MPI: West African Countries Offer Citizenship to Descendants of Enslaved Africans
2026/09/02 Leave a comment
Of note. C-3 offers citizenship to similarly multi-generational descendants albeit in a different context:
An increasing number of West African countries are offering citizenship to the descendants of enslaved Africans. Government initiatives since 2016 have made obtaining citizenship and living on the African continent more appealing to members of the historic diaspora, many of whom are in the United States. Yet some initiatives have also been criticized for requirements that applicants submit a DNA test to prove their ancestry, and a tension has emerged between visions of these processes as drivers of development versus as restorative justice for the horrors of the slave trade.
As of this writing, at least 1,213 people had received citizenship through these policies in Ghana, Sierra Leone, Benin, and Guinea-Bissau, with the vast majority receiving Ghanaian citizenship, according to publicly available data from news outlets and civil-society organizations. There are no centralized data for citizenships granted to diaspora members, so the actual number may be higher.
The diaspora members receiving citizenship have predominately been African Americans from the United States, although people from Canada, the United Kingdom, and countries in the Caribbean have also received citizenship.1 Among these new citizens are some famous names: Music legend Stevie Wonder received citizenship in Ghana, and singer Ciara and movie director Spike Lee received citizenship in Benin, with Lee also named an ambassador to help market Benin’s citizenship initiative.2 Additional African countries without formal diaspora citizenship programs have nonetheless offered citizenship to African American celebrities, including Gabon’s offer to Hollywood star Samuel L. Jackson and Guinea’s naturalization of actors Meagan Good and Jonathan Majors.3
Although diaspora return policies target both emigrants and their descendants who have ancestral ties to the country, these new citizenship initiatives overwhelmingly focus on the latter. Several factors are driving this rise in historic diaspora citizenship, including individuals’ interest in reconnecting with their ancestral homeland, concerns about growing racism and far-right rhetoric in Western countries, and increasing attention to reparatory justice.4 In this context, African citizenship is framed as one method of addressing the injustices created by the transatlantic slave trade….
Source: West African Countries Offer Citizenship to Descendants of Enslaved Africans
