As a series of protests and events to mark the life of George Floyd began in Minneapolis earlier this month, a memorial was being held 10,000 kilometers away in Ghana’s capital, Accra.
Attended by government representatives and a small socially-distanced group of African Americans living in Ghana, the memorial was held in solidarity with the Black Lives Matter movement and Floyd, who died on May 25 after a white police officer knelt on his neck for nearly nine minutes during an arrest.
Ghana has long courted the descendants of enslaved Africans to “return home” as tourists or to permanently resettle. Leading African American icons including Martin Luther King Jr, Maya Angelou, Muhammad Ali, and Malcolm X have either visited or lived in the country since independence in 1957.
With large-scale protests across the United States and Europe taking place, many hope the organic groundswell of anger with racial injustice would be a tipping point in race relations. Ghana’s government, meanwhile, is hoping to tap into the current mood of reflection and resistance to strengthen its pitch targeting people of African descent in the diaspora.
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At the memorial and wreath-laying ceremony for Floyd, the minister of tourism, Barbara Oteng-Gyasi, re-echoed the government’s message to African Americans to “Come home.”
“We continue to open our arms and invite all our brothers and sisters home. Ghana is your home. Africa is your home. We have our arms wide open, ready to welcome you home,” she said. “Please take advantage. Come home, build a life in Ghana. You have a choice and Africa is waiting for you,” she added at the event held at a center dedicated to another prominent African American, the pan-African sociologist W.E.B Du Bois, who lived his later years in Ghana and is buried at the center.
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