Poet Ras Takura is currently in Ghana, Africa, as Jamaica’s sole participant in the 25th annual staging of Panafest, the Pan African historical theatre festival.

The event which commenced last Saturday and will run until August 3 myriad events covering the full spectrum of cultural expression including dance, film, music, theatre, as well as lectures and other presentations have been planned. Ras Takura is set to perform on July 31 at the Reverential Night and Declaration of Emancipation to be held at the Cape Coast Castle — one of about 40 large forts, built on the Gold Coast of West Africa by Europeans. They were later used as holding areas during the height of the trade in enslaved Africans.

This is Ras Takura’s first trip to Africa and he noted that it is more a case of Panafest choosing him rather than him choosing Panafest as his opportunity to make his maiden visit to the African continent.

“I always wanted to go and it just happens that this opportunity has presented itself at this time. I am scheduled to perform on the programme and I don’t know of any other Jamaican artiste performing at Panafest this year. It is important for me to go there and share my experience and speak to my people…so this is my return. I’m looking forward to feeling that vibration and that energy and also learning more about Africa from the people…just physically being in the space and generally meeting and interacting with the people including those who have never been on this side of the world and the potential for collaboration. I have been doing some work with some poets out of Ghana, so during this visit we have work to continue, and this might even include the shooting of a video for one of the collaborations,” he told the Jamaica Observer.

This year is being celebrated in Ghana as the Year of Return. Historically, Ghana is the location from where it is said that the majority of the Africans who ended up in Jamaica were shipped. It is also documented that those Africans walked the the Gate of No Return — the exit point from which they boarded the vessels to be shipped to the West as part of the transatlantic trade in enslaved Africans. So according to Ras Takura the cycle is being reversed. He noted that this is why the president of Ghana Nana Akufo-Addo visited Jamaica a few weeks ago and announced the removal of the visa requirement for Jamaicans and some other countries in the diaspora.

Culture aside, Ras Takura will also be using his first trip to Africa to promote and share ideas on his other passion which is food security.

“One of the things I am taking to my people in Africa is something that I have been doing here, which is the teachings and message of food security. We note that we are in the middle of the global food crisis and the thing about it is that Africa is the land that has the most seeds, and I am interested in the preservation of the natural heirloom seeds and the practice of the exchange of these seeds. That is why I do the Dis Poem Wordz and Agro Festival in Portland and invite the farmers to bring their natural seed and participate in seeds exchange. So if I take this message to the source, to the farmers in Africa then it will actually be a stronger message against GMOs ( genetically modified organisms) coming from the source.”