Dear Africa, I’m Trying to Love You Without Losing Myself

The Conversation That Started It All

I was nineteen when my grandmother looked at me across the dinner table in her small Accra apartment and said, “You’re becoming too foreign for your own good.” I had just returned from my first year at university in London—my accent slightly shifted, my opinions sharper, my traditional cloth replaced by jeans and a vintage band t-shirt.

Her words hit like a slap. Not because she was wrong, but because she had voiced a fear I’d already been carrying: that in trying to become myself, I might be losing something essential.

That conversation haunts me still, fifteen years later. I wasn’t becoming less African—I was becoming more me. Messy. Contradictory. Unapologetically complex.

Dear Africa, I’m writing this letter because I’m tired of apologizing for evolving.

The Authenticity Trap

There’s a peculiar kind of suffocation that comes with being expected to represent an entire continent. Every choice becomes a statement. Every deviation, a betrayal.

Cut your hair short? You’re rejecting African beauty standards. Speak with an accent acquired abroad? You’re performing whiteness. Question traditional practices? You’re culturally confused. Date outside your ethnicity? You’re abandoning your people.

The authenticity trap is exhausting. It demands that we remain static—as though the only legitimate form of Africanness is one preserved in cultural amber.

But cultures that don’t evolve don’t survive. And people who don’t grow don’t truly live.

I think about my great-grandmother, who learned to read at sixty. She didn’t question whether literacy was “too Western.” She expanded her world because she knew evolution was a form of resistance. That’s the African spirit I inherited—not the performance of tradition, but the courage to transform.

The Diaspora Dilemma

For those of us straddling multiple worlds, the pressure only intensifies. We become cultural bridges—expected to represent, explain, translate, soothe, and succeed.

We’re too African for some spaces. Not African enough for others.

I remember attending a Black Lives Matter protest in Brooklyn. Holding a sign, chanting in solidarity, I felt the powerful weight of Black unity—but also the quiet tension of being African, not African-American. I belonged, but I didn’t. I understood, but not entirely. My Blackness had its own history.

Being in the diaspora is a constant act of translation. Not just of language, but of self.

We learn to code-switch not just between English and Twi or French or Arabic—but between versions of ourselves. Professional. Family. Social. Dating. Activist. Each with its own performance of belonging.

But here’s the secret joy no one talks about: cultural fluency is power. To exist across borders, cultures, and expectations is to be both rooted and rootless. We are not diluted—we are distilled. Sharp. Multifaceted. Capable of building bridges where others see walls.

The Gender Complication

Now add womanhood into the mix.

To be an African woman is to live within a paradox. You’re expected to be strong—but not intimidating. Ambitious—but not too bold. Educated—but still obedient. Independent—but only within approved limits.

I learned early that my aspirations came with side-eyes. Choosing career over early marriage? “You’re too Western.” Traveling solo? “A proper African girl wouldn’t.” Speaking boldly in meetings? “You’ve become too much.”

But African women have always been too much. Too powerful for the confines assigned to us. From Queen Nzinga to Wangari Maathai, from village market matriarchs to the tech-savvy young women building startups in Nairobi, we’ve always redrawn the boundaries.

So no—I won’t shrink for tradition. Because our real tradition is courage.

The Success Paradox

Success brings its own set of shackles.

Achieve too much, and you’re suddenly a “spokesperson for Africa.” Your story becomes collective property. You’re expected to embody African excellence while staying boxed into a narrow, palatable definition of success.

What if your win isn’t becoming a doctor or lawyer or NGO darling? What if your success looks like producing experimental film in Berlin? Or running a niche fashion brand in Lagos? Or coding in Japanese from your apartment in Nairobi?

I’ve seen brilliant African artists told they’re “too foreign” for the continent and “too ethnic” for the West. Entrepreneurs accused of “selling out” when they scale globally. Writers criticized for not setting every novel in a dusty village.

The message is clear: succeed, but only if it makes us comfortable. Only if it fits the narrative.

The Language of Belonging

Language is often used as a loyalty test. Speak English too fluently? You’ve sold out. Struggle in your mother tongue? You’re disconnected. Pick up another language entirely? You’re abandoning your roots.

But what if language was a bridge, not a border?

My cousin, born and raised in Toronto, speaks three languages fluently. Yet she’s ridiculed for her accent when she speaks Twi. My friend in Berlin gets grilled about his Africanness because his Hausa isn’t “pure.”

Language is a tool—not a measure of love.

The goal isn’t linguistic purity—it’s connection. It’s meaning. It’s evolution. My Africanness isn’t compromised by my multilingualism—it is amplified by it.

The Love Letter

Dear Africa, I love you enough to grow.

I love you enough to question the traditions that harm more than heal. To challenge norms that no longer serve all your children. To evolve in ways that might make you uncomfortable—because growth always feels like discomfort before it feels like truth.

I am not your representative. I am your continuation.

I carry your stories in my bones and your rhythms in my walk—but I also write new verses. I am your legacy and your possibility.

I love you enough to bring you with me into a future where authenticity isn’t mimicry—it’s self-definition.

The Revolution of Self

The most radical act we can commit as Africans today is to become—freely, fully, fearlessly.

Not caricatures of Africanness. Not symbols of the past. But living, shifting, contradictory beings unafraid to outgrow the containers we were handed.

The artist who paints beyond the village scene isn’t betraying you—she’s expanding you. The queer African who refuses silence isn’t rejecting you—they’re loving you louder. The daughter who no longer bows in shame when she chooses herself? She’s honoring your spirit of survival.

We are not leaving Africa behind—we are taking her further.

Because the Africa we love is not static. She is not fragile. She does not crumble under our questions. She dares us to ask more.

She raised warriors. Thinkers. Builders. Lovers. Survivors. Dreamers.

So here’s to all of us trying to love Africa without losing ourselves.

Here’s to becoming.