This week, Adrian speaks to Michael Ekow Richardson, a British-Ghanaian, Husband and Father, and also the Co-Founder of Destination Africa, an online and in-person community dedicated to empowering and inspiring the next generation of Africans and more.
With a background as a software engineer and professional basketball, Michael decided once he became a father to apply his passions to inspiring and empowering the next generation of young leaders. These days, Michael uses his IT skills as the technological mind behind all things Destination Africa and on the odd occasion, you’ll find him coaching on the basketball court.
Show Notes: https://www.thesoundofaccra.com/destinationafrica
Watch on YouTube: https://youtu.be/4Swt1aO4EZs
Check out Swiff: https://bit.ly/SwiffSOA
Download Menufinder Africa App: https://www.menufinderafrica.com/
Connect with Michael and Destination Africa:
Website: https://www.thedestinationafrica.com/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/destafricagrp/
Linktree: https://linktr.ee/destafricagrp
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@DestinationAfricaGroupTV
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Timestamps:
0:00 Intro
0:55 Icebreaker
2:30 What is Destination Africa
4:00 Afroparenting
6:00 Learning fluent Twi and Portuguese
8:14 Passing on Twi to kids
12:00 Will Twi become Extinct
14:00 Moving to Ghana during Year of Return
15:10 Why destination Africa
16:40 Investing in kids and relocating to Africa
19:30 Why Ghana needs Destination Africa
20:50 Loving where you are from and who you are
22:20 Jellof rice Challenge
25:50 Business Model
26:45 Who Destination Africa is for
27:20 Destination Africa Academy
29:30 Modules
30:00 Building the next global Africa
31:00 Sankofa
33:00 Speaking Twi
37:00 2023 plans
38:25 Tips for African Parents
40:00 Announcements, Outro and links
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00:00:00
Hey, everyone. Welcome to the Sound of Accra podcast. I go by the name of
00:00:03
Adrian Daniels. If this is your first time listening, this is the show
00:00:07
where we speak with top Ghanaian founders, entrepreneurs, and creators worldwide
00:00:11
with the aim of leaving you behind with meaningful takeaways that you can apply
00:00:15
in your life, business, and career. Just before we get into
00:00:18
today's episode, I would like you to know that you can head over to
00:00:21
thesoundofaccra.com/destinationafrica
00:00:25
for all of today's links, references, nuggets, and wisdom. So
00:00:28
head over to the sound of accra dot com slash destination Africa. All
00:00:32
right. It'll also be in the description below whether you're listening in the podcast platforms
00:00:36
on YouTube, please, like subscribe share whilst you're
00:00:40
here. And if you listen to Spotify or Apple podcasts, five star reviews.
00:00:44
Very much appreciated. So today I'm joined with one
00:00:48
of the co founders of destination Africa, Michael Ekow
00:00:51
Richardson. Welcome to the show. Hey. It's a
00:00:55
pleasure being here. Yeah, it's been great. I think
00:00:59
over the past few weeks, you've developed a quick relationship, and I feel
00:01:02
like we connect because we share similar values. And, of course,
00:01:06
you're British Ghanaian and I'm British Ghanaian. And I feel like, of course,
00:01:10
once you have that connection, you can hit the ground again. So
00:01:15
once again, Michael is one of the co founders, along with his
00:01:19
partner Abena. They're the co founders of destination Africa.
00:01:22
So it's an Afro parenting platform, and they're
00:01:26
involved in building the learners of tomorrow. Is that correct? Yes, that's it.
00:01:29
Yeah. So while we're on that topic, could you just give us a quick
00:01:33
elevator, actually, before we get into that? We actually met through
00:01:37
social media. You reached out nicely.
00:01:40
I appreciate that. And then, of course, we had a meme
00:01:44
of me, you, Abena. We had, like, a little brief meeting, and then you
00:01:48
came down to our third anniversary on Monday, which I'm really grateful for.
00:01:52
So thanks for coming down, I'm sure,
00:01:55
and three years in and I'm sure many years to come. I
00:01:59
appreciate all medase. I'm trying to learn the tree, but
00:02:03
we'll get into that because they have a tree program. So you're going to learn
00:02:06
more about how you can get your hands in that and what to expect. So
00:02:08
yeah. So we're going to get into Destination Africa.
00:02:12
Could you just give the audience mike, I don't think everyone knows. I
00:02:16
know. Quite. People have heard about what you do. I've got friends that know about
00:02:19
what you do, which is great. Could you just give them a quick 60
00:02:22
second elevator pitch in terms of what Destination Africa
00:02:26
is and what you guys do? Okay. So Destination Africa is
00:02:29
a platform which we've created to assist or
00:02:33
build the learners of today to become the leaders of tomorrow. We
00:02:36
found in our communities, especially the Afro community, that
00:02:40
we sometimes haven't been intentional on certain
00:02:44
areas about raising our children. And we have to create platforms
00:02:47
in order to leapfrog where we currently are to where we want
00:02:51
our children to be. So Destination Africa is a platform to encourage parents
00:02:55
on their parenting journey and also for children to instill
00:02:59
some of the things which are essential to who they are in order for
00:03:03
them to be and live out their potential. That sounds powerful. It's
00:03:06
like you've got that USB nail on the head. It's like I
00:03:10
can tell you've been working on it, working it until you've got it razor sharp.
00:03:13
It's been a life journey. It's been a life journey.
