Immigration to Ghana is managed by the Ghana Immigration Service (GIS). [1] [2] [3] Ghana a country located at the western part of the African continent with a population of 28.83 million and gained independence on 6 March 1957.
The Ghanaian government has most recently reviewed its immigration policy, as its intention is to increase immigration of skilled labour. [4] [5]
A skilled worker is any worker who has special skill, training, knowledge, and (usually acquired) ability in their work. A skilled worker may have attended a college, university or technical school. Or, a skilled worker may have learned their skills on the job. Examples of skilled labor include engineers, software development, paramedics, police officers, soldiers, physicians, crane operators, truck drivers, machinist, drafters, plumbers, craftsmen, cooks and accountants. These workers can be either blue-collar or white-collar workers, with varied levels of training or education. Ghana has a skilled worker immigration policy aimed at creating a highly skilled and knowledgeable Ghanaian population, capable of creating wealth for Ghana and rapidly increasing the Ghanaian economy GDP output; [6] and has recruited highly skilled professional experts in the fields of information and communications technology, manufacturing, health care, construction, finance and banking, retailing and the oil and gas industry sectors of the Ghanaian economy. [6]
Skilled worker immigrants in Ghana include Indian, South Korean, Japanese, Malaysian, Cuban, Lebanese, Chinese, German and Dutch nationals and however after seven years as Ghanaian permanent residents with the Ghana Card permanent residency; skilled workers have gone on to become Ghanaian nationals. [7] [8] Since 2012, Ghana has also had its highly professional skilled worker expatriates returning from the diaspora back to Ghana. [9]
Lydia Frances Polgreen (born 1975) is a journalist, who is the editor-in-chief of HuffPost . She was previously the editorial director of NYT Global at The New York Times , and the West Africa bureau chief for the same publication, based in Dakar, Senegal, from 2005–2009. She won many awards, most recently the Livingston award in 2009. [10] She also reported from India. [11] [12] She was then based in Johannesburg, South Africa where she was The New York Times Johannesburg Bureau Chief. As reported by the journalist Lydia Polgreen in a New York Times article, the fact that Ghanaian slave exports to the Americas were so important between the 16th and 19th centuries means that Ghana currently is trying to attract African slave descendants from the Americas in order that they settle there, and so that they return to make the country the new home to many descendants of the Ghanaian diaspora – though not all are of Ghanaian descent. Accordingly, as reported by Valerie Papaya Mann, president of the African American Association of Ghana, thousands of African Americans are already now living in Ghana, at least for part of the year. To encourage migration or visits by the descendants of enslaved Africans from the Americas, Ghana decided in 2005 to offer them a special visa and grant them Ghanaian passports. [13]
The history of African Americans in Ghana goes back to individuals such as American civil rights activist and writer W. E. B. Du Bois, who settled in Ghana in the last years of his life and is buried in the capital Accra. Since then, other African Americans who are descended from slaves imported from areas within the present-day jurisdiction of Ghana and neighboring states have applied for permanent resident status in Ghana. As of 2015, the number of African-American residents has been estimated at around 3,000 people, a large portion of whom live in Accra.
According to the Ghana Statistics Service 375,000 of the Ghana resident population were born outside Ghana, representing 2.5% of the total Ghana resident population. In 2010 Census, European-born population was 14,295 in which some of them could be children of Ghanaians living in Europe. [7]
Country | 2012 |
---|---|
Togo | 142,688 |
Nigeria | 57,056 |
Ivory Coast | 46,058 |
Liberia | 20,056 |
Benin | 19,502 |
Niger | 9,205 |
Mali | 7,819 |
United Kingdom | 2,117 |
Sierra Leone | 1,939 |
Lebanon | 1,142 |
India | 989 |
United States | 952 |
Canada | 320 |
Netherlands | 284 |
Italy | 268 |
China | 264 |
France | 254 |
Switzerland | 227 |
Guinea | 161 |
Cameroon | 113 |
Ghana, officially the Republic of Ghana, is a country in West Africa. It abuts the Gulf of Guinea and the Atlantic Ocean to the south, sharing borders with Ivory Coast in the west, Burkina Faso in the north, and Togo in the east. Ghana covers an area of 239,567 km2 (92,497 sq mi), spanning diverse biomes that range from coastal savannas to tropical rainforests. With over 32 million inhabitants, Ghana is the second-most populous country in West Africa. The capital and largest city is Accra; other significant cities include Kumasi, Tamale, and Sekondi-Takoradi.
