Return To Roots: African Americans in Ghana
As reported by the journalist Lydia Polgreen in a New York Times article, the fact that Ghanaian slave exports to the Americas was so important between the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries, make that Ghana currently does try to attract the attention of African slave descendants from the Americas in order that they are established here, and so that they turn the country into the new home to many descendants of the Ghanaian diaspora -though they only are partially descent of Ghanaian -, for they return to the country. So, according reported Valerie Papaya Mann, president of the African American Association of Ghana, now thousands of African-Americans already live in Ghana, at least part of the year. To encourage migration or, at least, the journey of the descendants of slaves from the Americas, Ghana decided, in 2005, offer a special visa to those people and provide Ghanaian passports to them. Thus, the government of Ghana also developed an advertising campaign which tries to convince Ghanaians to treat to African Americans as a people related to them. Thus, according to J. Otanka Obetsebi-Lamptey, the tourism minister: "We want Africans everywhere, no matter where they live or how they got there, to see Ghana as their gateway home. We hope we can help bring the African family back together again."
Read more about this topic: Ghanaian American
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