African Traditional Religion and Trans-Saharan Migration from Ghana

What is it about?

This paper interrogates an unexamined component of the religion-migration nexus in Ghana. Using Traditional African Religion as a case in point, the paper examines the function shrines play in sustaining youth migration to Libya and across the Mediterranean to Europe. This paper relies on interviews and fieldtrips to some shrines to give an account of the daily realities of prospective migrants, returnees and their families. Among other key findings, we report that there is an intricate connexion between migrant youth, the family system and the deities of the Nkoranza area of the Bono East region of central Ghana. The trans-Saharan youth migration, we observe, has become a livelihood strategy, the perpetuation of which reassures the survival of not only the people, but their gods as well.

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