For Lola Banjo, luxury is something all of us deserve.

The founder and creative director of Silver & Riley, a luxury bag and accessories, from the first day she knew that she desired to create products that looked good, lasting long.

Her journey from Brooklyn and Lagos to launch a globally recognized luxury brand is an affidavit to perseverance, creativity and unwavering involvement in quality.

A former management consultant who studied economics and earned MBA, Banjo traveled every week to work and in the future she found herself in a chilly cold flight, where she asked a flight attendant for a blanket, but refused. She was told that she was reserved for first -class passengers. This experience caused an idea.

These products will develop in the Silver & Riley brand, which produces high -quality bags and travel bags made in Italy, combining functionality with style. In the case of Banjo, once you keep Silver & Riley, whether in top quality or economy, you’re feeling increased.

Overcoming challenges

Banjo’s journey was not with none obstacles. As a black woman on the luxury market, she encountered hidden prejudices that undermine her brand’s progress. “People don’t expect you as a face in space,” she explained. “Every time I think about how difficult it is, I think about what my ancestors had to face – our ancestors had to face – 100 years ago.”

“Growing up, my mother had a Rolex watch, of which she was very proud. And you know, she has invested a lot of money in it. But it was something she wanted to tell me – explained Banjo. “I would like to be a part of such a generational history, creating songs that is usually a sentimental combination with someone and represent something that exceeds this moment.”

With this in mind, each Silver & Riley product reflects meticulous attention to detail and passion for quality. Bag New Yorker, one in every of the brand’s bestsellers, took 4 years. Banjo describes this as a “iconic bag” that represents “grit, beauty and diversity of the city.”

The power of black luxury

For Banjo, luxury is greater than a logo of status – it’s an announcement of value and strengthening. “We absolutely deserve luxury, because it is something that we have been excluded from so long,” she explained. “I also wanted to work on luxury, which was relatively available.” Silver & Riley holiday sale comprises such items Durban convertible and clutch for USD 295 and them RIO handle bag It’s USD 475.

Silver & Riley stands out on the luxury market not only in terms of top of the range products, but in addition for community involvement. “We are more than just a brand; We are a movement – explained Banjo. “Our” buy one, give five program and social initiatives reflect our commitment to giving and raising others, in which we give 5% of our revenues as subsidies for women of entrepreneurs. “

Because Banjo still introduces innovations and is growing, her vision stays clear.

Accra, Ghana (AP) – browsing the family album, Keachia Bowers stopped in her photo as a toddler on her father’s knees, when from 1978 he organized the album “Africa Stand Sam” from 1978 by the culture of reggae.

“When I was 10, I was supposed to come to Ghana with him,” she said. The day before she was 10 years old from her father’s death. Although he was a Panfrycanist who dreamed of visiting Ghana, he never found himself here.

However, Bowers and her husband, Damon Smith, belong to 524 diaspora members, mainly Black Americans, who received Ghana’s citizenship during the ceremony in November.

Bowers and Smith moved to Ghana from Florida in 2023. After a visit to the region for several times since the Nineteen Nineties everlasting movement.

The November Group was the best citizenship since Ghana launched the “Year of Return” program, geared toward attracting a black diaspora in 2019. This meant 400 years from the first African slaves in Virginia in 1619.

The Ghana Tourism Office and the Diaspory Office prolonged the program to “Beyond the Return”, which promotes relationships with the diasporants. Hundreds received citizenship, including people from Canada, Great Britain and Jamaica.

Bowers said that moving to Ghana gave the family a sense of ease that they didn’t have in the USA

“When we see Trayvon MartinSandra Bland, all these stories about people murdered at home, living at home and murdered at the hands of police brutality, hearing about it causes trauma, “she said.

She was also apprehensive about her son Tsadik, 14 years old.

Tsadik towers over family members in a way that lean teenage boys often do. He is shy, but opens around his younger sister Tselah, 11 years old and family dog, Apollo.

“In America, being a black man from LOCs, who is very high for his age, is treated as a threat,” said Bowers.

Americans encounter several obstacles in life in Ghana, and most of the people pay an annual fee for his or her stay. But Bowers said that citizenship meant greater than atypical life in Ghana.

“I didn’t need (citizenship) to inform me that I used to be an African. Wherever I am going to the world and someone looks at me, I’m melated – she said.

“But my ancestors who wanted to come back and come back home, those ancestors who have never returned him,” she said – For me, the passport is for them. “

From 10 to fifteen million people were forced from Africa to America during transatlantic trade in slaves, most of West and Central Africa.

Ghana, then the British colony often known as Gold Coast, was the foremost point of the trip.

Because slave trade monuments grow to be tourist places in West Africa, painful reminders of its brutality are easily accessible. From Ghana to Senegal to BeninYou can visit the varieties of “door without returning”, haunting doors opening to the Atlantic Ocean, where the slaves left Africa and their families for the last time.

The joy that individuals feel to find connections that were destroyed an extended time ago is tangible. Movies from a recent citizenship ceremony show men and ladies of all ages, waving the flags and cheers of Ghana.

33 -year -old Deijha Gordon was certainly one of them.

“I visited Ghana for the first time in 2015. From now on, I knew that this was a place where I wanted to be, and a place where I wanted to show other diasporas, African Americans, that we had a place where we belonged, “she said.

In 2019, she moved from Brooklyn to Ghana and opened a truck with food, Jerk Hut Deijha Vu, selling Jamaican food.

Between the orders of the bag and talks with the Black American tourist couple, she explained how she built an organization from scratch.

Gordon was dizzying, remembering the moment when she received citizenship.

“It is nice to be related to the African country as an African American, as a black American. Because in America we now have nothing to trace our roots except Africa. To have this connection here, I feel that I did something right – she said.

Like Bowers, Gordon had a stream of individuals reaching out and questions on the citizenship process.

The path shouldn’t be clearly defined. Citizenship must come from a concession from the presidency of Ghana, the trial is legal in accordance with the Act on citizenship of 2000. This is granted to people living in Ghana who told the Diaspory office that they are considering citizenship.

The Ghana government partly describes the program as a bonus for the economy and focuses on investment capabilities for individuals who wish to move.

Festus, with the local Non -profit spokesmake center, said that although the government emphasizes the economic angle, the real advantages of citizenship are intangible.

“I do not think that (recipients) cry because they landed with a gold mine, or found oil or a business opportunity. But this is something so relieving that the value or price cannot be set, “he said.

The administration of President Nana Akufo-Addo, who began the “year of return” is on the way. Ghana’s foremost opposition party won the presidential election on December 7.

But this -man said that black Americans and other diaspora residents would probably still receive citizenship of the presidential concession.

Citizenship may also pass on the next generation. Bowers and Smith’s children received him robotically after their parents’ ceremony.

Bowers’s father, like her husband and youngsters, was a follower of Rastafari’s faith. “Repatrination is an element of the rastafarian tradition. We see repatriation as the final experience you could have on this land – she said.

She thinks her father is happy with her. “I really feel that he is smiling where he is. He wanted to experience it for himself, so he experiences it through me. “