00:03:16
And it's one of the things when it's your passion, when you want
00:03:20
to inspire, when you see some of the issues. I don't
00:03:24
want to sit there and complain about it as sometimes our parents did, just complained
00:03:27
about the issues. We want to be part of the solution. So yeah, it's
00:03:31
something not a day goes by about us thinking about it. Yeah, well,
00:03:35
that's really amazing. I feel like you have this burning desire
00:03:38
and this passion to go on this mission
00:03:42
of Afro parenting. Parenting, which is fantastic. On the
00:03:46
topic of Afro parenting parenting, before we get into how it
00:03:50
came into be, could you break down the difference of what Afro some
00:03:53
people probably don't know what Afro parenting is. For me, it's not really a term
00:03:57
I'm familiar with. Could you break down what Afro parenting is compared to normal parenting?
00:04:00
I think I've got an idea, but I'll hear from you. Okay, so anyone, whether
00:04:04
you're white, Asian, South American,
00:04:08
everyone has to go on that parenting journey. And there are certain things
00:04:12
in that space which are universal, but then there are also things which
00:04:16
are specific to those of an Afro orientation. I
00:04:19
always say you can
00:04:23
go and pick up and read a blog from any old parent and sometimes
00:04:27
it's good and it makes sense. But then there's certain things which are specific to
00:04:30
where we came from, to our situation. We have UK
00:04:34
connection and things that happened in the UK. Only the
00:04:38
UK people would understand. Things that happened in the US. Which us
00:04:41
people understand. But there's something that both of us can connect
00:04:45
with on a black, on an Afro level. And it's sometimes good to
00:04:49
have those platforms to say, you know what? These are things specific to our
00:04:53
culture. These are things the way we interact as family and
00:04:56
having that space where it's geared towards that
00:05:00
and to give people who aren't from that perspective an idea of some of
00:05:04
the things that we get into. So that's what we coined the term Afro
00:05:08
parenting. Okay, I understand. That makes a lot of sense. I
00:05:11
think it's why I thought it would be of course
00:05:16
I thought it was going to be something that was only personal to the
00:05:19
Afro or Caribbean society or
00:05:23
community. You understand again, the Chinese have their own thing,
00:05:27
the Asians, whatever, they got their own thing. French have their own thing. So
00:05:31
that makes perfect sense. What are some characteristics of
00:05:34
our parents? Like maybe how you do your hair and how
00:05:38
you kind of raise your kids, how you handle your kids and the misbehavior. Exactly.
00:05:42
Of course our culture is more kind of like more kind
00:05:46
of tied to maybe spanking our kids rather than maybe like what's
00:05:50
the word? I'm looking for a Caucasian, someone from a
00:05:54
Caucasian background. They're probably not less likely to do that. I think it's probably stuff
00:05:57
like that. It's the food, it's the culture. Some of the
00:06:01
things which we sometimes take for granted, it's some of the things that
00:06:05
we should focus on. I remember when I was younger, I had a good friend
00:06:08
who was Portuguese and his parents, for them,
00:06:12
it wasn't a thing about teaching them Portuguese, portuguese, wherever you could
00:06:16
speak English, you know how to speak Portuguese. And that was their
00:06:20
focus and that was where pride and culture came through,
00:06:24
where from an Afro parenting perspective, there are many
00:06:27
Africans or those from the African diaspora who don't
00:06:31
see that as that important, or it'll be nice to have, but they
00:06:35
don't deem it as essential. They're more tied to the Portuguese culture. And
00:06:38
I've seen that because I was there, it's been like almost two weeks there in
00:06:42
November. And I saw that because there's a lot of black people in Portugal and
00:06:45
of course they're from Africa. Right. But you don't really see them. I
00:06:49
think maybe apart from what they wear sometimes you don't really see them representing Africa.
00:06:52
They're very much Portuguese, they're embedded
00:06:56
and tied to the culture. Whereas with us, we have dual identities. We
00:07:00
British and then also Ghanaian. Understand? So
00:07:04
we have the best of both worlds and we know how to kind of get
00:07:06
the best out of both worlds. Yeah, exactly. It's a fantastic one. So
00:07:10
basically let's go into how destination Africa
00:07:13
came to be. So of course you said this kind of started off in the
00:07:17
UK. And then because you saw challenges and
00:07:20
problems and you felt like this would be a
00:07:24
great way to kind of tackle that. Could you go more into that? Okay, so
00:07:27
the journey is a very long one. I don't
00:07:31
know how far back I should go, but I'll start maybe just maybe just kind
00:07:34
of like summarize it for us. I
00:07:38
met Abena in the early two thousand s. And
00:07:41
one thing about her was even though she
00:07:45
lived most of her life in the UK, she always spoke to her mum in
00:07:49
tree. So her tree was on point. Wow, it's better than yours.
