In 2019, Ghana launched the Year of Return to commemorate 400 years since the transatlantic slave trade began, inviting descendants of enslaved Africans to take the birthright journey home. When President Nana Akufo-Addo delivered a speech at Harvard University publicizing the initiative, he described it as being a step toward achieving an “Africa without Aid.”
In doing so, Ghana has moved from commemoration to a repeatable policy that is backed by immigration pathways, turning affective belonging into tourism, investment, and relocation. The Year of Return was promoted extensively across the United States, emphasizing themes such as shared ancestry, linked fate, and deep ancestral connections to Ghana.
The approach works, but implementation of the initiative has proven challenging. Citizenship application fees and processes are clear, though many are warned that approval is notoriously slow. For visas, high costs limit access for many potential participants with modest financial resources. For example, returning Ghanaians pay around $180 for the Right of Abode, while Black Americans and other non–West African diaspora pay roughly twice that. West African nationals seeking permanent residency pay about $360, whereas Black Americans pay closer to $480, neither include additional fees for dependents. These obstacles offer important lessons for other sub-Saharan African governments seeking to adapt Ghana’s approach.
Why Black Americans Leave
Black American migration has historically been driven by structural racism and economic inequality. This has prompted movement not only within the United States but also abroad—from Liberia in the 1800s to today’s renewed interest in Ghana. Across the Caribbean, Africa, and beyond, emigration has consistently served as a response to structural racism, economic inequality, and the search for dignity.
In recent decades, renewed migration trends reflect persistent experiences of inequality and marginalization for Black Americans, experiences that may complicate a collective sense of belonging. These dynamics echo earlier movements chronicled by historians like Nell Irvin Painter and Isabel Wilkerson, migrations driven by a search for safety, dignity, and opportunity when life in the United States becomes untenable.
Podcasts, commentaries, and media coverage about Black American motives for moving to Ghana suggest that today’s question has shifted. It is not so much why Black Americans leave, but where they choose to go.
From Affective Belonging to Policy
Citizenship-by-investment programs monetize belonging while channeling foreign capital into national development. Ghana’s “Beyond Aid” strategy reflects these dynamics, seeking to reduce dependence on international donors by mobilizing diaspora resources. This raises an important question: what motivates Black Americans to invest in a country where ancestral links are often uncertain?
Black Americans’ emotional connection to Ghana stems partly from its early independence years, when Kwame Nkrumah invited the Black diaspora to migrate to embody a vision of global Black unity and collective liberation, a call answered by figures like W.E.B. Du Bois and Maya Angelou.
These ideas reemerged through PANAFEST (1992), which promoted heritage tourism and cultural exchange, and later through the Joseph Project’s (2007) reframing of historical trauma as a call to reinvest in Africa’s growth. Ghana’s Immigration and Citizenship Acts (2000) marked a pivotal shift to formalize belonging, drawing on similar symbolic language to create legal pathways of inclusion for people of African descent.
“The Year of Return” epitomized this shift and positioned Ghana as a premier destination for Black American heritage seekers, with 750,000 U.S. visitors, 1,500 new immigrants, and $1.9 billion in revenue.
But who benefits from this return?
Who Gets to Belong, and on What Terms
Citizenship processing in Ghana has been slow, despite government actions to accelerate approvals, including granting citizenship to 524 members of the African diaspora, mostly Black American, in 2024. The proposed Homeland Return Bill aims to further streamline residency and citizenship pathways for “persons of African descent” who make financial contributions, reflecting a renewed commitment to pan-African unity.
Black American applicants are often perceived as more affluent than local Ghanaians, given Ghana’s per capita income of just over $2,000. This perception, combined with financial and bureaucratic barriers, means that wealthier returnees are typically better positioned to navigate the bureaucracy surrounding residency and citizenship, while others encounter opaque procedures, delays, and informal costs. Visa and citizenship processing timelines can be inconsistent, and unofficial payments are often needed to expedite applications. As such, citizenship and visas are granted more easily to those with capital and connections while less affluent diasporans face financial barriers that form a two-tiered system of belonging.
Housing and other living costs in Ghana have risen, particularly in urban areas. Without safeguards to ensure equitable access, these policies may reproduce economic inequalities. Further, these changes could commodify belonging to a point where solidarity and shared identity become unrecognizable.
Looking Ahead
Addressing these challenges requires policy measures that balance the economic potential of return migration with a genuine commitment to social inclusion and equitable development. The opportunity for sustained investment is substantial. Black Americans alone have a projected buying power of $1.7 trillion by 2030, and growing interest in Africa. However, they may look elsewhere if the exchange is purely transactional and worsens the lives of the local Ghanaians with whom they wish to build community.
Simplifying and standardizing application procedures offers one pathway to reduce reliance on informal payments and discretionary approvals. Establishing transparent fee structures and creating special provisions for applicants who may lack financial capital but demonstrate long-term commitment through the kind of community engagement that many Black Americans seek.
These reforms will require increased civil service capacity, reliable data systems, and stronger institutional coordination. They may also bring short-term revenue losses for individuals who collect informal fees and for the government before efficiency gains emerge. Yet strong institutions remain essential to scale current incentives and attract investment and talent, positioning Ghana as a pioneer in diaspora partnerships across Africa.
Ghana’s next chapter will hinge on turning the promise of belonging into the practice of effective, durable institutions. Similar efforts have emerged in Benin, Nigeria, Sierra Leone, and the African Union’s recent recognition of the diaspora as the “sixth region” of Africa. Refining these policies and the institutions that uphold them will help ensure that belonging becomes a genuine pathway open to all diaspora members while cultivating community for all.
True belonging will depend not on sentiment, but on the strength of the institutions that sustain it.