Welcome Home: Ghana Reconnects Diaspora with Citizenship Drive for National Growth

By nurturing a sense of shared heritage, African countries can encourage the diaspora to contribute to the continent's future.

Ghana is leading the way for Africa’s reconnection with its diaspora, transforming history into a powerful source of strength and opportunity. In 2019, the country launched the landmark "Year of Return", commemorating 400 years since enslaved Africans were first taken to Virginia, and welcomed thousands of descendants back to their ancestral home. Building on that emotional milestone, Ghana rolled out "Beyond the Return", an ambitious ten-year campaign to deepen diaspora ties through investment, cultural exchange, and community building. The momentum reached new heights in November 2024, when 524 members of the diaspora were granted Ghanaian citizenship in a vibrant ceremony.

To explore Ghana’s bold approach to diaspora engagement, African Currents spoke with Dr. Akpeko Agbevade, Senior Lecturer in Political Science at the University of Ghana, Legon. He traced these efforts to Pan-African ideals rooted in past cultural movements and explained how they have revived Ghana’s global profile.

"Ghana's approach to diaspora engagement can be traced back to the politico-cultural movements of Pan-Africanism - a political and a cultural phenomenon that regards Africa, Africans and people of African descent abroad as a unit. This idea of Pan-Africanism can be traced back to the 19th and then the 20th century, when a range of Black intellectuals and politicians struggled against racism, colonization, and imperialism [...]. When Ghana returned to multi-party democracy in 1993, the government adopted what you call the Panafest - a Pan-African Historical Theatre Festival, aiming at bring African-Americans and Ghanaians together," Dr. Agbevade said.

Moreover, Mohammed Suhuyini Zakaria, a public policy and government relations consultant at Speyside in Accra, Ghana, said that Ghana’s citizenship program has strengthened its economy and positioned the country as a leading destination for heritage tourism.

"If you look at the country [Ghana] as a whole you realize that tourism is one of the major contributors to our GDP [...]. It brought in a total of about 1.9 billion Ghana Cedis from visitors of over 1.1 million. And if you look at it from the cultural diplomacy point, one as a country and in a global village, long-term effects of an initiative like this are: One: that we are going to be able to position ourselves as a country that hosts every investor, every diasporan who is welcomed to grow in this particular country. Two: the other side of it is that it gives us access to resources to develop the country," Zakaria noted.

To find out what else our guests had to say, tune in to the African Currents podcast, brought to you by Sputnik Africa.

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