Ikaze East African Market, located at 2515 S Smithville Rd in Dayton, Ohio, stands as a renowned center for traditional African grocery needs. This market offers a diverse array of fresh products directly imported from Africa. Known for its authenticity, Ikaze East African Market has garnered attention from shoppers both within and outside Ohio, all eager to experience the true flavors of their culture.
As a trusted source for African groceries, Ikaze East African Market prides itself on providing customers with the freshest and highest quality products. Anita Nzigiye, the owner, shared her story of immigrating from Rwanda in 2007 and becoming a citizen in 2014. She opened the store in March 2020, right at the start of the pandemic.
“Much of the food we sell comes from East Africa," Nzigiye explains. "We even get our eggplants from Africa. They are similar to the eggplant you have here, but smaller."
Nzigiye observed that she used to rarely see African immigrants in Dayton but says more are arriving every week, building a customer base for her store and a built-in welcoming committee for new arrivals.
The market offers a variety of staples, including palm oil, rice, corn flour, and cassava flour, often sold in large quantities to cater to the preferences of African customers who prefer less frequent shopping trips.
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Ikaze East African Market also boasts a wide selection of fish, catering to the preferences of customers from the Congo, who particularly enjoy fish. The market offers dried, salted, frozen, and fresh tilapia, among other varieties.
Additionally, the market sells green bananas, known as plantains, which are boiled and fried as a popular dish. Nzigiye also recommends Soso Cuisine, a recently opened Rwandan restaurant in West Carrollton, encouraging customers to try their sambusas.
The arrival of new immigrants has given a welcome boost to the aging community. “Families were buying these abandoned houses and fixing them up immediately, occupying them,” Tepper says. “So Old North Dayton doesn’t have the - quote - abandonment problem that a lot of urban areas had.”
Dayton's welcoming environment extends beyond just business. The city launched the "Welcome Dayton" initiative in 2011 to integrate newcomers into the local community and make services more accessible. According to City Commissioner Matt Joseph, the goal is to create a welcoming place for everyone. He even has business cards printed in Spanish, Mandarin, and Croatian.
The city’s Welcome Dayton office has three full-time staffers who spend part of their time mediating between immigrants and longtime residents to prevent small conflicts from spiraling into something bigger. Recent cases involved people parking their car on the grass instead of the driveway and drying their clothes on the bushes. A quiet conversation in the right language can make a big difference. “When those small things become a huge monumental mountain, Welcome Dayton has been instrumental in putting them back to mole-sized hills,” Tepper says.
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Anita Nzigiye's story and Ikaze East African Market exemplify how immigrants contribute to the economic and cultural vitality of Dayton, Ohio. The market not only provides essential goods but also serves as a gathering place, fostering connections and preserving cultural heritage within the growing East African community.
The foreign-born population in Dayton, like Ohio as a whole, is still relatively small - about 5%, compared to a national average of nearly 14%. But Dayton’s immigrant community has grown large enough to be noticeable in some areas. At Kiser Elementary School, for example, 40% of students now speak a native language other than English. Instructions on the walls are printed in Spanish, Turkish and the central African language of Kinyarwanda.
City Commissioner Joseph acknowledges there are costs associated with providing services to the new arrivals, and he wishes his city had more control over things like work permits. On the whole, though, Joseph says Dayton has prospered by reaching out to immigrants rather than turning them away. “This is the best the city has done in 50 years - since before I was born,” Joseph says.
Dayton’s lure: Low cost of living and abundant jobs. Those are the same qualities that drew waves of European immigrants and Black workers from the South to Dayton in the last century.
“We want good workers,” she says. “We want people who can grow here and grow us to the next level. And we’re open to looking wherever that could be.”
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Over the last 12 months, nearly 1.5 million foreign-born workers have joined the labor force - legally or illegally. Were it not for immigration, job growth likely would have stalled. And that’s doubly true in places like Dayton - an aging industrial city with a population that’s half the size it was in 1960.
Matt Tepper and Jennifer Evans are active in the Old North Dayton Neighborhood Association. "No matter how you got here, if you're in front of me, I'm going to deal with you positively," says Evans, who grew up in the neighborhood.