00:07:53
Serious. And you wouldn't think
00:07:56
that when you talk to you wouldn't think that. But there's people because I don't
00:07:59
meet a lot of Ghanaians that are flowing in tree. It's hard for me when
00:08:02
I meet someone that's growing Ghanaian tree, so I get excited. Yeah, I
00:08:06
got excited from there. I remember when we were speaking, I
00:08:10
was like, you know what? It's important that we pass this on to the children,
00:08:13
because for me, I can see the void. Around
00:08:17
the time when I met Abena, I couldn't speak. I
00:08:20
could speak fancy a little bit. I knew housewives. If it came to like, go
00:08:24
and tidy your room, go and cook some rice, sweep the floor, I
00:08:27
can understand housewives, but when it came to full conversation proverbs idioms,
00:08:31
I was lost. So, yeah, we
00:08:35
spoke about and I said, you know, when the children are born, we need to
00:08:38
make sure they can speak our language. Because of that,
00:08:42
I felt a bit of a cultural disconnect growing up, and I didn't want them
00:08:45
to have that. I didn't want them to feel part British. Well, part British,
00:08:49
but not really British, because you have a history, you have a
00:08:53
culture, and your parents came to the UK and not to
00:08:57
be on the other side where you go to Ghana and people say, oh, Bruni,
00:09:00
or you're a foreigner and just be somewhere in
00:09:04
the middle. I wanted them to feel like you are fully Ghanaian and
00:09:07
don't be confused about it. I love that. When the children are
00:09:11
born, we just said the first thing we're going to do was to make
00:09:15
Tree the language of the house. So in order for that to happen, I knew
00:09:18
I had to step up my tree game. So I was studying and really trying
00:09:22
to get it to that next level. So in the house, we would sing
00:09:25
nursery rhymes, we would read to him, tell him
00:09:29
stories or some books we had in English. And as we were reading the bedtime
00:09:33
stories, we were translating in our heads in tree so that
00:09:36
you can understand giving him actions and so on. Fast forward
00:09:40
a few years that they could speak Tree. They could read it and they
00:09:44
could write it, and people were like, how did you manage to do it living
00:09:47
in the UK? And at that time, they'd never been to Ghana. And I
00:09:50
remember one time my mom took a Saddam a bus, and one
00:09:54
of the ladies heard him speak in Tree, and she turned around, said, oh, when
00:09:57
did he come from Ghana? And my mom was like, she's never been to Ghana.
00:10:01
And were so surprised. And through that, some of our friends were
00:10:05
like, you know, it would be great if you guys could help us tell know,
00:10:08
how did you guys do it? So that's where destination Africa started.
00:10:12
It came from a place, know, we wanted to share with
00:10:16
the community and say, you know what? If you want to teach your children tree,
00:10:18
it's a great platform. And not only that, some of the other things we
00:10:22
were incorporating to sort of build up his self esteem, his identity in
00:10:25
who he was, through learning African flags, through learning about
00:10:29
culture, through storytelling and through presentation skills, all these
00:10:33
things we brought it together, and then destination Africa was
00:10:36
born. That's powerful, man. That's powerful. So it just seems that
00:10:40
just from the communities that you plugged into and the people that you're surrounded by,
00:10:44
this just kind of was birthed through natural demand,
00:10:47
and people seeing you and Abbot are doing what you're doing on
00:10:51
the day to exactly. Exactly. And it really led
00:10:54
to that sense of being really purposeful about what we're doing. I always
00:10:58
say to people, especially with children, have a plan. Have
00:11:02
a plan. It sounds silly, but have a plan. Because what tends
00:11:06
to happen is people have this mindset, like, okay, you know what? When my
00:11:09
children get old enough, we'll go to Ghana, we'll go to Nigeria, they'll spend six
00:11:13
weeks in the village, and then they're going to speak pure Yoruba, pure
00:11:17
Chi, pure Intima, and then come back and they're going to be fluent.
00:11:21
And the reality is, it doesn't work that joy. So
00:11:25
you can have a kid in a country and raise them there, and they wouldn't
00:11:28
be fluent unless you speak it to them. I mean, it happens here.
00:11:32
Even in Ghana, you get lots of families where they're so hell
00:11:36
bent on pushing them to speak English that
00:11:39
they're forgetting to teach them their language of their mother tongue. And
00:11:43
children are being disconnected. And I'm saying
00:11:47
there's nothing worse than living in Ghana. Someone comes from another country
00:11:51
and they're teaching you your mother perspective. It's
00:11:56
not a place you want to be in. It's crazy. There's this ongoing
00:11:59
debate, Michael, about whether or not trees can be extinct in
00:12:03
the newer generations. What's your thoughts on that? My thoughts
00:12:07
are it's down
00:12:10
to us. It's down to us. I think if we
00:12:15
sit there and do nothing, if we have an apathetic
00:12:19
mindset about it, it will get extinct, and then
00:12:23
that would be no one's fault to blame but ourselves. And if it
00:12:27
does, what else do we lose? Some people say it's just a language, it doesn't
00:12:31
matter. Other languages are dying out. But the question is,
00:12:34
what are you losing with that language? What culture, what history, what heritage,
00:12:38
what art, what law? When you speak
00:12:42
another language and someone translates it, sometimes you lose
00:12:46
the meaning of it true. And it's about once you
00:12:49
understand the full meaning of what the words are actually saying, it automatically
00:12:54
gives you a different paradigm shift as to what is
00:12:57
happening in this language. How do the people think so? It
00:13:01
would only be devastating. I
00:13:04
say people come to Ghana other than the partying at
00:13:08
Christmas for the culture, for the heritage, for the
00:13:11
history of what happened. Now, if we're bending
00:13:15
over backwards to not speak our language, to not show
00:13:19
them our culture and our history, why would they come to Ghana? It's like
00:13:23
you're losing identity. You're losing very good point. We're just bringing the west here.
00:13:27
West is already there. Why do we need to bring the west here. Yeah, exactly.
