Accra, Ghana – Ashley Haruna by no means meant to remain in Ghana. But every part modified for the 28-year-old well being coach when she stood going through a darkish cell contained in the stone partitions of Cape Coast Castle. As the tour information defined that most of the enslaved individuals who’d as soon as been held there had ended up in Haiti, Haruna says she “felt one thing”.
Having grown up within the United States to Haitian dad and mom, she realised “my ancestors may’ve handed by means of right here. This place. This floor.
“I wasn’t searching for that,” she displays. “But it discovered me.”
The feeling it stirred inside her solely grew when she returned dwelling to Ohio. After a couple of months, together with her household’s reluctant approval, she returned to Ghana – for good.
That was in December 2021, and Haruna was following within the footsteps of many different African Americans who had sought to reconnect with the nation which will as soon as have been dwelling to their ancestors.
In the Nineteen Fifties, Ghana’s first prime minister and president, Kwame Nkrumah, championed the diaspora’s return as a part of his Pan-African dream and nation-building efforts. During the US civil rights motion, he invited Black American activists, together with W E B Du Bois, Marcus Garvey, and Julian Bond, to relocate to Ghana. In the Sixties, De Bois moved there, as did author Maya Angelou.
Ghanaian leaders proceed to encourage the African diaspora to reconnect and relocate. In 2019, the “Year of Return”, marking 400 years because the first enslaved Africans arrived in Virginia, greater than 200 folks from the US and the Caribbean acquired Ghanaian citizenship. In 2024, as a part of the federal government’s “Beyond the Return” initiative – the identical programme that inspired Haruna to maneuver to Ghana – 524 African diasporans had been granted citizenship.
But, as Haruna found, constructing a brand new life in Ghana comes with challenges.
Villa Diaspora
Her first condominium was positioned two hours north of Accra, within the mountainous Eastern Region, and whereas Haruna had imagined herself integrating right into a area people, she as an alternative discovered isolation. With no grocery shops close by and nobody to assist reply her questions – like the best way to function a gasoline range or what to do when the water stops working – she discovered herself feeling alone and annoyed.
She recalled a YouTube video she’d seen whereas nonetheless within the US about a spot referred to as Villa Diaspora – a co-living area the place the proprietor, herself a “returnee”, as African Americans relocating to Ghana confer with themselves, helps others navigate their new lives within the nation. Haruna dug by means of her browser historical past till she discovered the video. Every week later, she moved into the villa in an upscale suburb of Accra.
In the nice and cozy communal residing space and kitchen she shared with two different African-American tenants, she discovered the best way to navigate the sensible and cultural challenges of determining her new dwelling – from getting an identification card to studying to say “please” earlier than each sentence.
When Haruna was injured in a automobile accident, it was the villa’s proprietor, Michelle Konadu, 37, and the group of former tenants who helped her. The villa turned her lifeline. Like the opposite tenants – who have a tendency to remain for between three and 9 months – Haruna moved out of the villa after some time, however it’s nonetheless Konadu she calls when she wants assist.
‘They need therapeutic’
Konadu is aware of the sensation of being caught between worlds. Born and raised in New York City to Ghanaian dad and mom, her household condominium was a touchdown place for visiting family members, distant cousins and pals of pals. “We had been all the time housing somebody,” she says.
It wasn’t till she visited Ghana for a funeral in 2015 that she first contemplated leaving the quick tempo of New York for the sluggish stream of Ghana. At first, she thought it will really feel like dwelling, however she says she typically felt like an outsider. “Too American to be in Ghanaian areas. But too Ghanaian for America,” she explains.
A cousin named Alfred softened her touchdown by educating her the best way to navigate markets, hail a trotro (an area minibus taxi), and perceive the unstated etiquette of greeting elders and by no means utilizing the left hand to make gestures in direction of anyone.
Without his steering, she says, she may need left and by no means returned.
Recognising that not each returnee has their very own Alfred, Konadu determined to assist. In 2017, she opened Villa Diaspora, a three-bedroom co-living compound alongside her bigger household dwelling in Kwabenya. She invitations the tenants she hosts into the on a regular basis lifetime of her neighbourhood and introduces them to middle-income Accra. Beyond offering lodging, she helps returnees discover faculties, consults on land purchases, and connects them with social teams and sports activities golf equipment.
Her objective is easy: to assist folks belong by offering “an already-made group”.
