Nigeria opens Black Festival

Nigeria has launched its first Black Heritage Festival, with the aim of showing its dance, drama, music and slave trade history to an international audience.

The festival is being held in Badagry, one of the main ports used between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries at the height of the slave trade.

Among those attending the opening were Nigerians, African-Americans resident in Nigeria, and a group of about 50 visiting American mayors.

The festivities began with a carnival prade of masked dancers, some re-enacting the capture of slaves and their passage to the ships that would carry them across the Atlantic.

Later attractions will include a display of African wrestling, a regatta and film show.

From the newsroom of the BBC World Service