00:13:30
That's another danger as well. So it's sad. I mean, it's great Ghana's
00:13:34
on the map more, but it's sad that we're not really taking
00:13:37
advantage of what Ghana is all about and our culture and
00:13:41
stuff. I mean, there's bits of it, but shadows of it. I don't think it's
00:13:44
enough. Exactly. I don't think we're doing enough. Yeah, I think you're doing enough.
00:13:48
Okay. And I think for you, of course, you kind
00:13:52
of worked on Destination Africa, you and Abena from the UK, and
00:13:55
then, of course, when did you move? When did you move to Ghana? So we
00:13:59
moved to Ghana in 2019. 2019? Okay, cool. That year it's
00:14:03
just a pivotal year for a lot of people. It's a
00:14:06
year a lot of people moved and a lot of things happened. The year returned,
00:14:09
of course, and then you guys wanted to
00:14:13
kind of launch it within Ghana as well. Was that the plan or just happens?
00:14:16
So it was always the plan. Once we decided we wanted to move, a few
00:14:20
years before, we were just putting things in place, planning just
00:14:23
strategizing and then COVID, and
00:14:27
everything else happened. And it happened quicker than to a certain
00:14:31
extent than we planned for, but sometimes you have to roll with a punch. So
00:14:34
since we've been in Ghana, we've had multiple
00:14:37
terms, multiple classes. We ran
00:14:41
classes at the Lagon Botanical Gardens. We've done
00:14:45
some online. So we had the UK Destination Africa
00:14:49
family joining online, learning to cook jalof. I
00:14:52
love that. Chichikule. It's been
00:14:55
a lot of fun so far. We sort of were merging the
00:14:59
face to face classes with the online ones. And now we get to that place
00:15:03
where we're about to release our academy shortly. Yeah, we'll get back
00:15:07
to that. We're definitely going to talk about that. Why Destination Africa if
00:15:11
there's a lot of focus around Ghana? So Destination
00:15:14
Africa is I always say it's
00:15:18
part of who you are. It starts from where you are. So in the UK,
00:15:21
one of the first things we did was to teach Chi, because that was the
00:15:25
language we knew. But even though we were in the
00:15:29
UK, it wasn't solely a focus on Ghana, it was a
00:15:32
focus on Africa, or we would have called it Destination Ghana. So when
00:15:36
people came, it wasn't just Ghanaians. We had non Ghanaians coming as
00:15:40
well. Yes, we had Nigerians, we had Tanzanians, we had South Africans, we
00:15:43
had those from the Caribbean. We had mixed heritage families. We
00:15:47
even had Turkish and Canadians. Whoa. Were the
00:15:52
diasporan Turkish? Turkish. We had one purely
00:15:56
Turkish family. No, purely Turkish.
00:15:59
And you know what? The son was five years old at the time, and we
00:16:03
asked him, Why did you come to these classes? And he was like,
00:16:07
oh, in future. His son saying that he wants to do business in Africa,
00:16:11
so he wants to learn an African language. Did that give
00:16:14
you a light bulb? Moment when you heard that, you know what I mean? For
00:16:17
me, the light bulb moment went on a few, but this gave
00:16:20
me a secondary and just made me realize that, look, someone
00:16:24
who isn't from the African continent saw some classes
00:16:28
about culture and language and stuff and just decided that he's
00:16:32
going to do it. And that's the intentionality I'm
00:16:35
talking about. Okay, cool. Because he's got kids as well. Yeah. So he had a
00:16:39
five year old at the time and a three year old who came. That's actually
00:16:41
a good point. So it's not only for necessarily Ghanaians or Africans, it's for non
00:16:45
Africans who want to relocate or invest or live in Africa. Invest?
00:16:48
Yeah. And I always say it's investing in your children children. So we
00:16:52
had another family where mixed raced child, British
00:16:56
or English heritage, and
00:16:59
the father was Nigerian, but
00:17:03
he didn't want to teach her children about their culture,
00:17:06
didn't want to teach them about their language. So she saw destination,
00:17:10
found us, signed up, joined it and
00:17:14
said absolutely loved it. And she said she wants her child,
00:17:18
who's of mixed heritage, to know equally about both sides of the
00:17:22
family. And that's that intentionality. I'm
00:17:25
talking about that's. That for someone on the other side to do
00:17:28
their job and more, it should really be
00:17:32
the parent from that side to say, this is important to
00:17:35
me, I need to do it for my child so that they know both sides
00:17:39
of the identity. I love that, which doesn't happen very often. And something
00:17:43
I've realized in patterns is wherever there's normally I might
00:17:48
get shot down for this, but wherever there's an African parent
00:17:51
and another parent from
00:17:56
another group, whether it's European, whether it's South American, whether it's
00:18:00
Asian, the parent that is non African, the
00:18:03
dynamic of dominance
00:18:07
is with a non African. True. So if
00:18:10
there's French and African, they're more likely
00:18:14
to know the French than they are to know the African language. If they
00:18:18
are Asian, if they are Malay and any
00:18:21
African country, they're going to know Malaysian. If they're Spanish, Spanish will
00:18:25
be the first language every now and then. It's the other way around, but in
00:18:29
the majority, and that's because our intentionality to teach our
00:18:32
children, our culture and their identity isn't there. And
00:18:36
then this is where this nation African comes in, really, to really push that envelope
00:18:40
and to really kind of balance out exactly that area.
00:18:44
This is very powerful. Very powerful.
