Africa: How a School Project in the Amazon Is Tracing Afro-Brazilian Ancestry Back to Africa's Great Empires

What the report says

In Alcântara, a quilombola municipality in Brazil’s Amazon region of Maranhão, a school initiative called Origens is helping students explore where their ancestors in Africa may have come from. The project, led by teacher Lucas Sousa, combines DNA testing, family and community oral history, and historical research to reconnect young people with lineages shaped by slavery and colonialism. Quilombola communities in Brazil are descended from Africans who resisted enslavement and formed independent settlements to protect their culture and land.

According to African Arguments, the students’ research pointed to ancestral links across West Africa, especially to the Gold Coast and Slave Coast areas, including the former Kingdom of Dahomey in present-day Benin. Other results suggested connections to Senegambia and to historical societies and empires such as Mali, Jolof and Kaabu. The article says the findings broadened the students’ understanding of Africa, showing it not as a distant place of origin alone, but as a continent with varied histories and political and cultural traditions.

The report also notes that the project created a stronger connection between local Afro-Brazilian culture and African history. In Maranhão, traditions such as Tambor de Mina are tied to enslaved Africans and their descendants, and the article highlights historical memory around figures linked to that practice. For students, the exercise was presented as both personal and educational: it recovered erased histories, underlined the scale of the Atlantic slave trade, and encouraged some participants to imagine visiting the African regions identified in their research.