That friendly co-existence between new and old residents is a stark contrast with the ominous picture of immigrants that former President Donald Trump and his running-mate JD Vance like to paint. To be sure, many Americans from across the political spectrum would like to see changes in national immigration policy. Evans says she would too. But however people make their way to Dayton, she tries to make them feel welcome, and thinks most of her neighbors feel the same way.
“I’d be lying if I said there was never anybody that said, ‘I don’t want all these new people in my neighborhood,’” Evans says. “I’m sure there are still some people here that would prefer it to be the way it was 60 years ago. But it just isn’t. For the most part, we’re all working together to make us all stronger.”
In a survey last year, 57% of Dayton residents said they’d be happy to have an immigrant family next door. That’s down from 70% three years ago. City officials suspect hostile rhetoric from national politicians is partly to blame for the decline.
It’s not just Casella’s company. economy humming. About 10% of the 300-plus employees at FC Industries in Dayton are foreign-born. "We've always prided ourselves on being very diverse," says HR manager Beth Casella, whose grandfather Frank started the company more than 50 years ago.
Finding workers to sustain that growth has not been easy, especially since the pandemic, in a city where the unemployment rate is just 5%. Casella has relied in part on immigrants, who now make up about 10% of FC Industries’ 300-plus-person workforce. “We’ve always prided ourselves on being very diverse,” Casella says. “Three of my grandparents were immigrants.” The company has partnered with a local refugee resettlement agency to help recruit workers. Bilingual employees are paid extra to act as translators, and the company is setting up an English class. It’s not altruism, Casella says. Just good business.
Since the Taliban’s takeover of Afghanistan three years ago, more than 100 other Afghans have settled in Dayton. Ahmadi calls it a second chance to rebuild their lives.
Scott Horsley“I started with one truck,” Ahmadi says. “I have nine trucks now. I have a total of 10 drivers. And I have three dispatchers. And I have a guy working in my office too.”
After working for a time as a home health aide, she opened a market with her family, selling east African groceries to the growing community of African transplants. “It’s basically food from home,” Nzigiye says of popular items such as smoked fish from Tanzania and specialty flours made from cassava and yams.
“The housing is affordable,” Nzigiye says. “Even if their English may not be their first language, they can still find a job.”
In this elementary school, 40% of students speak a native language other than English. The foreign-born population in Dayton, like Ohio as a whole, is still relatively small - about 5%, compared to a national average of nearly 14%.
Instructions on the walls are printed in Spanish, Turkish and the central African language of Kinyarwanda.
Dayton rolls out the welcome mat for immigrantsWhile nearby Springfield, Ohio, has become a lightning rod in the national debate over immigration, Dayton has been working for more than a decade to lure more immigrants, to help fill jobs and revitalize old neighborhoods.
“Most of the people who complained about it came from out of town,” he recalls. “Sometimes out of state. Like, they would drive hours to come to our meeting to complain about it. But native Daytonians didn’t, which I was really proud of.”
A group of ethnic Turks from Russia and Ukraine converted an old funeral home into a mosque. It shares a parking lot with the Polish social club next door. Luckily, the growing crowd at Friday prayers typically clears out just as happy hour at the social club is getting underway.
In retirement Bill Franz bought a camera, learned how to use it, and became a volunteer photographer. In 2013 Bill started a project of his own - photographing people at work. Since then he has photographed hundreds of workers, from butchers and bakers and candy makers to clowns and sculptors and fire eaters. The photos have appeared in solo and group art exhibitions and also in less traditional venues such as hospitals, retail stores, nature centers and breweries. They have been seen by hundreds of thousands of people.
Dayton dubs itself an "immigrant friendly city" and launched a program in 2011 to make services more accessible to newcomers and integrate them into the local community.
Immigrants have brought newfound variety to Dayton's retail scene, serving newcomers and longtime residents alike. "Now we have the opportunity to be able to go in there and buy things we've never seen before," says Dayton native Jennifer Evans.
Dayton, Ohio, launched an effort in 2011 to become more welcoming to immigrants. Backers say the newcomers have benefited the city, which was losing population for decades.
Ahmadi calls it a second chance to rebuild their lives. Ahmadi spent a year working at Payless Shoes, then got a job as a truck driver. He now owns his own trucking company and employs 14 other people.