00:18:47
Honestly, I never thought about that way when you just told me that
00:18:51
even non Africans trying to come into you to get
00:18:55
involved your platform so they can pass these values onto their kids and
00:18:58
to learn a bit more about Africa and how
00:19:02
to kind of integrate their family into the continent. I think
00:19:06
it's really powerful stuff. So of course, you move
00:19:11
to Ghana. Destination Africa is running in Ghana. You
00:19:14
even have people joining from Zoom and everything so you
00:19:18
also noticed that there was, like, gaps in the market or maybe there
00:19:22
wasn't really a lot of what you guys are doing in
00:19:25
Ghana, and people needed what you were doing even in Ghana. Yes.
00:19:29
So the thing is, sometimes
00:19:32
in the west, there's that appreciation for culture,
00:19:37
for identity. People are I remember when the Afro beat
00:19:40
started coming. That's a time when people were proud to wear
00:19:44
their batekaris or their Sankara or
00:19:47
different things. But in Ghana, it's almost like, oh,
00:19:51
you know what? There's almost nothing to be proud of. They're
00:19:55
waiting for the diasporans to show the pride,
00:19:58
and from there now, they're taking more pride in it. But at the same time,
00:20:02
there are certain things because they want to almost be Westernized, they
00:20:05
want to fit in, they want to be accepted. They are suppressing
00:20:09
their culture. And you are finding a generation of
00:20:13
children who don't know much about their culture, who don't know much about their history,
00:20:16
historical figures. It's true, because
00:20:20
in Ghana, usually they want to be more like the West Americans and whatever.
00:20:24
They don't really want to some of them are disgust, some of
00:20:28
them disgusted about their own culture. But it's like the thing they're blinded because
00:20:31
it's the funny thing is that we told them, we want to be like you,
00:20:35
like you, and you want to be like us. Yeah, it's funny. Grass always
00:20:39
seems to be greener. Yeah, so
00:20:43
it's quite interesting. So I think having those perceptions, I mean,
00:20:47
Ghanaians having the perceptions, I think it's great
00:20:51
that platforms like yourself can make them realize, no, this
00:20:54
is really important, and then see the beauty
00:20:58
in it as well. I think it's important as well, because the thing is, we
00:21:01
always say in order to be bold, like,
00:21:05
true confidence is had from knowing who you are, knowing thyself.
00:21:09
And if you don't know yourself, you'll always
00:21:13
be wavering. You'll always be wavering. You can learn someone else's
00:21:17
culture as much as you like, but it's always their culture. It's
00:21:21
someone else's culture. But know yourself, whatever it may be. Be proud of
00:21:24
who you are, where you came from, who your family is, the journey
00:21:28
that they've made and from that, if you merge that
00:21:32
with whatever you learn, the knowledge, the wisdom on top from anywhere around the
00:21:36
world, you are in a sure place to do great things. And
00:21:39
sometimes we want to skip that part and jump straight
00:21:43
to the academics, jump to things which are
00:21:47
good and which we must always do and endeavor, but
00:21:51
not at the sacrifice of
00:21:54
knowing who we are and embedding that foundation. I think
00:21:58
that's the foundation that's important. You need to build that foundation, and
00:22:02
then you can get to the stuff like speaking a language and then other
00:22:05
bits. That's really important, what you're saying. And I
00:22:09
mean, you mentioned Turkish people
00:22:14
getting involved in destination Africa and all these
00:22:17
incredible stories. Are there any kind of notable testimonies
00:22:20
or kind of stories from customers or
00:22:24
maybe community members of Destination Africa that
00:22:28
you like to share. Is any notable there are so many. So
00:22:32
on one of our programs, on the online one, during the COVID
00:22:35
we had a special Jalof special. So
00:22:39
part of that term was about entrepreneurship. So
00:22:43
we were teaching the children about how to become an entrepreneur, how
00:22:46
to set up your own businesses. They learned about charities and different
00:22:50
things. So during that term, one of the things was to have
00:22:54
your own business. So the week before, they created a little skit on selling
00:22:57
their Jalof company, which they all did, sent in their
00:23:01
videos. And this week was the time for them to make so this is for
00:23:05
so the program online is primarily for
00:23:08
it's like an empowerment program, but because of the zoom, the children, the
00:23:12
parents are also present. Okay. So one of the things we tend to do
00:23:15
is try to do programs in conjunction with parents. We don't want to be like,
00:23:19
oh, pay and leave your children. No, it doesn't work like that with
00:23:23
the kid. Comes to parent, you don't get one
00:23:27
you can't buy separately. You get them as a package. As
00:23:30
a package, exactly. So on this occasion, we're doing gel off
00:23:34
rice sometimes. For many children, it was the first time they'd cooked with
00:23:38
their parents. Wow. Online and serious stuff. We
00:23:41
made the food. They were on the
00:23:45
fire cooking, chopping up the onions on Zoom. Yeah. Literally
00:23:49
15 families on Zoom. And at
00:23:53
the end of it, after they tasted their food, they had to do a video
00:23:56
testimonial. And one of the things that really touched me
00:24:00
was one of the boys said, it's the first time I've ever made
00:24:04
jeloff rice. No. And it's the first time I'd cooked
00:24:07
with my parents. That was
00:24:11
the whole point of it, was to, one, learn about creating food, having fun in
00:24:15
the kitchen, but really to start building those memories with your parents,
00:24:19
doing things which are culturally should be innate.
