On Africa Day 2026, The Africa-Barbados Heritage Initiative (TABHI) unveiled a groundbreaking digital platform designed to safeguard the little-known shared historical legacy between Barbados and Liberia, while fostering deeper collaboration across cultural, educational and diplomatic spheres. The project traces its origins to decades of personal and academic research from TABHI founder Ambassador Lorenzo Llewellyn Witherspoon, who first began investigating the little-documented 1865 voyage of the brig *Cora*, which carried 347 Barbadian migrants to seek new lives in Liberia.
What started as a deeply personal journey for Witherspoon — uncovering his own family ancestry as a descendant of Barbadian emigrant John Prince Porte — gradually expanded into a broad, community-focused initiative dedicated to reconnecting separated descendant communities across the Atlantic and building durable bilateral cooperation between the two nations. The project gained critical institutional momentum in 2021, when Witherspoon held high-level discussions with Barbadian Prime Minister Mia Mottley focused on ancestral preservation, archive access and cross-national engagement. Those early talks laid the groundwork for the landmark 2024 Sankofa Back2Barbados Pilgrimage, a landmark event that drew more than 500 descendants of 19th-century Barbadian emigrants from across the globe to Barbados for ancestral tracing workshops and immersive cultural exchange.
In parallel to this community work, official diplomatic relations between Barbados and Liberia have advanced rapidly in recent years. Key milestones include the 2024 signing of a joint communiqué formally establishing full diplomatic ties, the presentation of credentials by Barbados’ first resident ambassador to Liberia in 2025, and the early 2026 signing of both a mutual visa waiver agreement and a formal framework for regular political consultations between the two governments.
Speaking at the website launch, Ambassador Witherspoon framed the new digital platform as far more than an online archive: “This website is a platform for remembrance, reconnection, and renewal. It reflects a shared history and points to a shared future built on exchange, partnership, and opportunity.”
Professor Dr Caree Banton, a distinguished scholar of African diaspora history, TABHI board member, and author of *More Auspicious Shores: Barbadian Migration to Liberia, Blackness, and the Making of an African Republic*, noted that the initiative builds on a transatlantic bond forged more than 160 years ago. “In 1865, a courageous voyage linked Barbados to Liberia. Today, their descendants are bridging that same ocean through cooperation, commerce, and community,” Banton explained.
Barbados’ Ambassador to CARICOM David Comissiong connected the TABHI project to a broader, ongoing shift in Barbados’ relations with the African continent, pointing to two recent high-profile developments: the launch of direct passenger flights between Nigeria and Barbados by Nigerian carrier Air Peace, and the opening of the African Export-Import Bank’s Caribbean regional headquarters in Bridgetown, Barbados’ capital. “Without a doubt, it is fair to assert that a profound deepening and extension of the relationship between the Republic of Barbados and its ‘mother continent’ of Africa is well and truly underway,” Comissiong said.
Moving forward, TABHI plans to use the new website to make rare historical resources freely accessible to the public, share regular updates on its community and diplomatic initiatives, and create clear pathways for descendants, academic researchers and cultural institutions to partner on its ongoing work of preservation and connection.