Recently, the following question was posed in a WhatsApp chat group: “Do Caribbean people see themselves as African?”

Let us drill down on it a bit. We are Caribbean people. Which by definition means many/most of us are from the region because untold numbers of our ancestors were forcibly taken from the west coast of Africa over the course of 400 years by the European nations of Britain, France, Denmark, Spain, the Netherlands and Portugal.

This was to feed an endless supply of free labour for their plantations in the Caribbean region between the years of 1500 and 1900.

There is no doubt that when many of us do DNA tests, there will be an overwhelming percentage of results from countries such as Nigeria, Ghana, Senegal, Ivory Coast, Angola and Benin. This is not to discount that many of us have varying percentages of Indigenous, European or Asian blood as well. Indeed, many in the Caribbean region have no traceable African DNA.

Unfortunately, because of 400 to 500 years of colonialism, racism, classism and colourism, far too many of us who do have African DNA reject that we are African.

Likewise, many from the continent do not accept us as African.

“Africa for Africans at home and abroad”— Marcus Garvey

Africa’s total population is more than one billion and growing. The total Caribbean population is less than 40 million and shrinking.

Africa has every raw product/fresh food conceivable to mankind. However, because of global economics and trade routes, Caribbean governments, private-sector entities and individuals can purchase finished products from only China, North America and the European Union. As we have seen recently, we are subject to ever-increasing prices for those goods.

So, the only people really benefiting financially from the continued division are the same folks who divided us 500 years ago. This was/is all by design. Governmental organisations such as Caricom and the African Union are only now starting to attempt to bridge those tourism, cultural and trade gaps. Ask ourselves these questions:

Why can’t we have ships of fresh food and goods sailing from Africa to the Caribbean?

Why must we depend primarily on tourists from North America and Europe?

It will be a very long journey for us in the Caribbean to fully accept whence we came — and, equally, for those in Africa to acknowledge that we are indeed the children of the millions taken from their homes hundreds of years ago.

However, we must start somewhere.

Let us remember the prophetic words of the Honourable Robert Nesta “Bob” Marley:

“How good and how pleasant it would be before God and man

“Yeah, to see the unification of all Africans.”

• Christopher Famous is a government backbencher and the MP for Devonshire East (Constituency 11)