read More<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Written by: Sumaila Gariba<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I remember the red soil of Tamale, my hometown in Ghana and our elders\u2019 stories of past kingdoms. Years later, I stood on Carleton University\u2019s campus in Ottawa, a humble student carrying those African dreams. In the cold Canadian winter, as I studied Economics far from home, I realized that being African in Canada means [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-20304","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"acf":{"cu_post_thumbnail":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/africanstudies\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20304","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/africanstudies\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/africanstudies\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/africanstudies\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/africanstudies\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20304"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/africanstudies\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20304\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20308,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/africanstudies\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20304\/revisions\/20308"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/africanstudies\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20304"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/africanstudies\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20304"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/africanstudies\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20304"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}