ACCRA, Ghana — She couldn’t help herself. After Nykisha Madison Keita officially became a citizen of Ghana during a ceremony last week, she didn’t expect what happened next. The 42-year-old Germantown native burst into tears. “I felt so overwhelmed,” she said. “I felt this huge weight being lifted off of me somehow.”
That weight, Keita acknowledged afterward, includes her no longer having to deal with the relentless toll of gun violence in Philadelphia, an ever-expanding cost of living here in the States, the forces of gentrification that are remaking city neighborhoods and pricing out residents of color, and just about everything else that comes along with being Black in America.
Keita, an international agricultural business consultant who relocated to Ghana with three of her four biological children, noted that although she yearns for friends and family in Philadelphia, she doesn’t miss the city. At all.
“Coming to Africa is like a godsend for me,” she told me. “I really believe I was called to do this spiritually.”
» READ MORE: Ghana wants Black Americans to ‘come home.’ Many are accepting the invitation. I went to find out why. | Jenice Armstrong
Keita is one of the hundreds of Black Americans who have immigrated to Ghana in the past several years, after Ghana’s president, Nana Akufo-Addo, invited them to “come home” — to leave the many challenges facing African Americans in the United States.
It’s all part of Ghana’s attempt to market this nation of 35 million as a mecca for Black people around the world. The country wants members of the diaspora to not only visit its portion of the continent but to also consider taking up residence and giving back. “Your presence here is already making a difference,” Akufo-Addo told attendees during the citizenship ceremony in which Keita participated. “You are human bridges connecting us to both sides of the Atlantic.”
Keita feels as if her formerly enslaved ancestors’ dreams of freedom had been fulfilled by her 2021 move to the continent from which they had been held in slave camps along Ghana’s coast before being sold and shipped to the Americas. After briefly living a bicontinental life, Keita has lived abroad full time since March 2022.
“For me, this is really the embodiment of being what my ancestors had prayed for for a long time,” Keita said. “I had a lot of ancestors that wanted to come back home, and through me, they were able to experience what being reacclimated home is like.”
I felt some of that, too, as I sat in the audience and watched as Keita along with 523 other members of the African diaspora took an oath of allegiance at the Accra International Conference Center to officially become citizens of Ghana. She now formally holds dual citizenship here and in the United States.
It was a little surreal seeing so many Americans so genuinely excited about becoming citizens of another country. A green-uniformed military band performed. Attendees dressed in traditional African attire posed for photos. Freshly minted Ghanaians clutched their certificates and waved miniature red, gold, and green flags of their new home.
The president referenced the country’s considerable role in facilitating and profiting from slavery — Ghana has been called “the center of the British slave trade,” and from 1500 to 1850, an estimated 12 million Africans were captured and sold. He spoke movingly about the need for reconciliation and brotherhood and pointed out how the descendants of enslaved Africans had made their way back to the continent as part of a journey of self-discovery.
At a time when so many Americans are fearful that Donald Trump’s reelection has put the country on the road to authoritarianism and closed borders, Ghana has swung its front door practically all the way open. I spent nearly two weeks visiting the country thanks to a grant from the National Association of Black Journalists, and have never felt more welcome anywhere — not even in America, which is the country of my birth. I arrived in Ghana not even knowing for sure what “Akwaaba” meant (“welcome”) to hearing it so much that I quickly began responding, “Medaase” — thank you.
One official with whom I spoke at the Jubilee House (which is akin to the White House) cautioned that Ghana is far from a utopia. Many of the roads are in bad shape. Power outages and connectivity problems are notorious issues. Crime rates here are lower than in the United States, and about a quarter of the nation’s people live in poverty.
But the African Americans I met in Ghana consider the considerable challenges that come with living in a deeply impoverished, underdeveloped country in sub-Saharan Africa a fair exchange so that they can have the freedom to be themselves and not have to deal with racism.
Some expatriates such as the iconic civil rights leader W.E.B. DuBois settled in the country long ago for just that reason. Many of the relative newcomers began coming in response to the country’s 2019 “Year of the Return” initiative, which issued a call out for members of the African diaspora to “come home.” That effort was deliberately timed to coincide with the 400th anniversary of the arrival of the first enslaved Africans in Jamestown, Va., in 1619.
The response was so positive that Ghana tourism officials created “Beyond the Return,” a decade-long effort aimed at encouraging Black people living in the United States, Europe, and elsewhere to visit Ghana. Government officials organized similar citizenship ceremonies for members of the diaspora in 2019 and 2022. In May, Stevie Wonder became one of the most high-profile Americans to have accepted the country’s offer of citizenship. Some expats here refer to their move using the phrase “Blaxit” — a play off of “Brexit,” a word used to describe Britain’s exit from the European Union in 2020.
As for Keita, last week’s ceremony cemented her relationship with her adopted homeland. She and her children live in what she described as “a beautiful mansion” that costs her less than $400 a month. “I was always feeling like I needed to be here,” she said. “I feel affirmed.” And after the disappointment I felt following the results of the election, so did I.
This column is the second installment of “Blaxit” — a series by The Inquirer’s Jenice Armstrong about Black American expatriates who have moved to the African continent. Travel for the series was funded, in part, by the National Association of Black Journalists.
