Ghana Wants Once-Enslaved Diaspora to Come Home

released on 12/27/05 at 09:40:28

CAPE COAST, Ghana For centuries, Africans walked through the infamous “door of no return” at Cape Coast castle directly into slave ships, never to set foot in their homelands again.

These days, the portal of this massive and fearsome edifice has a new name, hung for all to see on a sign on the side leading in from the roaring Atlantic Ocean back into the slave fort: “The door of return.”

Ghana, through whose ports millions of Africans passed on their way to plantations in the United States, Latin America and the Caribbean, wants its descendants to come back.

Taking Israel as its model, Ghana hopes to persuade the descendants of enslaved Africans to think of Africa as their homeland, to visit, invest, send their children to be educated here and even retire here.

To encourage more to come, or at least visit, Ghana plans to offer a special lifetime visa for members of the diaspora and will relax citizenship requirements so that descendants of slaves can receive Ghanaian passports. On the home front, Ghana is starting an advertising campaign to persuade Ghanaians to treat African-Americans more like long-lost relatives than rich tourists. That is harder than it sounds. Full Article

http://www.iht.com/articles/2005/12/26/news/ghana.php