“Most of them come right here with a soul mission,” Konadu explains. “They need therapeutic. Or reconnection. Or only a recent begin. For many, coming to Africa has been a lifelong dream. But the folks they meet won’t perceive that.”
Her household struggled to grasp why she moved again when their dream had been to depart. But now different households are relieved to know that their family members will spend their first months in Ghana surrounded by folks on an analogous journey. After 10 years in Ghana, Konadu believes that if folks can stay together with her, they’ll stay among the many wider group.
She factors to the Brazilian “Tabom” group in Jamestown, Accra, which she sees as an ideal instance of a well-integrated returned diaspora group. As descendants of previously enslaved Africans who returned from Brazil within the nineteenth century, they settled among the many Ga folks, intermarried, discovered the language, and constructed lives that blended their Afro-Brazilian heritage inside the Ga social construction. Over the generations, their names – De Souza, Silva, Nelson – have grow to be a part of the Jamestown story. Konadu expects the identical will occur with the newer returnees and that the African-American tradition will stay sturdy however exist inside the construction of the bigger Ghanaian society.
Haruna understands that integration takes time, and she or he acknowledges that returnees like her have privileges that others in Ghana don’t. Lighter pores and skin and an American accent typically open doorways in ways in which by no means occurred again within the US, giving her preferential therapy equivalent to quicker service in eating places, locals prepared to supply assist, and usually with the ability to make issues occur quicker, like conferences with authorities.
“It is uncomfortable as a self-aware individual to note that I’ve privilege, one thing that’s the complete reverse of what’s occurring within the United States. I’m nonetheless wrapping my head round all of it,” she says.
“I’m Ghanaian. I’m additionally a returnee,” Konadu says. “We’ve all the time been linked: Ghana and its diasporans. This isn’t new, however the ‘Year of Return’ made issues extra seen.”
This elevated visibility – and the clustering of returnees in particular settlements, together with rising prices – has brought on some friction.
‘The Ghana they gained’t see’
Anthony Amponsah Faith runs a enterprise renting out automobiles and driving shoppers round Ghana, together with returnees navigating the nation for the primary time. He credit them with permitting him to go to locations he had by no means been to earlier than, such because the Nzulezu stilt village and the middle-belt waterfalls. “Before, I by no means received to go anyplace. Now, I’ve seen the entire of Ghana,” says the 32-year-old.
On these journeys, Amponsah has witnessed his African-American shoppers’ emotional visits to coastal slave castles and memorials, however he has additionally seen friction up shut. While wealthier neighbourhoods, the place returnees typically settle, get pleasure from steady electrical energy, paved roads, and entry to supermarkets and cafes, in others, water is available in cycles and primary providers require improvisation. Returnees complain about energy cuts or heavy visitors, whereas locals shrug them off as a part of day by day life. He remembers a consumer insisting he was being overcharged as a result of “Ghana needs to be low-cost”.
Earlier this 12 months, Amponsah awoke one evening to seek out his mattress floating in a room flooded with water. “That’s the Ghana they gained’t see,” he says. “It doesn’t flood within the areas the place returnees keep.”
He is annoyed by the rising value of housing, which he attributes to returnees’ willingness to pay extra. “To them, it’s not costly,” he says. “They come from locations the place they earn extra. But I blame the federal government. Why aren’t we getting those self same alternatives?”
In 2019, he paid 120 cedis ($10-12) a month for a small studio; he now pays 450 cedis ($42-44).
“The value of residing is rising by the second. It makes discovering a spot scary,” says Amponsah. He would favor to be nearer to his prospects, a lot of whom stay a minimum of an hour away, however he can’t afford to maneuver.
‘A city from scratch’
Many new arrivals really feel responsible about their financial and social privileges, however some Ghanaians carry an typically unstated burden tied to their ancestors’ function within the transatlantic slave commerce, main some chiefs to supply land to returnees as atonement.
Across Ghana, a minimum of two diaspora settlements, Fihankra and Pan African Village emerged that method, whereas different returnee-focused residential tasks, together with gated communities, are below building.
Dawn Dickson, an entrepreneur and investor, is constructing a home for herself within the African-American settlement generally known as Pan African Village. She moved to Ghana in 2022, after envisaging a life exterior the US in a spot the place she wasn’t “the minority”.
The 46-year-old says she didn’t intend to hunt out a diaspora-only group. Dickson, who traces her ancestry to the Akan folks in Ghana and Ivory Coast, was struck by the sense of familiarity, heat and power among the many Ghanaians she met. But when she began trying to purchase land, she found that different returnees had been shopping for round Asebu city within the coastal Central Region, the place a standard chief had carved out some 20,000 plots for diasporans.
