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In 2023, Keachia Bowers and Damon Smith left behind their lives in Florida to start anew in Ghana. Among a growing number of returnees from the global Black diaspora, they say they’ve found a sense of belonging they never fully experienced elsewhere.
“I am an African woman,” Bowers explained. “How do we identify who we are? You look at your skin. I didn’t need citizenship to tell me I’m African. Anywhere I go in the world, and someone looks at me, I’m melanated.”
In November, Bowers and Smith joined 522 others in a ceremony granting them Ghanaian citizenship. For Bowers, the moment carried a profound significance:
“My ancestors wanted to return and come back home. Those ancestors who never made it back—their dying wish was to return. That passport, for me, is for them.”
This sense of reconnection is part of Ghana’s Beyond the Return initiative, launched in 2019 to deepen ties with its diaspora. The program followed the commemoration of 400 years since African slaves were first forcibly taken to the Americas, with Ghana serving as a significant departure point during the transatlantic slave trade.
While the initiative aims to attract investment and promote economic development, for many like Bowers, it’s about something far deeper: reconnecting to their roots.
Dejiha Gordon, another U.S.-Ghanaian who moved to Ghana in 2019, has since established a Jamaican food truck. She echoed similar sentiments:
“It feels good to have a connection to an African country as an African-American, as a Black American. Back in America, we don’t have anything to trace our roots to but Africa. To have that connection here, I feel like I’ve done something right.”
For Bowers, Smith, Gordon, and many others, the move to Ghana represents more than a change in geography—it’s a reclamation of identity, history, and a sense of home long denied to their ancestors.
