It was President John Dramani Mahama’s first state visit to Jamaica. For many of us on his delegation, it was our first time too.
On this historic visit, both countries agreed to establish a direct flight connecting our peoples and, on a broader scale, to connect Africa to the Caribbean by air. Not only by air, but by sea as well, as both nations agreed to link their ports.
These are tangible, forward-looking commitments and concrete agreements, signed and sealed.
Despite three transits on a long-haul flight through the United States of America, we needed no visa to set foot in Jamaica. That, right there, is a broken barrier.
Distance should never stand between Africa and her diaspora. By air or by sea, the gap must be bridged.
A deeper connection
Before the official engagements, bilateral meetings and state courtesies, Kingston had something profound waiting for us.
Our visit offered a glimpse of something deeper: a spiritual connection that history, geography and politics could never outdo.
About twenty metres across from our hotel stood two towering, unmissable statues — Redemption Song. A man and a woman, naked, dark-skinned, their faces lifted to the sky.
It was impossible to walk past without pausing.
The figures embody the triumph of the human spirit over slavery, gazing upward as a symbol of hope, freedom, dignity and rebirth after emancipation.
As Bob Marley once sang, “None but ourselves can free our minds.”
I later learned that when the statues were unveiled on July 31, 2003, marking the 165th anniversary of emancipation, they stirred grave controversy. Created by Jamaican sculptor Laura Facey, the statues divided opinion.
But over time, Redemption Song grew into an iconic landmark at the heart of Kingston.
Curiosity, they say, killed the cat. In my case, it led me to Nanny.
Nanny of the Maroons
Of the seven busts of heroes standing in Emancipation Park, only one belongs to a woman.
Nanny.
Nanny of the Maroons (circa 1686–circa 1750), revered as the “Queen Mother”, is believed to have been born in West Africa of Asante origin before being taken into slavery and brought to Jamaica.
She rose to become a formidable military leader of the Maroons — Africans who had escaped bondage and carved out their own communities in the rugged hills of eastern Jamaica.
The Maroons stood defiantly against slavery, becoming a fighting force for freedom.
Between 1720 and 1739, Nanny led them through fierce guerrilla warfare against the British.
Reading her story on that plaque, I couldn’t help but think of the great Yaa Asantewaa, warrior-queen of the Asante Kingdom. But let’s stay with Nanny for now.
A peace treaty in 1739 finally brought the conflict to an end. Under its terms, the British legally granted the Maroons land in exchange for a bitter compromise: the Maroons would no longer shelter new escapees and would instead help recapture them for bounty.
Still, Nanny’s legacy endures.
She kept the flame of freedom alive among her people, safeguarded African legends and nurtured the survival of African customs, music and song.
In 1975, she was posthumously honoured with the Order of National Hero for her role as a freedom fighter against slavery.
Today, her statue stands shoulder to shoulder with giants such as Marcus Garvey, who gave his life to the cause of Black liberation from colonial rule.
Reading her story at Emancipation Park gave me goosebumps.
I could instantly picture the haunting corridors of Cape Coast Castle and Fort Prinzenstein in Keta and feel the thread connecting them to the harrowing struggle our ancestors endured across the Atlantic in Jamaica.
Too often, when the story of slavery and reparations is told, women are written out of it.
Yet were it not for Nanny’s fierce courage, the chains might have held far longer.
There has never been a better moment to see a reparations resolution through than now.
The Ghana-led UN Resolution A/RES/80/250 will forever stand as a defining moment of reckoning in the history of diplomacy — the moment 123 nations chose to stand on the right side of history, while many more have reconciled to make amends.
A shared history
Jamaicans, like their Caribbean neighbours and people of African descent, carry the wounds of a shared past — visible scars that bear grim witness to the atrocities of transatlantic enslavement.
That shared history is precisely why Ghana’s pursuit of reparatory justice may not have moved forward without the voice and support of CARICOM and the wider African diaspora.
Perhaps this is why President Mahama’s state visit mattered far beyond the usual choreography of diplomacy.
