Ghanaian president Nana Akufo-Addo conferred citizenship Wednesday to 126 Afrodescendent residents as part of the country’s ongoing ‘Year of Return’. His office said the diasporic immigrants had lived in Ghana for many years.
The president told the newly inducted citizens at a conferment ceremony that he was “glad [they] decided to make Ghana [their] home and thereby join several generations of Diasporans, who committed their lives” to the country.
Akufo-Addo made not of the many prominent members of the African diaspora who had chosen to make Ghana their home,George Padmore, Bob Marley’s widow, Rita, Maya Angelou, and W.E.B du Bois, the latter of whom is buried in the country.
The ceremony was one of many that the country has hosted this year aimed at addressing the legacy of the transatlantic slave trade and welcoming the descendants of its victims to return to West African shores.
The president told attendees his country recognized that three in four of the region’s historic slave dungeons, which served as export points for the slave trade’s human cargo, were located in Ghana.
