﻿WHY GHANA IS ATTRACTING SO MANY AFRICAN AMERICANS
INTRO The first enslaved Africans
from West Africa arrived in the United States 400 years ago. fast forward to the 21st century and
many of our lost people are seeking their roots, they are seeking to return to the motherland.
The land of their ancestors. 2019 was declared the year of return by Ghana's president,
Nana Akufo-Addo. It praised African Americans' fortitude and encouraged
people to return to Africa, visit, apply for Ghanaian citizenship, and invest in the country.
Ceremonies of naming and healing, visits to historical locations, musical performances,
lectures, investment forums, and relocation conferences were among the events. The effort,
according to the tourism ministry, earned $1.9 billion in tourism earnings.
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EMANCIPATION OF SLAVES Following the abolition of
slavery in the United States and elsewhere in the Americas, numerous movements for African-American
settlement in Africa arose and faded in popularity, many of them involving the colonies
that would eventually combine to form Liberia, such as Maryland in Africa, Kentucky in Africa,
Mississippi in Africa, and others. Martin Delany, an African-American abolitionist and Army officer,
later backed a plot to bring African-Americans to Liberia. However, by the end of the nineteenth
century, it had faded due to a series of hoaxes and fraudulent acts linked to the movement.
With Jamaican activist Marcus Garvey and his Universal Negro Improvement Association and
African Communities League, who promoted racial pride among African-Americans in the United States
and pushed for the repatriation of slave descendants to Liberia and Sierra Leone,
the Back-to-Africa movement regained popularity. The movement disbanded by the end of the 1920s,
but it influenced both the Nation of Islam and the Rastafari movement. The latter,
led by a Jamaican who saw Ethiopian Emperor Haile Selassie I as a reincarnation of Jesus
and Garvey as a patron saint, was able to establish a settlement in Shashamane,
which still exists today and numbers over 200 people out of a city of 95,000.
GHANA’S CONNECTION WITH AFRICAN AMERICANS The link between Ghana and African Americans
is not new. When Ghana became the first sub-Saharan African country to gain independence
from a colonial power in 1957, it became a source of inspiration for African Americans.
Ghana's independence also boosted the Pan African movement, which promotes unity among all African
diaspora ethnic groups in order to gain political and economic power, among other reasons.
Non-American members of Ghana's administration became sceptical of Nkrumah's principles as
Black American expatriates became involved in the government. They chastised immigrants for being
handed high-ranking government positions upon their arrival in Ghana. This suspicion produced
a great deal of friction between Ghanaians and African Americans in the administration.
There was an assassination attempt on Nkrumah in 1962 because of the widespread
suspicion. Tensions grew to the point where "concerns about possible CIA infiltration,
a severe economic downturn, and Nkrumah's apparent support for a petty bourgeoisie
led to the National Liberation Council's 1966 military coup d'etat,"which not only
publicly opposed Nkrumah but also weakened the African-American expatriate community.
The fact that Ghanaian slave exports to the Americas were so important between the 16th
and 19th centuries, as journalist Lydia Polgreen reported in The New York Times,
has prompted Ghana to try to entice descendants of enslaved Africans from the Americas to return
to the country and make it their new home – though not all are of Ghanaian descent.
Thousands of African Americans now live in Ghana for at least part of the year,
according to Valerie Papaya Mann, president of the African American Association of Ghana. Ghana
agreed to provide African Americans a special visa in 2005 to stimulate migration or at least visits,
but it has not granted them dual citizenship. Fourteen years later, African-American author
Jacqueline Woodson recounted her first visit to Ghana in The New York Times,
when she discovered "a major marketing effort called 'Year of Return.'" Woodson expressed
her desire to return to Ghana, but not to live there year-round; she is not African,
but African American. She also questions if today's societal inequities in Ghana are the
result of the same attitude that allowed blacks to sell other blacks to whites in the past.
Martin Luther King Jr. visited Ghana to commemorate the country's defeat of colonialism,
and Malcolm X and Maya Angelou worked in Ghana under Kwame Nkrumah's presidency. W.E.B.
Dubois died as a Ghanaian citizen in Ghana, and the W.E.B. Du Bois Memorial
Center for Pan-African Culture is now located in Accra. Marcus Garvey,
a well-known Jamaican Pan-Africanist, campaigned for African Americans
to return to Africa. He formed the Black Star Line to assist black people in returning to Africa,
hence the black star on the Ghanaian flag and the national football team's name.
GHANA’S PLAN Genealogy tourism, also
known as roots tourism, is a part of the tourism business made up of visitors with family ties to
their vacation destination. These genealogy travelers visit their ancestors' homelands
in order to reconnect with their history and "walk in their predecessors' footsteps."