As a journalist and now the Media Relations Officer at Ghana’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, it became clear to me why the President felt this state visit was essential: to express gratitude, reconnect our roots and strengthen that bond ahead of the 81st United Nations General Assembly in September 2026.
But sometimes the deepest diplomacy happens far from the banquet table — through music, dance, dress and food.
President Mahama struck exactly that chord when he sat down and played the nyabinghi bass drum with Jamaican Rastafarians.
In that single act, he communicated something words rarely can, reaching back to the ancestral foundation that binds Ghana and Jamaica as one people, one history.
His time with the Rastafarian community became one of those rare moments where cultural diplomacy travelled further on the wings of social media than any ocean could separate us.
Watching him lose himself in the rhythm, I leaned over and whispered, half-joking: “Give him one roll.”
He turned, laughed and shot back: “Huh?”
I still smile thinking about it.
By the time he had finished entertaining himself and everyone around him, I was watching a president reunited with kinsmen he never knew he had lost.
The laughter that followed said more than any polished communiqué ever could.
It was one of the finest state visits I’ve witnessed him make.
We felt at home.
We laughed. We shook hands, embraced and exchanged stories with our brothers and sisters — Jamaicans.
It felt less like a state visit and more like a family reunion.
Because, truthfully, it was.
The faces of Jamaicans and Ghanaians — of Africans everywhere — carry an unmistakable resemblance. We don’t just look alike; even the air, the warmth and the rhythm of the place felt like home.
For a moment, Kingston was Accra.
Diplomacy must be felt
Diplomacy is more than handshakes, wine glasses and pressed suits.
It must be lived in every corner of life — and, above all, it must touch people’s real aspirations.
A state visit brings its share of pageantry, but once the ceremony fades, one question remains: what next?
Too often, heads of state visit or host one another with little lasting impact. Residents near the seat of government may glimpse only a passing convoy, never learning who rode inside or why it mattered.
But nearly every visit undertaken by Ghana’s President has carried global weight, a reflection of his role as the African Union’s Champion of the Reparations Agenda.
His visit to Zambia proved this, drawing the two nations as close as neighbouring cities. Even his traditional fugu attire sparked conversation, proof that something as simple as clothing can become a diplomatic statement in its own right.
Beyond the head-of-state meetings and parliamentary sessions, though, nothing captured attention quite like the moment he sat with a Rastafarian group and played the nyabinghi drum.
That moment wasn’t on any itinerary.
No suits. No ties. No long speeches.
Just people, music, laughter and a shared sense of belonging.
Perhaps that is the whole point.
Diplomacy cannot stay abstract.
It must connect. It must be felt. It must leave something behind.
Reclaiming what was taken
Our resolve to reclaim what was taken — the cultural artefacts stolen from Africa — remains unshaken.
On that front, Germany and the Netherlands deserve credit for their good faith at the Next Steps Conference in June 2026, where a catalogue of extensive provenance research on four objects from Kpando in Ghana’s Volta Region — two war drums and two war horns — was formally presented to the President of Ghana.
This is where I pause to commend the stellar contribution and leadership of Ghana’s Minister for Foreign Affairs, Samuel Okudzeto Ablakwa, for his tremendous role in galvanising support and rallying the world behind President John Dramani Mahama and the African Union for the adoption of the landmark United Nations Resolution A/RES/80/250, declaring the trafficking of enslaved Africans and racialised chattel enslavement of Africans as the “Gravest Crime Against Humanity.”
Jamaica and Ghana have also resolved to bring the Caribbean into the fold of the African Union, as President Mahama prepares to chair the AU in 2027.
While in Kingston, President Mahama named two moments as highlights of his visit: touring the Bob Marley Museum and the warm welcome from the Rastafarian community during the wreath-laying at Marcus Garvey’s grave.
It might all seem intangible.
But it is priceless, cherished, remembered and spoken of for years to come.
And perhaps that is where true diplomacy begins: not necessarily in what gets signed, but in the human connections forged along the way.
This is how Ghana reconnected its roots to Jamaica in a shared pursuit to reunite and heal, bound by one common purpose: reparations and restitution, in honour of Nanny and all our ancestors.
