Nairobi feels like a city in fast-forward. A new expressway built a few years ago is helping to tame its once infamous gridlock, glass towers rise where low-rise tin-roofed settlements once stood, and international events like this month’s Kenya Bartender Week draw visitors from Lagos to London. Once dismissed as merely a launchpad for safaris, the city itself is emerging as a destination.
With Black unemployment spiking in the U.S., rising costs of living pushing milestones like homeownership and retirement further out of reach for many, and what one Black American expat, Shayna Conde, described as living with “a target on my back,” a generation of Black Americans is looking to Kenya, Ghana, and elsewhere in Africa not just as travel destinations or as a spiritual home but as places to build wealth and new lives.
How Black Americans Are Building Wealth Abroad
Singer and entrepreneur Kelis, known for her “Milkshake” anthem, has put a celebrity face on the trend this year by buying 300 acres in Kenya to build a sustainable farm and retreat. Meanwhile, high-profile events like this month’s celebrity-filled Invest Fest in Atlanta, along with thousands of Instagram and TikTok videos, are positioning Africa as a frontier for Black America’s dollars. Beyond the stars, though, retirees, remote workers, and entrepreneurs are quietly making the move or seeking out real estate and investments, with economic consequences on both sides of the Atlantic.
For Kio Wakesho Simmons, a U.S. Army veteran who now runs Traverze Culture, a relocation and medical tourism company in Nairobi, the choice was as much about survival as it was about opportunity. “I had constant anxiety as an entrepreneur… I had to get out,” she said. “It’s a breath of fresh air when you can just blend in.”
That sense of relief echoes across the Black diaspora. Kelis has been blunt about her reasons for joining the exodus of Black Americans this year.
‘I Had To Get Out’-Black Americans Are Building Wealth by Relocating to Africa