“For me, it was the joy that I received to be a part of constructing a city from scratch,” Dickson explains.
She purchased land after which based an organization that helps different African Americans purchase and construct houses. Dickson is using sustainable rammed earth expertise to assemble homes for 35 returnees in addition to roads, a college, a church and boreholes, and is coaching locals to grasp this constructing approach.
The group, nonetheless, has not been with out controversy.
In 2023, a household challenged the choice to allocate land they claimed was their ancestral property as a part of the village. Development has continued regardless of a excessive court docket injunction ordering that building be halted, and a few 150 farmers who relied on this land say they’ve misplaced their livelihoods.
Dickson says the land she has helped buy isn’t contested, and if farmers are utilizing it, she negotiates shared-crop agreements or fee.
Elsewhere, new diaspora tasks are below method and have come below scrutiny.
Sanbra City (“Return City”) is a 300-acre non-public actual property improvement exterior Accra. The deliberate eco-friendly gated group brought on a backlash over preliminary experiences that the federal government was behind an unique returnee enclave with homes beginning at $180,000, which is out of attain for many Ghanaians. Sanbra City founders have stated the mission is a collaboration between African-American and Ghanaian builders, not a authorities initiative, and Ghanaians can be welcomed.
In different cases, Dickson says she has seen African Americans scamming their very own, promoting homes hours away from Accra as in the event that they’re “quarter-hour from the airport,” or charging unattainable costs.
A Pan-African refuge and a group hub
The very first deliberate diaspora group within the nation was Fihankra, on the outskirts of Akwamufie city in Ghana’s southeastern Eastern Region.
In 1994, the chief within the Akwamu Traditional Area supplied land as a present to diasporans keen to resettle in Ghana. Fihankra is a Twi phrase that loosely interprets as, “When you left this place, no goodbyes had been bid.” It symbolises diasporans’ painful separation from their ancestral dwelling.
Once promoted as a Pan-African refuge, Fihankra is now largely abandoned and marked by scandal.
Harriet Kaufman, 69, a retired nurse and an Afro-Caribbean from New York, first heard about Fihankra when she and her husband had been residing in London within the late Nineteen Nineties.
By the time they arrived in Ghana in 1998, rumours had been swirling that Fihankra turned away Jamaicans and Nigerians, reserving land solely for African-American traders and charged inflated costs and rents. So the couple discovered land on their very own, and slowly constructed a house quarter-hour away from Fihankra.
Over time, some diasporans at Fihankra began calling themselves the royal household, prompting the minister in command of chieftaincy to take authorized motion towards them for impersonation. Then, in 2015, two feminine African-American residents had been murdered in an tried theft. Soon after, the small group was largely deserted.
Today, solely two folks stay in Fihankra, says Kaufman.
The Kaufmans’ dwelling, in the meantime, named Black Star African Lion and located on hills overlooking the Volta River, has grown right into a area people hub with a babies’s library, cafe, bar, music studio, guesthouse and prenatal care enterprise.
‘I’m lucky’
The group took years to develop, and Kaufman is struck by how simply returnees appear to reach in the present day. When she first got here to Ghana, she and her husband rented from a household in Accra and it took them a number of years to seek out land and construct the primary constructing. There had been no smartphones, and no electrical energy within the space. There was no Instagram to glamourise the journey or actual property brokers curating “Africa” from afar. In her opinion, social media has made return look simple, even luxurious.
“I suppose it was a unique time than now. When we got here, my husband and I sat exterior and stared on the stars at evening for leisure,” she says. “Today, all these influencers are posting about Ghana on Instagram, and folks assume it’s simply simple and good villas by the river.”
Kaufman believes this contributes to perceptions that returnees are privileged.
After all these years, when she often sells bananas from her backyard within the native market, she is obtainable costs beneath what suppliers would sometimes settle for. She says she continues to be seen as somebody who already has greater than sufficient and shouldn’t be searching for revenue. Kaufman says she will get it, and considers herself privileged to stay as she does in Ghana.
As newer arrivals construct new lives in native communities or select to be surrounded by different diasporans, many returnees face integration challenges.
“I do know that almost all of my ancestors dreamed of returning to Africa, and I’m lucky sufficient to have that likelihood,” Haruna says, admitting she nonetheless appears like an outsider. “[But] I’ll all the time say I moved right here, not that I’m from right here.”