00:24:22
That was one of the ones that really touched me. I think
00:24:26
on another term, we had the end of term, and one of the boys said
00:24:30
one of the things he really loved was learning to
00:24:34
speak his mother tongue. And again,
00:24:37
it was something which I thought he would enjoy the games, playing
00:24:40
with his brothers and sisters, the competition, but it was just feeling
00:24:44
like he can now identify with his mother's tongue. That
00:24:47
was really powerful. That's powerful. And you would think with the kids, they're more
00:24:51
inclined to the fun stuff, but they
00:24:55
probably picked up big significance. Exactly. And the
00:24:59
power in speaking a language, being able to cook the food, being able
00:25:02
to understand the culture and the history. You're doing fantastic
00:25:06
job. Thank you. Please keep going. I share the same things with
00:25:10
other guests during season five, and people
00:25:13
are really making impact, filling in
00:25:17
gaps that are needed to be filled. Congratulate you
00:25:21
and Abeno for the good work that you're doing. Thank you. I think
00:25:27
we've spoken about all these different programs you do in Zoom, and
00:25:30
then you mentioned the you know, so of course you do in person
00:25:34
events and programs and workshops, et cetera. And of
00:25:37
course you like courses as well. So we're going to get into what, of
00:25:41
course, this nation, Africa, is a community, it's a platform, but of course
00:25:45
there's a business model behind it on the back of it. What does that look
00:25:48
like? Okay. So for us, the vision
00:25:54
primarily is to be intentional about our parenting,
00:25:58
to ensure that no Afro child
00:26:02
out there grows up to their 20s or
00:26:05
30s, not being able to speak an African language, not knowing
00:26:09
about their culture, not learning some of these foundational things that
00:26:13
make them who they are, as well as other skills on
00:26:16
top. And we want to get that message out to as many people as possible
00:26:20
and to give them the resources and the opportunity to say, you know
00:26:24
what, it's available. And this is where
00:26:27
the next step of what Destination Africa doing comes into play with
00:26:31
our okay, okay, I get that. Destination Africa,
00:26:35
I know it's aimed at Afro parents. Is it
00:26:38
also suitable for I mean,
00:26:42
primarily we say it's for everybody, but we
00:26:46
mentioned Afro parenting, so you know the perspective on which it's coming from.
00:26:50
Most of the content is geared towards the African continent. If
00:26:53
we tell stories, it's going to be primarily from the African
00:26:57
continent somewhere. If it's languages, the focus
00:27:01
will be primarily on an African language or multiple African languages
00:27:05
from across the continent. If you're Pakistani or
00:27:08
from Japan, you can join in,
00:27:12
you can sign up, and you can learn more about the African continent. It's for
00:27:17
everyone. Pakistani, I love that. I'm sure you probably have Pakistanis on there as well.
00:27:21
Yeah, we do. Okay, and let's talk about this new academy. Is that out?
00:27:24
Is it coming up for 2023? Yes, it's coming up for
00:27:28
so we'll be launching it on the 15 February next
00:27:32
month. So that is our on demand
00:27:35
courses just to allow people from across the world at
00:27:39
any time to sign up and also to have
00:27:43
that interaction, to have the benefit. We didn't want
00:27:47
to launch it. We should have launched it a while ago. I was like, no,
00:27:51
we want to get it right. We want to make sure there's that right level
00:27:54
of interaction versus video and so on. So we've had a
00:27:58
small pilot group testing it in the background and making sure it was
00:28:01
effective. That didn't work. Scratched it, did it again. But now
00:28:05
it's ready to go and we're happy. It's going
00:28:09
to have the impact that we desire. That's powerful and
00:28:12
that's amazing. How long
00:28:17
has it been in the works for? It's probably since 2019. Okay.
00:28:20
So it's been a few. Years. So is it something
00:28:24
you start working on years ago? Or is it
00:28:28
something you start working on years ago? Or is literally just like, okay, cool,
00:28:32
we have all of this content, let's just pull it together into an academy. Or
00:28:35
you actually just intentionally said, oh, we're going to start building this thing. It
00:28:39
was intentional. So when we left the UK, we had a destination
00:28:42
Africa family in the UK. And it was like, oh, when
00:28:46
are you guys going to do stuff online? When are you going to do stuff
00:28:48
online? And we're like, we'll do it. Once we get settled, we'll do it. And
00:28:52
we started and it was going well. But as you
00:28:55
do, there's a different dynamic between face to face doing it online,
00:28:59
and we didn't want to rush something and just get it online. And it wasn't
00:29:03
as impactful as the face to face content. So that's why
00:29:06
we took time, really dissected a program, built it
00:29:10
back up primarily for those on the other side of the screen, so it can
00:29:14
be as effective with all the necessary support, resources and so on.
00:29:18
All right, cool. So what does it look like? So what can people expect in
00:29:21
the academy? Is it like a subscription? Is it a one off price? Is it
00:29:24
a yearly price? What's the pricing like? Okay, so it would
00:29:28
be a yearly subscription subscription originally. And what that would
00:29:32
contain is different modules within. So there'll be
00:29:36
modules on language, there'll be modules on the
00:29:40
country information, there'll be modules on different elements, from presentation skills
00:29:43
to entrepreneurship to financial literacy.
