Accra (AFP) \u2013 Tightly holding her citizenship certificate against her chest, Patrice Ann Robertson wiped away a tear; she’s now officially Ghanaian nearly a decade after she started living in the west African country.<\/p>\n
“This is home,” the now Ghanaian-American, who lives in Ghana’s southeastern Volta region, told AFP at a ceremony in the oceanside capital Accra.<\/p>\n
In nine years since she relocated to Ghana, she has only returned to her birthplace in the United States once.<\/p>\n
Robertson was among 150 members of the African diaspora granted Ghanaian citizenship on Monday, the latest group in a growing initiative to reconnect descendants of Africans abroad with the continent of their ancestors.<\/p>\n
More than 1,000 Africans in the diaspora have obtained Ghanaian citizenship in recent years, many of them Black Americans drawn by a mix of historical, cultural and personal motivations.<\/p>\n
For some, the ceremony at which they waved miniature Ghana flags in jubilation, marked the culmination of years of identity search.<\/p>\n
Nataki Kambon, who obtained Ghanaian citizenship in 2019 and attended Monday’s ceremony, said becoming a Ghanaian allowed her to reconnect with a part of her identity rooted in ancestry but long distant from her daily life.<\/p>\n
“I grew up in a household where we always knew we were African,” she said. “But there’s still a disconnect because of how Africa is portrayed in the United States.”<\/p>\n