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Ghana: The year of return!
In the heart of Accra, the capital of Ghana, a few meters f rom the United States Embassy, are the graves of the African-American W.E.B. Du Bois, a prominent figure in the civil rights movement, and his wife Shirley. . The founder of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People in the United States, settled in Accra in 1961 in the neighborhood of Labone, a quiet residential area where he lived until his death in August 1963.
Mr. Du Bois's return to Ghana was perhaps the manifestation of a deep desire among Africans in the diaspora to return to their roots and return to the continent. From the 16th to the 19th century, Ghana was one of the major hubs of the transatlantic slave trade.
In September 2018 in Washington, Nana Akufo-Addo, President of Ghana, officially launched “The Year of Return, Ghana 2019” for Africans in the diaspora, to give new impetus to the quest for unity of Africans on the continent with their brothers and sisters in the diaspora.
At the event, President Akufo-Addo said, “We know about the extraordi- nary achievements and contributions of [Africans in the Diaspora] to the lives of Americans. It is important, 400 years later, to commemorate this symbolic year and to pay homage to their existence and their sacrifices”. Two members of the US Congress, Gwen Moore from Wisconsin and Sheila Jackson Lee from Texas, diplomats and prominent figures from the Af rican American community attended the event.
Ms. Jackson Lee recalled that the initiative of the Ghanaian govern- ment came at the same time as the adoption by Congress, in 2017, of the Act establishing a Commission on 400 Years of African American History (400 Years of African American History). -American History Commission Act). This law provides in particular for the creation of a commission to set up and finance the activities which will mark the 400th anniversary of "the arrival of Africans in the English colonies in 1619 at Point Comfort in Virginia".
Since the country gained independence in 1957, Ghana's rulers have all adopted policies aimed at attracting Af ricans f rom abroad to Ghana.
In his inaugural speech on the country's independence, then Prime Minister Kwame Nkrumah already sought to place the return of Af ricans f rom all over the world to Af rica within the larger f ramework of the struggle for the liberation of the continent. .
"Nkrumah saw black Americans as the vanguard of the Af rican people," says Henry Louis Gates Jr., Director of the Hutchins Center for African and African American Research at Harvard, who first visited Ghana. at 20, just graduated from Harvard, his spirit burning with his faith in Nkrumah. "He wanted to use the services and skills of African Americans as Ghana moved f rom colonialism to independence."
In 2000, the Ghanaian parliament passed a Citizenship Act making dual citizenship possible. People of Ghanaian descent who have another nation- ality can now acquire Ghanaian citizenship if they wish. The same year, the country adopted an Immigration Law which provides for any "person of the diaspora who is of African descent", a "right of residence" by virtue of which the entry and the exit of the territory are made. "Unhindered".
Why Ghana?
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