Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Multiculturalism
West Africans know a thing or two about living side by side with people from different cul-
tures. For a start, West Africa as you see it today is the result of centuries of population
shifts and mass migrations that have created a patchwork of diverse but largely cohabiting
cultures. After the colonial period and independence, most groups found themselves being
asked to share a new national identity with other cultures that were, in some cases, wholly
different from their own. Later, widespread urbanisation produced polyglot West African
cities that are among the most multicultural on earth. And then there are the twin issues of
immigration and emigration - millions of West Africans live in Europe and elsewhere, cre-
ating new levels of multiculturalism in the Western countries they now inhabit.
Gogo Mama: A Journey into the Lives of Twelve African Women,
by Sally Sara, includes illuminating chapters on a
Liberian former child soldier, a Ghanaian former slave and a Malian midwife.
The movement of people in search of opportunity within West Africa is less widely re-
ported in the international media, but it operates on a much larger scale than emigration to
Europe. Côte d'Ivoire's one-time economic miracle drew immigrants from across the re-
gion, providing much-needed labour for a booming economy and a livelihood for millions
of citizens of neighbouring countries. However, after political instability began in 2000, the
economy slumped and the country descended into a conflict that exposed the thin veneer of
tolerance with which many Ivorians viewed the immigrants.
