Ɔbenfo Ọbádélé Bakari Kambon Appointed UNIA-ACL Ambassador to Ghana

In a formal Letter of Appointment dated May 15, 2025, the Universal Negro Improvement Association and African Communities’ League (UNIA-ACL) announced that President General Michael R. Duncan has appointed Ɔbenfo (Professor) Ọbádélé Bakari Kambon as the organization’s Ambassador to Ghana, with his headquarters at the UNIA Embassy at Abibitumi.

The appointment, issued from the Office of the Secretary General and signed by Secretary General Brenda Amoakon, notes that it has been approved by the High Executive Council of the UNIA-ACL, underscoring the strategic importance of this role within the global Garveyite movement.

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UNIA-ACL: A Century-Long Vision of Black Uplift

The UNIA-ACL, founded in 1914 in Kingston, Jamaica by Marcus Mosiah Garvey and Amy Ashwood Garvey, is one of the most influential Black nationalist organizations in modern history.

From its inception, the UNIA-ACL has described itself as a social, friendly, humanitarian, charitable, educational, financial, institutional, constructive and expansive society dedicated to the “general uplift of the people of African ancestry of the world.” (unia-aclgovernment.com) Its guiding slogans—“One God! One Aim! One Destiny!” and “Africa for the Africans, at home and abroad!”—have inspired generations of Black people seeking Abibitumi ‘Black Power’ and Abibifahodie ‘Black Liberation’ across continents.

During the 1920s, at its height, the UNIA-ACL established nearly 2,000 divisions in more than 40 countries, including in the then-Gold Coast (now Ghana), and created institutions such as the Negro World newspaper, the Black Star Line, and the Negro Factories Corporation. These efforts laid an early organizational foundation for global Black unity that continues to reverberate in contemporary Pan-Afrikan work.

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Leadership Under President General Michael R. Duncan

The current President General, Hon. Michael R. Duncan, is recognized as the 10th successor in the line of leadership established by Marcus Garvey. (unia-aclgovernment.com) Elected President General of the UNIA-ACL on August 19, 2016, Duncan has overseen major initiatives including the historic 62nd International Convention held in Monrovia, Liberia, in 2019, bringing together Garveyites from the Caribbean, the United States, Ghana, Sierra Leone, and beyond. (FrontPageAfrica)

Under his leadership, the organization has emphasized both continuity with Garvey’s original vision and renewed attention to building institutions “on the ground” in Afrika and in Afrikan communities worldwide. The creation of a formal UNIA Embassy at Abibitumi in Ghana, and the appointment of an Ambassador to Ghana stationed there, are consistent with that agenda of turning ideology into living, functioning institutions. (unia-aclgovernment.com)

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Ɔbenfo Ọbádélé Bakari Kambon: Scholar, Organizer, Nation-Builder

Ɔbenfo Ọbádélé Bakari Kambon is widely recognized as a world-class scholar of language and sbAyt nt Kmtyw ‘Studies of Black People’ as well as a dedicated organizer and institution-builder. He serves as an Associate Professor at the Institute of African Studies, University of Ghana, with research spanning serial verb construction nominalization, historical and comparative linguistics, and the study of Black people in antiquity and today. (ResearchGate)

Beyond academia, Kambon is the architect and founder of Abibitumi, described as the oldest and largest Black social education network on the planet, and he has played a central role in repatriation work that has enabled scores of Black people from the diaspora to obtain Ghanaian citizenship and re-establish roots on the continent. Through platforms such as Abibitumi.com, AbibitumiTV, and RepatriateToGhana.com, he has consistently advanced a program of holistic Black self-determination in language, culture, education, economics, and political life.

Kambon’s work is deeply rooted in the same currents of Black self-organization and global unity that animated Garvey and the early UNIA—prioritizing Afrikan languages, Afrikan spiritual and cultural restoration, and building independent Black-controlled institutions rather than relying on structures of whiteness or neo-colonial states.

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The UNIA Embassy at Abibitumi: A Strategic Site for Global Black Power

The Letter of Appointment specifies that the UNIA Ambassador to Ghana “will be headquartered at the UNIA Embassy at Abibitumi,” signaling a formal recognition of Abibitumi as a key institutional node for contemporary Garveyite work on the continent.

Abibitumi already functions as:

• A hub for Afrikan language learning and translation
• A digital and physical community space for Black people across the world
• A base for organizing the practical aspects of return and relocation to Ghana
• A center for conferences, festivals, and scholarly work grounded in reKemetization and Abibifahodie

Locating a UNIA Embassy within this ecosystem not only honors the historical importance of Ghana in Pan-Afrikan struggles—from the days of the Gold Coast divisions of the UNIA to Kwame Nkrumah’s leadership—but also concretely connects Garvey’s vision of “Africa for the Africans” to living institutions run by Black people in Ghana today.

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Significance of the Ghana Ambassador Role

The appointment of Ɔbenfo Ọbádélé Bakari Kambon as UNIA-ACL Ambassador to Ghana has several layered implications:

1. Re-Anchoring Garveyism on the Continent
   By installing an Ambassador in Ghana, the UNIA-ACL strengthens its physical and organizational presence in a country long regarded as a gateway for Black people in the diaspora returning “home.” This concretizes the slogan “Africa for the Africans, at home and abroad” not only as a historical motto but as a living program.
2. Bridging Diaspora and Continental Black Struggles
   Kambon’s life trajectory—from the United States to Ghana, from student to Ɔbenfo, from individual researcher to builder of large-scale Afrikan institutions—embodies the bridge between diaspora experience and continental nation-building. In his role as Ambassador, that bridge becomes an official part of UNIA-ACL’s global structure.
3. Institutionalizing Abibitumi as a Diplomatic Space
   Recognizing Abibitumi as the seat of a UNIA Embassy symbolically and practically affirms independent Black institutions as legitimate diplomatic and organizational spaces. This resonates strongly with Marcus Garvey’s insistence on Black-owned, Black-directed structures—from newspapers to shipping lines—as the backbone of Black freedom.
4. Advancing a 21st-Century Program of Abibitumi and Abibifahodie
   The combination of UNIA-ACL’s century-long heritage and Abibitumi’s cutting-edge digital, educational, and repatriation work creates powerful possibilities for coordinated programs in language, culture, economics, and governance for Black people worldwide.

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A Continuation of a Long Struggle

More than a hundred years after the founding of the UNIA-ACL, the appointment of a UNIA Ambassador to Ghana headquartered at Abibitumi can be seen as both a return and an advance: a return to Garvey’s insistence on Afrika as central to Black liberation, and an advance in the sense of leveraging new technologies, new organizational forms, and contemporary Pan-Afrikan networks.

In this light, Ɔbenfo Ọbádélé Bakari Kambon’s appointment is not merely an honorific title. It is a strategic move in the ongoing project of organizing Black people—on the continent and in the diaspora—around a clear program of Abibitumi ‘Black Power’ and Abibifahodie ‘Black Liberation,’ in full continuity with Garvey’s original call for the uplift of Black people worldwide under their own institutions, flags, and leadership.