By Owei Lakemfa
History was made. It was the United Nations International Day of Women and Girls of African Descent. Benin Republic chose this Day of Saturday July 26, 2025 to implement its new nationality initiative for diaspora and Black individuals. The law, passed on September 2, 2024, grants Beninese citizenship to descendants of African ancestors sold and transported during the transatlantic slave trade.
All that is required of the Black person anywhere in the world to become a Benin citizen is to be at least 18 years old, not hold citizenship of another African country, and have proven African descent through DNA test, or other forms of authenticated proof.
Benin Republic picked Grammy Award-winning R&B singer and entrepreneur, Ciara Wilson, as the first recipient in the world to become its citizen under the law that promises to positively affect relations between the mother African continent and descendants of the approximately 12.5 million Africans forcibly transported across the Atlantic Ocean over a 400-year period. About two million of those transported died during the journey.
Despite the centuries that separate that period and today, the wish of millions in the diaspora is to return home to Africa. That huge mass of human beings have the knowledge, skills and funds that can transform Africa into a First World. But, mainly, the poor vision of African leaders and their lack of will continue to frustrate this.
However, the African Union, AU, has tried to redress this by formally recognising the Diaspora as its sixth region in 2003. It has also tried to work out a formal framework to ensure its participation and to address how its decisions can be implemented in the diaspora. However, the process has been stalled for over two decades.
Ciara, who became the first American to ever grace the Rolling Stone Africa magazine cover, and the first person to feature on its maiden French-language edition, said of the investiture: “I feel incredibly proud to be a Benin citizen. This is more than symbolic, this is deeply personal, and I cannot wait to go home and show my family this beautiful certificate. The significance of this moment is so powerful. My daughters will see their mother honoured in this way, and so will my sons and husband.”
Many may not understand how urgent Africa needs to link up with the diaspora. For instance, of the 66 territories still under colonialism, many, like Guadalope and Martinique, are Black. Ironically, one of the greatest Pan Africanists in world history, Franz Fanon, author of the “The Wretched of the Earth,” who in the 1950s-1960s fought for the liberation of Algeria, was given to us by Martinique. How wonderful and beautiful would it be, if the Africa of the 21st Century were to repay that historical debt by assisting Martinique to become an independent country.
At the “The Forgotten Peoples: International Conference to Decolonize the World” held in Abuja, August 12-13, 2024 one of the main demands of the Caribbean and United States delegations was the right of all Black people to citizenship of African countries. This is in continuation of the “Back to Africa” movement by Blacks in the diaspora which began in the 1700s. It carries in its bowels, the desire of millions of Black people to return home. This was the primary aim of Marcus Garvey who famously said: “A people without the knowledge of their past history, origin and culture is like a tree without roots.”
In what can be said to be experimental, 15,000 freed African-Americans made their way to Liberia and resettled there in 1847.
Ghana, perhaps given its deep Pan Africanist traditions built by Kwame Nkrumah, leads in this common sense possibility of integrating the diaspora with Africa. Nkrumah had in stating that an African need not be born in the continent, famously declared: “I am not African because I was born in Africa but because Africa was born in me.”
Ghana has its policy of granting long stays and even citizenship to people of African descent, especially from the United States and the Caribbean.
In 2015, I attended a Pan African conference in Accra, Ghana where a number of African-Americans, while commending Ghana’s role in welcoming them, complained that the journey to their citizenship was very slow.
It was therefore heartening that in late 2024, then Ghanaian President Akufo-Addo granted citizenship to 524 diaspora African, most of them, African-Americans.
One of the most famous families which relocated to Ghana was the Bob Marley family. Led by the matriarch, Rita Marley, the family moved to Ghana in the 1990s, and Mama Rita in 2013, became a Ghanaian citizen. She also adopted the Ghanaian name, Nana Afua Adobea. When over a decade ago, I lived in Ghana, I passed by the gates of her home in Aburi on my way to the beautiful Aburi Gardens.
Another famous American who gained African citizenship is the rapper and actor, Christopher Brian Bridges, famously known as Ludacris whose wife Eudoxie Mbouguiengue is Gabonese. He picked up the citizenship of that country.
Other African countries that are encouraging Africans in the diaspora to take up African citizenship include Sierra Leone which under its encouraging descendants policy, offers citizenship to all those who can prove their lineage. Its aim is to reunite the diaspora with their ancestral African home.
South Africa, which, in comparison with many African countries has since Apartheid was defeated in 1994, had a visionary leadership, offers free citizenship to African Americans. Zimbabwe has also made its citizenship process for African Americans simple by reducing or eliminating obstacles such as long residency requirements and bureaucratic procedures.
Kenya allows persons of proven Kenyan ancestry or long term legal residents to become citizens.
Interestingly, a country like Nigeria, ‘The Giant of Africa’, is still sleeping. It is yet to awake to the realities of the continent and the need to fast-track not just African, but also diaspora integration. All its constitution allows is dual citizenship which is not even targeted at persons in the diaspora of African origins.
In the geo-politics of the world with the American establishment throwing out coloured migrants and imposing high tariffs on various countries, genocide in Gaza, punitive sanctions against countries and the nuclear race, it is important for Africa to leverage on its various advantages. A major part are the Black populations in North America and Latin America, Europe and the Pacific.
In his famous 1977 “African” song, Peter Tosh, left us with the imperishable lyrics: “So don’t care where you come from as long as you’re a Black man, you’re an African. No mind your nationality, you have got the identity of an African”
