Diasporan visa to break down borders

New Diasporan visas will be issued to visiting Africans by the middle of this year, according to Jake Obetsebi Lamptey, the Tourism Minister - a kind of lifetime pass for entry into Ghana.

Responding to complaints from Diasporan returnees about barriers to their resettlement in Ghana, Mr Obetsebi Lamptey told The Saturday Statesman that the Tourism Ministry is in active discussion with the Ministry of Interior and the Ghana Immigration Service about the question of dual citizenship and easier entry for visiting and resettling Africans.

As this newspaper reports today, there are calls among the African Diasporan community for a relaxation of citizenship requirements, to allow those returning to Africa to acquire dual citizenship.

Whilst their calls are legitimate, and more needs to be done to welcome and facilitate returning Diasporans, the case is not a straightforward one, according to Mr Obetsebi Lamptey.

"The laws on dual citizenship at the moment are aimed at allowing Ghanaians to acquire a second citizenship,” the Tourism Minister explains, “It's not aimed at those who have other citizenships to acquire Ghanaian citizenship while retaining their own citizenship.”

He said that a number of those coming back to Ghana look to Israel as an example of what the country should be offering its returnees.

Once you are a Jew, you have an automatic right to claim repatriation. “They have programmes that will help you to settle, places where you can get an easy mortgage… But we don"t have the resources Israel has to be able to do that sort of thing.

“What we tell people is that we are not going to allow a situation where dual citizenship or Ghanaian citizenship is a fashion item. That you come in and say, 'I’m an African, I’ve come back home, I want my citizenship.’ Immediately we rush out and we give you a citizenship certificate. And then you go back and in your den in wherever, you hang up your certificate and you show people when they come and have a drink at the weekends, ‘I’m a citizen of Ghana’. We’re not interested in that.”

Government is interested in acknowledging those who have a made a genuine commitment to Ghana, however, and is currently working on a list of criteria for this.

In the meantime, Government is trying to institute the new Diaspora visa in time for the July onslaught of visitors. Those coming from countries which need a visa would be eligible to apply for this pass once they are in the country, a stamp in their passport meaning that if they want to come and visit Ghana, they never need a visa again.

July will see the first real influx of visitors under the Ministry’s Joseph Project – an outreach programme to African Disaporans. As well as giving these visitors the opportunity to explore their ancestral roots, the project also aims to engage them with the development process of the continent.

The only people who can bring about real change in Africa is Africans, he says, “but continental Africans by themselves do not have sufficient resources to effect that change. We need the support of all Africans, we need the support of Diasporan Africans, who took resources away from here – resources and skills. Those resources and skills which they have been able to multiply out there, we need to have those back.”

“What we have to do on our side of the project is to make it easier for them when they do this, he acknowledged” citing the example of a recent donor, who had brought in a container of medical supplies and books, but faced import duties of thousands of dollars.

The Joseph Project has come under heavy criticism from some within the tourism industry, with concerns that the scheme may simply duplicate the events already being run by the Pan-African Festival of Theatre Arts. According to Mr Obetsebi-Lamptey, their concerns are unfounded:

“If people come here because of the Joseph Project activities, and there’s a lot going on with Panafest, they’ll enjoy the Panafest activities too. So the numbers that will attend Panafest activities will be higher than they would otherwise be. Basically what we do is that we support each other.”