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A Slavery Theme Park in Benin - Is History for Sale?

The Marina Project is a vast memorial and tourist complex under construction in Ouidah, a coastal town in the Republic of Benin in West Africa. The country hopes to market itself as a major destination for Afro-descendant tourists in the diaspora. Neighbouring Nigeria and its population of 220 million potential visitors also make serene and diminutive Benin an enviable location for large-scale tourist attractions, writes Dominique Somda for The Conversation.

The waterfront development is located at what was the main slave port for the Bight of Benin. From this region, almost two million enslaved Africans departed during the transatlantic slave trade. At its height - from the 1790s to the 1860s - Ouidah was controlled by the kingdom of Dahomey.

The Marina Project could lead to a better understanding of the transatlantic slave trade. But it raises many questions. In its design and scope, it epitomizes contested directions of slave heritage tourism. The commodification of heritage may debase the experiences of painful pasts. The spectacle of culture produced by the tourism industry, is often met with contempt.

 

InFocus

jbdodane/Wikimedia

Door of No Return. A memorial arch monument to the trans-atlantic slavery, on the coast of Ouidah.

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