Genealogy tourism is a global industry, although it is more prevalent in nations that have had
major emigration at some point in their history and hence have a big diaspora community.
Following the publication of Alex Haley's best-selling book Roots: The Saga of an
American Family in 1976, many African Americans and other diaspora Africans in the Americas
were inspired to journey to their ancestral African homelands. Cape Coast and Elmina in Ghana,
Goree Island in Senegal, Juffureh in Gambia, and Bahia in Brazil are all popular destinations.
The promise for tourism development in Africa was recognized by African governments.
Following the African African-American summit in 1999, the biannual Pan-African Historical
Theatre Festival, Emancipation Day celebrations, and Juneteenth, successive governments in Ghana
have made attempts through the Ministry of Tourism to lure Diaspora Africans to Ghana.
Ghana's Year of Return campaign aimed to not only maintain but also deepen this relationship.
The project is part of a bigger plan to reduce Ghana's reliance on aid
by attracting African American enterprise and investment,
among other things. President Akufo-broader Addo's development program, dubbed "Ghana
Beyond Aid," aims to attain self-sufficiency and break free from the reliance paradigm.
Ghana, according to Akufo-Addo, does not require foreign help; rather, the African
diaspora ought to return, create, and invest. His agenda was embraced by the United Nations
Sustainable Development Partnership (UNSDP) as part of its African development strategy.
Ghana is in a good position to reduce its reliance on help.
Ghana was awarded $1.25 billion in official development assistance or ODA in 2017. In 2017,
this amounted to only 2.1 percent of Ghana's $59 billion GDP. ODA refers to government assistance
that supports and especially targets the economic growth
and welfare of developing nations; it does not include military or anti-terrorism actions.
Furthermore, Ghana has already attracted significant foreign investment. For example,
French foreign direct investments in Ghana totaled $10.5 million in 2017, for a total stock of $1.7
billion, and China will have started work on a $2 billion infrastructure project in Ghana. African
Americans, on the other hand, will have programs tailored to their needs. The president announced
the formation of "Beyond the Return: The Diaspora Dividend," a multi-million dollar fund to solicit
investment from members of the African diaspora, as part of "Ghana Beyond Aid." Special diaspora
investment programs, Sankofa Savings accounts, and diaspora housing schemes will be part of it.
The African diaspora will be able to invest in "tourist infrastructure, agro value addition,
real estate, music, culture, and retirement homes," according to the ministry of finance.
There is no language barrier for African Americans in Ghana, and the country has a transparent legal
structure and economic environment, making it a safe and reliable investment location.
Ghana is also the only country that, under its Right to Abode statute, grants people of African
heritage the legal right to remain in the country indefinitely. Ghana removed a number of procedural
impediments during the Year of Return, granting citizenship to one hundred African Americans
solely on the basis of their African ancestry. Barbara Oteng-Gyasi, Ghana's minister of tourism,
exhorted African Americans to "return home, make a life in Ghana" at a memorial service
for George Floyd. Ghana's seduction of African Americans has evolved from one of solidarity in
the face of black persecution to one of business and investment.
Ghana is hoping to attract investors who are interested in the country's development,
and some African Americans may benefit directly from the association. Some African Americans may
accept Ghana's invitation because of accessible commercial prospects, a welcoming environment,
and the chance to escape behind racism and police violence and many African Americans have already
accepted this invitation. Another reason African americans are pouring into Ghana is because of
Ghana huge technology potential. Google in 2019 opened its first Africa Artificial Intelligence
lab in Ghana to provide developers with the necessary research needed to build products
that can solve problems that Africa faces today. This is Google's first AI research lab in Africa,
and the first from any tech firm, as far as we can tell,
beating Apple, Facebook, and Microsoft to the punch. Cisse the head of the initiative and Dean
his colleague said, "We're eager to combine our research interests in AI and machine learning with
our expertise in Africa to push the boundaries of AI while solving difficulties in sectors like
health care, agriculture, and education." The Google AI Center in Accra complements
Google's regional efforts. The organization claims that 10 million Africans have finished
its digital skills training program, and that its tech startup incubator,
Launchpad Accelerator Africa, is actively helping 100,000 developers across 60 businesses.
CONCLUSION It is truly amazing how Ghana
has managed to attract so many African americans to come to Ghana. These days, it is not uncommon
to find highschool students in the US who are applying to study in Ghana. Ghana also attracts
the working class US citizens who want to seek new frontiers in their respective carriers. The future
of Africa is bright and there’s no doubt that the bulk of that is going to come from Ghana. If you
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