Clive Myrie on what Africa taught a foreign correspondent about our common humanity

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Look, today on Big Ideas, a master storyteller, one of the world's most famous foreign correspondents and news anchors, host of the iconic BBC TV quiz shows Mastermind and Celebrity Mastermind. But when Clive Myrie was asked to do a travel story, he was kind of taken back because here he was, this tough, robust, heavyweight of journalism, reporting from the front line of wars and elections and natural disasters over decades. What came next? Let's go traveling. Welcome to Big Ideas. I'm Natasha Mitchell.

Clive Myrie's Italian road trip became one of the most watched shows on BBC Two. His Caribbean adventure won a British Academy Television Award. And then came his more recent epic African adventure, which became personal and something bigger than that too.

So let's join him with Joan Concannon, the Director of the York Festival of Ideas in the UK, where we're taking you today.

Joan Concannon (1:54)

First of all, and I was just checking the pronunciation, Clive has very interesting heritage, but he was given his African name as part of his induction and his journey through, which is Papa Kojo Abaka. Have I done that properly?

Clive Myrie (2:12)

You've done that right. Papa Kojo Abaka. I did one of those DNA testing things, home kit things. We did it while we were filming in the Caribbean, because I'd grown up with the legend that my forefathers had obviously come from Africa, but ended up in Cuba first and then ended up in Jamaica, which is where my immediate family are from. And we did the test and it turned out that I'm not from Cuba, but what it did reveal was 6% Irish, can't argue with that, yeah man, 10% Icelandic, weird, 34% Nigerian and 24% Ghanaian. So more Nigerian than Ghanaian, which is interesting. And inevitably, the majority of people who ended up in the Caribbean during the slave trade would have come from what was the Gold Coast, West Africa, which is now obviously Nigeria, Ghana, further Ivory Coast, Liberia further down, further up Benin and so on. So from that part of the world. And so the idea was, this was while we were in Cuba, we thought with the next series, it's got to be West Africa, go back there.

And that's exactly what we did. And in Ghana, I visit, you know, the slave forts where my ancestors may well have been held, which was incredibly powerful and moving. But I'm also given my African name, which is Papa Kojo Abaka. And Papa means male. Kojo is the day that you're born, which is Monday, I think, if I remember rightly. And Abaka is someone who imparts knowledge which is quite wise, you know, the seeker of truth.

And he gave me this name and I said, yeah, that sounds about right, mate. Sounds about right.

Joan Concannon (4:17)

And was any of that heritage known to any of your, in terms of the history of your family, was there a sort of general sense of, it's likely we have West African heritage or was this a complete surprise to your family?

Clive Myrie (4:27)

No, no, it's highly, I mean, the majority of the slaves in the British Empire that ended up in the Caribbean territory owned by the UK would have come from West Africa. I think some of the Spanish Empire, the Portuguese Empire in particular, they tended to get slaves from slightly further round the corner beneath Angola, Mozambique, on the other side. They were the Portuguese territory, so that's where their slaves came from. But the British slaves tended to come from West Africa. So most people know that. And indeed, I was there with a group of Americans from all over the United States, African Americans, and they were tracing their own roots back as well. And we were in this slave fort in this place called Elmina, which is on the coast, really beautiful coastline. But you've got this amazing, imposing white fortress. And that's where the slaves would have been rounded up, some sent there by other tribes in Africa. Because you would have had wars, and one way of dealing with prisoners would be to send them off to the white colonialists who would take them as the white slave traders who would take them across the Atlantic.