From students who meant to go home to one of the largest African diasporas in the world: the story of Ghanaian and Nigerian Britain, the hardships and the success.
Walk down Rye Lane in Peckham on a Saturday and you hear Yoruba, Igbo, Twi and Pidgin as much as English. Shops sell yams, plantain and palm oil; church posters advertise all-night prayer meetings; jollof rice is argued about with real passion. Britain today has one of the largest Ghanaian and Nigerian diasporas in the world, and their story is one of the great untold chapters of modern British history.
It did not begin with the famous ship Windrush in 1948, which brought people from the Caribbean. The West African story is different: it began with students, many of whom meant to go home, and it grew through independence, coups, economic crises and, above all, family. This page tells that story honestly, the hardships as well as the success.
These figures count only people born in Africa or who chose an African ethnic label. Hundreds of thousands of British-born children and grandchildren of Ghanaian and Nigerian parents are part of these communities too.
For most of the twentieth century, the typical West African in Britain was a student. Families in Lagos, Accra, Kumasi and Ibadan saved for years to send a son, and later a daughter, to study law, medicine, engineering or nursing in Britain. Before independence they joined the West African Students' Union; after the war their numbers grew fast, as the colonies prepared for self-government and needed trained people.
When Ghana became independent in 1957 and Nigeria in 1960, most students still planned to go home, and many did, to run the new ministries, hospitals and universities. But some stayed on to finish professional training, and the old colour bar made life hard for all of them: finding a room, a job or even a bank account could take months.
The student movement that trained the independence generation.
From the 1950s to the 1980s, thousands of West African children grew up not with their parents but with white foster families, often in small towns in the south of England. Their parents, studying and working long hours with no family nearby, answered advertisements in magazines from couples willing to look after a child for a weekly fee. These "private fostering" arrangements were legal and almost completely unregulated.
Some children were loved and kept close ties with both families. Others faced neglect and racism, lost their language and culture, and felt strangers when they were returned to their parents. The practice was so common among Nigerian families that it was known as "farming". The actor and director Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje told his own story of it in the 2018 film Farming. Many British Ghanaians and Nigerians now in their fifties and sixties grew up this way.
From the late 1960s the reasons for coming changed. Coups and civil war, the Nigerian civil war of 1967 to 1970 above all, made home feel less safe. In the late 1970s and the 1980s both Ghana and Nigeria went through deep economic crises, with currencies collapsing, shortages, military rule and structural adjustment. Doctors, nurses, teachers and engineers left for Britain, where many found that their qualifications were not recognised and took jobs as cleaners, security guards and minicab drivers to support families at home.
At the same time Britain's laws tightened. The Commonwealth Immigrants Act of 1962 and later laws made it much harder to settle, and many people lived for years with uncertain immigration status. Yet the communities grew, through students who stayed, spouses and children joining family, and, more recently, recruitment of West African nurses and care workers for the NHS and social care.
Peckham in south-east London became the best-known Nigerian neighbourhood in Britain, nicknamed "Little Lagos". The 2001 census found it home to the largest Nigerian community in Britain, with Rye Lane full of Nigerian food shops, hair salons and churches. Woolwich, Plumstead, Thamesmead and the wider boroughs of Southwark, Greenwich and Lewisham are also home to large Nigerian communities.
Ghanaian London grew in many of the same areas and in north London, around Tottenham, Hackney and Haringey, and in growing communities in towns and cities across England. Ghanaian hometown associations, chiefs' councils and festivals keep up ties with particular towns and regions at home.
Church is at the heart of community life. West African Pentecostal churches have grown into some of the largest congregations in Britain, filling old cinemas, warehouses and office blocks on a Sunday, alongside Ghanaian Methodist and Presbyterian congregations and a growing number of mosques for Nigerian and Ghanaian Muslims.
Food has moved from specialist shops into the mainstream: jollof rice, suya, kelewele, waakye and pepper soup now appear on restaurant menus far from Peckham, and the Ghana-versus-Nigeria jollof argument is a national sport.
Music may be the biggest export of all. Afrobeats, born in Lagos and Accra, was carried to the top of the British charts with the help of British-Ghanaian and British-Nigerian artists and DJs, and fused in London with grime, rap and dancehall into new sounds such as Afroswing.
The children and grandchildren of these migrants are now everywhere in British life:
Behind the famous names are hundreds of thousands of nurses, doctors, carers, teachers, engineers, lawyers, shopkeepers and drivers who keep Britain running, and who still send money, ideas and children home.
Take the Overground to Peckham Rye and walk the length of Rye Lane and into Choumert Road for food shops, market stalls and Nigerian and Ghanaian restaurants. The Black Cultural Archives in Brixton tell the wider story of Black Britain, and the WASU and Nkrumah sites in Camden and Kentish Town show where it began. Guided walks and food tours of south London are an easy way in. Entrance fees for the sights on a tour are always included in the price. Tips for your guide are not included, but they are welcome.
December is the great homecoming month, when the diaspora flies into Accra International Airport for weddings, funerals, festivals and the beach. For an honest look at what returnees really face, read Ghana-Net's Ghana Without Filters and the guide to December in Ghana.
Lagos and Abuja have daily flights from London. For destinations, culture and live radio, see Explore Nigeria and Nigerian Radio.
Where the story began.
Ghana's first leader and his London years.
The home of Black British history.
Current rules for visitors from Ghana, Nigeria and the rest of Africa.
A practical guide for new arrivals and visitors.
Britain Adventures is part of a network of independent sites on Africa and its history. These are the places where the stories on this page continue:
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