00:29:47
There's a module on
00:29:51
self defense, there's a module on bitcoin and cryptocurrency. I
00:29:54
saw some content. YouTube, it's crazy. I love
00:29:58
that bitcoin. Oh, my crypto. The whole
00:30:03
aim is we want to build that next global African. It's
00:30:06
not just, okay, learn about language and that's it. Or learn about your history. That's
00:30:10
part of your foundation. But your foundation also includes your
00:30:13
presentation skills, things that you would need in order
00:30:17
to function as a forward thinking member
00:30:20
of society. That's fantastic. And we focus on
00:30:24
the areas where most places don't focus in school. So all these courses or
00:30:27
short courses are there and also partly there for parents to interact
00:30:31
with their parents, have that conversation, enjoy and build memories whilst building
00:30:35
your children. You know what, this is great, Michael, because someone like
00:30:40
me, I might think, oh, this is just something maybe quite this is something where
00:30:44
it's a place where I can go and learn traditional skills, right. Which
00:30:48
are essential. Right. It's still relevant today, but you've also included contemporary
00:30:52
skills and resources and
00:30:55
tools needed to succeed and navigate society
00:30:59
today. Like you mentioned, bitcoin and all this other stuff really great. It's
00:31:03
a really forward thinking. That's what it's all about. Sometimes,
00:31:06
as I say in Sankofa, sometimes you have to go back to
00:31:10
take it before you move forward. So we don't
00:31:14
want to forget to go back, and we just don't want to go forward blind.
00:31:17
We want to combine the two and bring the best of both worlds. That's
00:31:20
incredible. So I'm sure you got quite a few people on the way in us
00:31:24
ready to jump on. As you said earlier, we're launching
00:31:28
on the 15th. We're doing a live webinar, so
00:31:31
we'll be demonstrating some of it. We have a few people lined up and just
00:31:35
before we go on a little online virtual tour. So we have a few guests
00:31:38
I love that coming in to share their journey as well as preparing
00:31:42
for the launch. So it'll be interesting. I'll send you
00:31:46
the link, no problem, so that people can join in and find out more about
00:31:50
destination app. Absolutely. By the time
00:31:53
the audience or listeners listen to this episode or watch this episode,
00:31:57
it's probably going to be already out. But yeah, we'll have all the
00:32:01
links to the Academy, and if there's any pre recorded videos, we'll have those links
00:32:05
in there as well. I'm sure Mike would be happy to share as well. And
00:32:08
of course, you mentioned Sankonfa. I
00:32:11
should have double tap on that. So you also have like a
00:32:15
tree program. Tree program or language. So for us, language is all
00:32:19
encompassing. It's all part of it. It's like you can't be an African without
00:32:23
an African language. So, again, part of that
00:32:26
was my personal journey, and some of the tools we have are there to help
00:32:30
people navigate that as well and to learn trees. That's part
00:32:35
of the package. We'll have to have a conversation about that because my tree is
00:32:38
not up to know. It's one of the challenges, I think,
00:32:42
when people come to Ghana, it's interesting. I tend
00:32:45
to find the cultural aspect. People don't place
00:32:49
a lot of emphasis on it in terms of one of the essential things.
00:32:53
They're like, oh, get somewhere to live, sort out my job, get a car and
00:32:56
whatever. But they miss the language. They neglect this. And
00:33:00
I always say, once you have the language, you open
00:33:05
a door. It's almost like a parallel universe, which is
00:33:09
close to you 100%. And that's
00:33:13
the one thing. If I was to say to anyone, like, get that, focus on
00:33:16
it, get a language, pick it up. Because for me, speaking for myself, as I
00:33:19
said earlier, I started to learn twi when I was 30 years old, and
00:33:23
my family knew that I knew one or two words before. So every time
00:33:26
I come back on holiday, I'll be like, oh, hello, Michael. But it
00:33:31
was very much a sense of, okay, that's Michael,
00:33:34
but he's over there. But the moment I learned to speak Chi and
00:33:38
they heard, they're like, hey, Michael. Which is
00:33:43
like, you can speak twi and they see you differently, they warm to me
00:33:46
in a different way. Like, now I was a family member, not that sort
00:33:50
of Michael who lives in London, and it changes
00:33:54
doors. It opens things up. I mean, sometimes you go
00:33:58
and buy a mango and somebody will give you another one. Yeah. 100%. Because they
00:34:01
see you as their own. Yeah. And if
00:34:05
you really want to want your children, even yourself, to
00:34:09
feel like Africa is my home, you've really got the passport. You got
00:34:12
the 100%, man. Now it's get the language understand 100%. And
00:34:16
I think it's a universal principle. I think if you can speak the same language
00:34:20
as that person from that country that you come across,
00:34:24
they connect with you more than they will if
00:34:28
you're speaking just English. Whatever. Exactly. I was in Scotland last year in
00:34:31
summer, August 2022, and I was with a group of friends, one on
00:34:35
a vacation, and my friend hit this person's car,
00:34:39
not knowing my friend's Ghanaian. She's British Ghanaian, but
00:34:43
she's Dutch as well. She's flown in Dutch because she grew up in the Netherlands.
00:34:46
That guy that she hit was Dutch because she saw the registration plate,
00:34:50
she started speaking English. But then when she realized she was Dutch, they started
00:34:53
speaking Dutch. And he kind of warmed up to her in a different way. So
00:34:57
it was a different kind of connection there, and he was
00:35:01
a lot more at ease in the sand. There's something powerful about language, honestly, something
00:35:04
is. And speaking of languages, I know your kids are
00:35:08
quite fluent in tree. Do they want to come in? Yeah. You
00:35:12
want to come in and say some words in tree? Just
00:35:15
come into the shot. Just be careful as you're walking in. Just
00:35:19
walk carefully around. So ASADA's
00:35:22
coming into the shot. Just come say hello. You
00:35:26
can come by your dad and just say hello. Just
00:35:30
tell them about yourself. Intrigue.
