Affirmation: Ghana, in a call to African-Americans, offers money, land to Americans to escape ‘deadly’ racism
An article appearing in the online publication PopularSuperstars says Ghana offers black Americans land and money to Americans to avoid “deadly racism.”
Ghana, located in an area known as the Gold Coast of Africa, was the center of the transatlantic slave trade and the point of departure for slaves bound for America.
Last year, Ghana declared the “Year of Return” to appeal to African Americans to visit Ghana and become familiar with the continent of their ancestors. Barbara Oteng-Gyasi, Minister of Tourism, Art and Culture, said the program was a blessing to the economy and to the effort to boost Ghana’s tourism industry.
The BBC reported that Ghana attracted various celebrities in 2019, including model Naomi Campbell, actor Idris Elba, comedian Steve Harvey, and American rapper Cardi B.
To double its offering to African Americans, Ghana unveiled a program called “Beyond Return” this year. According to the online article quoted: “Ghana says to African Americans: ‘We will pay you to live in Ghana.'”
He said that Oteng-Gyasi “offered unhappy African Americans to come to Ghana.”
Related: “I’m leaving and I’m not coming back”: fed up with racism, African-Americans are heading abroad
An appeal to African Americans
Oteng-Gyasi’s openness to African Americans has been signaled, as his remarks in Accra in June point out at a ceremony honoring George Floyd, whose death at the hands of a Minneapolis police officer sparked weeks of protests in the United States. .
“Racism in the United States remains a deadly pandemic, for which for over 400 years our brothers and sisters in the United States of America have yearned for a cure,” he said.
“We continue to open our arms and invite all of our brothers and sisters home. Ghana is your home. Africa is your home, “Oteng-Gyasi said, according to Newsweek. We have open arms ready to welcome you home … Please take advantage, come home, build a life in Ghana. You don’t have to stay where you are not he is loved forever, you have a choice and Africa is waiting for you. “
Plus: In Ghana’s year of return, NAACP goes home on behalf of ancestors
What is “beyond return”?
According to the tourism authority’s “VisitGhana” website, “Beyond the Return” aims not only to promote tourism but also to foster diaspora economic relations, trade and investment in Africa and the world at large.
It lists seven “pillars” of the program, including “progressive transparent government regulations” to encourage investment; develop pilgrimage infrastructure around “memory sites”, promoting tourism; and creating a sense of national consciousness anchored in key cultural festivals.
The second pillar, aimed directly at potential migrants, “will be responsible for the adoption of legal and policy frameworks on the acquisition of visas (e-visas) and the institution of a diaspora visa. It will facilitate key diaspora programs, like citizenship, education and job exchange programs, residency and work permits. “
None of the pillars in this framework for “Beyond Return” includes any reference to giving land or money to potential immigrants.
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Comments from Ghanaian officials indicate that the Beyond the Return program aims to attract wealthier African Americans to encourage their investment in Ghana, rather than those who may need financial assistance.
“We believe that given the wealth of African Americans and African Americans, given that purchasing power, the travel budgets of blacks in the United States,” Akwasi Agyeman, CEO of the Ghana Tourism Authority, told Black Enterprise. “We felt it was time for us to start that conversation that, instead of moving to any other destination, he returned to his place of origin.”
Land handover is not part of the plan
Goodlet Owusu Ansah, a master’s student in International Business at Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology and the author of hospitality and tourism research, calls “Beyond the Return” a “safe haven for the African business diaspora as she seeks to financially stimulate Ghana economy. “
“However, references to commitments in the form of financial gains and land distribution are objectively incorrect. In general, land ownership is owned by local ethnic groups and, as such, it will be very difficult for the government to participate in such gestures in the first instance, “he tells USA TODAY.
“Although, the Dwelling Rights bill was born in 2000, where Ghanaian citizenship was open to those in need, there is no proclamation supporting land and monetary donations, and Beyond the Return has not changed this either.” She says. “What the government can do is speed up land acquisition processes for those who need it.”
Rashad McCrorey, an American businessman and writer who founded Africa Cross-Culture, a return-to-Africa travel company that organizes trips to Egypt, Ghana, Kenya, Nigera and Rwanda, says it is wrong for an offer of “land and money” be part of the program.
“The belief that African Americans will receive free money and free land is a false rumor,” McCrorey, who was quarantined in Ghana during the coronavirus pandemic, told USA TODAY. “It appears that people mistook the tourism minister’s invitation for African-Americans to return home and ran with it and started spreading false information.”
Rabbi Kohain Halevi, director of PANAFEST, a cultural and theatrical event that attempts to unite Africans on the continent and in the diaspora around the issues raised by slavery, says he has never heard of any financial incentives being offered. African Americans or any member of the diaspora to return to Ghana.
Halevi, a member of the original Year of Return Committee, who was recently asked to join the Beyond the Return committee, tells USA TODAY that the only land-related issue she knows of is a tribal chief who has offered free land , but requires a registration fee for potential participants.
The Ghana embassy in the US, the Ghana Foreign Ministry and the Ghana Tourism Authority did not respond to questions about further details of the program.
Our finding: partially false
While the claim that Ghana is trying to attract African Americans is clearly true, there is no evidence that the country officially offers land or money. Instead, Ghana, by improving its financial regulations, and by offering help with visas, citizenship, and work permits, is looking for potential immigrants to invest in Ghana. We rate this claim as PARTIALLY FALSE.
Our sources of fact verification:
- Visit Ghana
- Black Enterprise
- BBC
- GhanaWeb.com
- Forbes
- Interviews with writer Rashad McCrorey and Rabbi Kohain Halevi
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