‘The Pan-African Return experience: from the Caribbean to Ethiopia’

Ethiopia is one of the symbolic nations of Pan Africanism. When land is granted there to the descendants of the Africans deported to the Americas, they settled in order to fulfil their return. The Rastafari are heirs to charismatic and controversial Marcus Garvey, they are the dreamed children of Emperor Haile Selassie I, and the spiritual brothers and sisters of Bob Marley; and they keep arriving in Ethiopia. There, they contribute to shape today’s Pan African experience.

Giulia Bonacci is a historian, and researcher at the Institute of Research for Development (IRD). She is currently posted at University Nice Sophia Antipolis. Her book Exodus! Heirs and Pioneers, Rastafari Return to Ethiopia (L’Harmattan 2010) was translated and published by The University of the West Indies Press in Kingston, Jamaica. It received the IndieFab Book of the Year Award in 2015 and the Choice Outstanding Academic Title in 2017. She is specialist of Ethiopia and of the English-speaking Caribbean, and her work on the legacies of slavery, the Rastafari movement, the Back to Africa movement and Pan Africanism is grounded on archival, print and oral history research. She publishes regularly in scientific journals (Cahiers d’études africaines, Revue européenne des migrations internationales, African Diaspora, Annales d’Ethiopie, New West Indian Guide, Caribbean Quarterly, etc.) and in the cultural media.