00:35:34
Hello, everyone. My name is. Give him
00:35:38
the mic. No, it's fine. He should be able to pick it up. Okay.
00:35:45
Hello, everyone. So, my name is Asella Richardson. As uncle just introduced me
00:35:49
on the show. So, as you know, my father's been talking about their company
00:35:52
destination, Africa, and gave you a little bit of a backstory on how I complete
00:35:56
peak. So do you have any questions to ask
00:36:00
me? No. What I'll say?
00:36:05
Just greet basically, the audience intrigued. Hi. My name is ASADA.
00:36:09
I'm this age and I enjoy this sport,
00:36:13
and I like to do these things in my free time. Whatever.
00:36:25
J seba african
00:36:30
say gram and penyama to say
00:36:34
football
00:36:38
guarantee you the sign. Pet majority swami,
00:36:41
papaya jollof. So, yeah,
00:36:47
but yeah, nappy
00:36:51
said, yeah, but why would be my Mariah Bahanam?
00:36:54
ASA now say, I say, yeah, yeah.
00:36:58
Casano say camp you. I said, yeah. Jenna say, yeah,
00:37:02
but before my nappy, you know, bahano now
00:37:06
after moving and so mo by casana
00:37:10
jidat and
00:37:14
K-A-J man
00:37:18
pitch. Nothing. Fire to the end.
00:37:27
CBP I a or hannah and say nothing.
00:37:31
oh, my dad say, why are they power. Why are they Mahome
00:37:35
great job. Great job. Thank you for coming in. Thank you for coming in.
00:37:39
That's it. So any other plans
00:37:42
for 2023 apart from the platform? Oh, the platform is going to be big.
00:37:46
So that's the main focus for 2020. That's going to take up the bulkier time
00:37:50
as it is. Yeah, I'm sure it is. Constantly new content, different things
00:37:54
coming. We really want to immerse those around the world
00:37:57
in African culture, in Ghanaian culture, and just
00:38:01
build themselves and give themselves a platform so that they, too,
00:38:05
can expand and teach their children specifics about
00:38:08
their heritage and stuff. So my thing is invest.
00:38:12
Invest in your children. That's powerful. That's powerful.
00:38:15
And any tips to
00:38:19
aspiring or existing parents who are Afro
00:38:23
parenting? I'll say just join a platform,
00:38:27
join a network, join a space of other parents who
00:38:31
really want to push and are using different
00:38:34
innovative ways to teach and to grow their community.
00:38:38
Because that saying it takes a village to raise a child, and it takes
00:38:42
an e village to raise a child. So get connected
00:38:45
with different people around, but ultimately be intentional.
00:38:49
Be intentional about your parenting. See that value. I
00:38:53
always say, have the end in mind. Where do you want
00:38:57
your children to be when they're 19-20 years old? Where do you want them
00:39:00
to be? And start with their mind. I know many parents
00:39:04
who invest in property. They invest in spend
00:39:08
a lot of time in academics and their profession,
00:39:11
but at the same time, they sacrifice preparing their
00:39:15
children to continue or to leapfrog.
00:39:18
So start with the end of mind and invest in them
00:39:22
from the early ages, because sometimes they get to seven, eight years old, and they're
00:39:25
like, I don't want to go to Africa. And they say certain things, and you're
00:39:28
like, those are the they should be
00:39:32
making your ears burn 100% because that seed
00:39:36
has already been sown, and you've lost them already. Then when they start saying that
00:39:40
exactly. If you look at ASADA and his brother, I mean, they're
00:39:43
already entwined in culture. Speaking a
00:39:47
language is fantastic. Exactly. Fantastic. Mike, I've really enjoyed this
00:39:50
conversation. Apart from your academy, any other
00:39:54
announcements you want to make?
00:39:58
That's the academy for us. Okay. All right, great. Well,
00:40:02
where can everyone find you on Destination Africa? Yes. So Destination Africa, you
00:40:06
can find us at our website at www dot thedestinationafrica.com
00:40:09
on Instagram. We're
00:40:12
on Instagram at Dest D-E-S-T Africa.
00:40:16
GRP. And the same on Facebook and
00:40:20
all the other social. Had someone taken destination Africa already? The handle
00:40:24
or maybe it was too long. Yeah, it was too
00:40:28
long. That was the one that worked. Gotcha.
00:40:31
Yeah. I mean, I have that conversation with people sometimes. Michael,
00:40:35
thank you so much for coming to the show. Thank you for having us. Yeah.
00:40:38
So there you have it, guys. Michael Ekow Richardson.
00:40:41
He's the co founder of Destination Africa.
00:40:45
Once again, all of the show notes, the links, references,
00:40:48
nuggets and gems will be in the show notes, so you head over to
00:40:51
Forward slash destination Africa. That's the
00:40:55
soundofaccra.com/Destination Africa. If
00:40:59
you're watching YouTube, please like subscribe on your way out, share with a friend
00:41:03
or family and if you listen to Spotify Apple podcasts, five star review
00:41:07
is very much appreciated and I will catch you in the next episode.
00:41:10
Thank you so much for listening or watching. Take care.