Opinion
Ghana: A place for African Americans, people of African descent to resettle
“It’s good to know that you came from some place and it’s not just a figment of someone’s imagination,” he says.
Claudette Chamberlain shares Thompson’s feelings of belonging. She was born in Jamaica but lived in the United States and United Kingdom. Seven years ago, she moved to Ghana and built a 5-bed guesthouse at Prampram.
“When I got off the plane, I just had this overwhelming feeling come over me,” Claudette says, adding that she realized then that Ghana was the place she wanted to be. She misses her mother and siblings who still live in London but she does not miss London. “Ghana is definitely home, I am going to spend the rest of my days here.”
Chamberlain, a former dentist, says while her native Jamaica is more beautiful, it is not as peaceful as Ghana.
Currently, there are around 200 million people in the Americas identifying themselves as of African descent, according to the United Nations. Millions more live in other parts of the world, outside of the African continent, and in most cases they experience racism and discrimination.
To promote the respect for and protection of their human rights, the UN General Assembly proclaimed 2015–2024 as the “The International Decade for the People of African Descent”, to be marked annually on 25 March.
Right of Abode
Ghana, from whose shores the majority of 15 million Africans passed into slavery, has invited its descendants in the diaspora to return home. The country has had a long history, from the days of its first president, Kwame Nkrumah, of encouraging the return of persons of African descent to help with the continent’s development. In 2000, the country passed a law on the ‘Right of Abode’, which allows a person of African descent to apply and be granted the right to stay in Ghana indefinitely.
And recently, the country set up a Diaspora Affairs Bureau under the foreign affairs ministry to provide a sustainable link between the Ghanaian diaspora and various government agencies to achieve development and investment goals.
But it has not been so simple for African Americans and Afro Caribbeans in Ghana. Only Rita Marley, wife of late reggae icon Bob Marley, has been granted the indefinite stay, and that happened only last year. Those who applied years ago are yet to receive any response from the interior ministry, whose charter states that the process should take only 6 months.
“It is as if they don’t know that such a thing exists,” Thompson says of the personnel who handle the residency applications.
The Ghana Caribbean Association and the African American Association of Ghana say they are engaging the appropriate government department on the matter. But what Chamberlain wants, like many others with residency or work permits that are renewable every year or two, is a more permanent arrangement. She says: “I just feel I am coming home. So why should I be going through all this?”
