Pitt student starts African community web site

If Ify Mkparu hopes to meet her parents’ expectations, she’ll need to get married soon. A… If Ify Mkparu hopes to meet her parents’ expectations, she’ll need to get married soon. A pharmacy school student at Duquesne University, Mkparu is from Nigeria, and she wants to marry another Nigerian.

“It’s typical to marry around my age. Usually women marry as soon as they’re done with school,” the 23-year-old, fifth-year pharmacy student said.

Mkparu said it’s been limiting and difficult to find suitable partners, but with a new dating and networking website that was developed by a Pitt student, Mkparu hopes to connect to more potential husbands.

Pitt senior Jack Nutugah launched myafricanconnect.com, a dating and networking site for Africans living abroad in the U.S. and Canada, just this past weekend. Africans often prefer to date and marry within their nationality, but finding dating and marriage partners can be difficult if none or few people from their country live in the area. Nutugah’s site aims to ease this process.

Nutugah, who moved from Ghana to the Philadelphia area in 2002, said the site allows users to create profiles for free. They can then upload photos and fill out basic info such as favorite foods, religion and languages they speak. Users also select their nationality from a list of 49 African countries.

There are many cultural differences involving language, food and traditions between African regions that make Africans more inclined to date within their nationality, Nutugah said, and it’s not uncommon for Africans to return to their home countries to date or get married. Long distance relationships are also typical in this scenario, but those can cause problems beyond the distance aspect.

“Sometimes you don’t know if that person who you’re talking to has your best interest, as in they really like you for who you are or they just want to come to the United States,” he said.

Nutugah has been working with the Union of African Communities to promote the site. The UAC is an organization that connects and fosters development among Pittsburgh’s and Allegheny County’s African communities. Rufus Idris, the secretary general of the UAC, said that same-nationality marriages are deeply rooted in tradition.

“In the African tradition, parents are very, very proud and most happy when they see that their kids … are able to connect with someone from their country or village,” Idris said.

According to Idris, the traditionis favored by older generations and younger ones. Younger Africans often feel more comfortable with someone of the same nationality, too. Marriage itself is also a valued custom.

“[Remaining unmarried] is not that much of a welcomed practice in African culture, because Africans believe so much in family,” Idris said. “Sometimes the situation makes you be single, but Africans love family. We cherish family.”

Nutugah began developing the site in January. While in New York City this past spring break, he was at a store and picked up a copy of African Abroad-USA, a newspaper for the African community living in the U.S., and read an article about the difficulty immigrant African women face in finding a husband in the U.S.

“I saw it and I felt like, ‘Wow, this newspaper is actually speaking to me.’ It substantiated what I had been working on for close to three months,” he said.

Nutugah held a website launch party Saturday night at the Mellon Institute in Oakland. About 40 people came out to support the project. Before Nutugah gave a presentation on the website, attendees took to the dance floor. Light from a multi-colored disco ball filled the room as a DJ played loud, upbeat African music. Afterward, Nutugah spoke about the site and talked about relationship difficulties a close relative of his experienced.

Nutugah had a family member living in the U.S. who began dating a man living in Ghana. The man later moved to the U.S. to be with her, but soon after, the relationship failed. The distance, expenses and the complexity of moving makes such relationships especially difficult and painful when they don’t work out, Nutugah said.

“She spent a lot of money with the immigration, with the plane ticket and the papers,” he said.

Pitt senior Clement Mokua, the operations manager for myafricanconnect.com, said that funding for the website had largely been out of pocket, but its creators hope to have African-run businesses, from restaurants to clothing shops, advertise on the site to promote the businesses as well as to generate funds.

The site also aims to provide a networking, idea and event-sharing forum. For example, Africans in one state might discover a Kenyan independence day celebration in another part of the U.S., Mokua explained. That group could then start a similar celebration in their community. Nutugah said students coming to the U.S. to study could use the site to find Africans in their area to help them adjust to the new culture.

Duquesne senior Dorcas Dadzie said she hopes to open an African restaurant specializing in Ghanaian food, and the site could help her promote it.

“People don’t get a lot of African food. It’ll be a platform for me to advertise and to tell people,” she said.

Mokua said he and his coworkers also hope to expand the site internationally, beyond the U.S. and Canada.

“There’s a huge African population in the U.K. I have [African] friends in Russia, China, Australia,” he said.