I’ve always believed Africa’s greatest stories are the ones told when no one is watching: when the cameras are off, and the road itself tries to kill you.
That’s exactly where we are right now: battered, broke, and more alive than ever.
We left Accra with a mad, beautiful dream: drive a Ghanaian-registered convoy from Accra through 39 countries and back, crossing the entire continent on its own terms, using nothing but Ghanaian passports, stubborn optimism, and an unshakeable belief that Africa is open, safe, and breathtaking, if only the world would come see it for themselves.
Twenty-two countries in, we had shaken hands with Presidents, Vice Presidents, Prime Ministers, Kings, and countless immigration officers who eventually smiled and waved us through. We were unstoppable.
Then the road fought back. First, advice from Ghana’s Mission not to travel by road to Ethiopia due to the Marburg virus. We were already on our way and less than 1500km from the Mayole border.
This forced us to reverse course and re-drive thousands of kilometres through countries we had already conquered (Uganda, Rwanda, Tanzania, Zambia…), rather than risk the war-torn shortcut through DRC and the Central African Republic.
We chose the long, safe route, spending a night in Uganda and Rwanda. It was uneventful — until Zambia.
Four days after crossing into Tanzania (yes, Tanzania is that vast) and just hours after entering Zambia, a split-second of reckless driving by a truck on a highway in Chinsali sent our lead vehicle spinning, leaving us with a total bill of $3,783 for towing and repairs. And for almost three weeks, the entire campaign was on life support.
The car was wrecked. The Zambian insurance we had paid for suddenly spoke in tongues. Money bled out faster than fuel in the Kalahari. For a moment, after 22 countries, the dream looked dead.
But dreams forged in the fire of Pan-African madness don’t die easily.
Good. Good people showed up. Ms. Sandra Agyeman, one of the finest human beings I’ve ever met worked her magic, arranged towing, and a mechanic on standby in Lusaka.
Mechanics in Lusaka who worked nights. Strangers who cooked Ghanaian food. A Ghanaian diaspora network that refused to let us fall.
Mechanics patched the car together with hope, and Zambian ingenuity, and prepared to push north, with the view to driving through Namibia to Angola, then ship my car to Accra or Casablanca —
only for Africa’s bureaucracy to swing the next punch.
We needed a new set of visas to Angola, and Namibia, as the ones that we got from Accra had expired. Typically one needs to apply for a visa in a country they were resident in. We simply needed to transit for a few days. The passport initial reaction was, “Apply for visas from your country of residence.”
My brothers and sisters, how exactly do you apply from your country of residence when you are already 20,000 km deep inside the continent trying to unite it? Do they want us to fly back to Accra, queue again, then fly back to the exact spot we left?
In 2025. In the era of AfCFTA and “free movement of people.” We laughed until the tears came. Eventually, frantic diplomacy and sheer shame forced single-entry transit visas out of them — valid for a few days only. Progress, I suppose.
Then came the knockout blow: the only ferry connecting Cabinda to Soyo (the one that lets you stay inside Angola without entering DR Congo) is closed for long-term maintenance. The land alternative? A “road” through DRC that even the UN won’t touch right now.
So we priced airlifting my landcruiser to Accra or directly to Morocco.
$17,400 US dollars. Total. You could buy a brand-new trotro bus in Accra and still have money left for Waakye at Alhaji’s Wife Waakye joint.
Any sane person would have quit. Issued a dignified press release about “logistical challenges beyond our control” and gone home.
We are clearly not sane.
So we sat under a baobab tree somewhere in Auntie Sandra’s brand new three bedroom house, stared at the map, and drew the wildest detour imaginable.
We are flying the cars straight to Rabat, Morocco — then driving them BACK to West Africa the long, hard, magnificent way:
Algeria → Western Sahara → Mauritania → Senegal → The Gambia → Guinea → Sierra Leone → Liberia → Côte d’Ivoire → Burkina Faso → Ghana.
Thousands of extra kilometres. New deserts that eat tyres for breakfast. Borders where Ghanaian passports are mythological artefacts. But every kilometre will be a loud, defiant shout:
Africa is not too difficult. Africa is not too dangerous. Africa is not too complicated.
We are coming anyway.
Through sandstorms that blot out the sun. Through checkpoints manned by officers who have never seen Black tourists before.
Through villages where children will chase the convoy shouting “Obroni!” at their own Black uncles. Through rainforests, savannahs, and cities that throb with impossible life.
This is no longer just a campaign for a visa free Africa. This is a declaration of war on every excuse ever made for why Africans cannot travel Africa freely, and why the world should not bother coming.
The Trans Africa Tourism & Unity Campaign — led by an unapologetic disciple of Kwame Nkrumah — is not cancelled. It is not paused. It is being reborn, tougher, angrier, and more determined than ever.
After two weeks grounded in Zambia, nursing a broken car and a bruised dream, we are finally ready to take this fight to North Africa.
See you in Morocco next week — by grit, by grace, and by the stubborn blood of this continent running through our veins.
And when we finally roll back into Accra, covered in the dust of more than thirty African nations, let the whole world know:
No accident, no visa officer, no closed ferry, no price tag on earth can stop an African who has decided that this continent will tell its own damn story.
Pack your bags, Africa. Your most stubborn children are coming home — the long, mad, beautiful way.
See you on the road.
Ras Mubarak: Former MP | Pan-Africanist | Leader, Trans Africa Tourism & Unity Campaign:
December 2025 – Somewhere between Lusaka and the sky.
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