The globalAfrican diaspora is the worldwide collection of communities descended from people from Africa, predominantly in the Americas. The African populations in the Americas are descended from haplogroup L genetic groups of native Africans. The term most commonly refers to the descendants of the native West and Central Africans who were enslaved and shipped to the Americas via the Atlantic slave trade between the 16th and 19th centuries, with their largest populations in the United States, Brazil, and Haiti. However, the term can also be used to refer to African descendants from North Africa who immigrated to other parts of the world. Some scholars identify "four circulatory phases" of this migration out of Africa. The phrase African diaspora gradually entered common usage at the turn of the 21st century. The term diaspora originates from the Greek διασπορά which gained popularity in English in reference to the Jewish diaspora before being more broadly applied to other populations.
John Evans Fiifi Atta Mills was a Ghanaian politician and legal scholar who served as President of Ghana from 2009 until his death in 2012. He was inaugurated on 7 January 2009, having defeated the governing party candidate Nana Akufo-Addo in the 2008 Ghanaian presidential election. He was previously the Vice-President from 1997 to 2001 under President Jerry Rawlings, and he contested unsuccessfully in the 2000 and 2004 presidential elections as the candidate of the National Democratic Congress (NDC). He was the first Ghanaian head of state to die in office.
Ghanaians in the United Kingdom encompass both Ghana-born immigrants and their descendants living in the United Kingdom. Immigration to the UK accelerated following the independence of Ghana from the British Empire in 1957, with most British Ghanaians having migrated to the UK between the 1960s to the 1980s owing to poor economic conditions at home.
African immigration to the United States refers to immigrants to the United States who are or were nationals of modern African countries. The term African in the scope of this article refers to geographical or national origins rather than racial affiliation. From the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 to 2017, Sub-Saharan African-born population in the United States grew to 2.1 million people.
Lydia Frances Polgreen is an American journalist. She is best known for having been the editor-in-chief of HuffPost. She also spent about one year between 2021 and 2022 as the head of content for Gimlet Media. Prior to that she was editorial director of NYT Global at The New York Times, and the West Africa bureau chief for the same publication, based in Dakar, Senegal, from 2005 to 2009. She also reported from India. She spent much of her early career in Johannesburg, South Africa where she was The New York Times South African Bureau Chief as well. In 2022, after leaving Gimlet, she returned to The New York Times as an opinion columnist.
African Australians are Australians descended from the any peoples of Sub-Saharan Africa, including naturalised Australians who are immigrants from various regions in Sub-Saharan Africa and descendants of such immigrants. At the 2021 census, the number of ancestry responses categorised within Sub-Saharan African ancestral groups as a proportion of the total population amounted to 1.3%.
Ghanaian Americans are an ethnic group of Americans of full or partial Ghanaian ancestry or Ghanaian immigrants who became naturalized citizen of the United States.
Jane Naana Opoku-Agyemang is a Ghanaian academic and politician who served as Minister for Education from February 2013 to January 2017. She is a full professor of literature. She served as the first female Vice-Chancellor of a state university in Ghana when she took over as Vice-Chancellor of University of Cape Coast. She currently serves as the Chancellor of the Women's University in Africa.
The history of African-American settlement in Africa extends to the beginnings of ex-slave repatriation to Africa from European colonies in the Americas.
The number of Chinese residents in Ethiopia has risen considerably since the turn of the millennium.
The Ghana Immigration Service (GIS) is in charge of the removal and deportation of illegal immigrants in Ghana.
The Ghanaian people are a nation originating in the Ghanaian Gold Coast. Ghanaians predominantly inhabit the Republic of Ghana and are the predominant cultural group and residents of Ghana, numbering 34 million people as of 2024, making up 85 per cent of the population. The word "Ghana" means "warrior king". An estimated diaspora population of 4 million people worldwide are of Ghanaian descent. The term ethnic Ghanaian may also be used in some contexts to refer to a group of related ethnic groups native to the Gold Coast.
Ghana–Jamaica relations refers to the bilateral relations between Ghana and Jamaica. Both nations are members of the United Nations, however neither country has a resident ambassador.
Ghanaian Australians are Australian citizens and residents of Ghanaian origin and descent. More than 50% of those who are Ghana-born live in Sydney.
Tourism in Ghana is regulated by the Ministry of Tourism of Ghana. This ministry is responsible for the development and promotion of tourism related activities in Ghana.
The history of African Americans in Ghana goes back to individuals such as American civil rights activist and writer W. E. B. Du Bois (1868–1963), who settled in Ghana in the last years of his life and is buried in the capital, Accra. Since then, other African Americans who are descended from slaves imported from areas within the present-day jurisdiction of Ghana and neighboring states have applied for permanent resident status in Ghana. As of 2015, the number of African American residents has been estimated at around 3,000 people, a large portion of whom live in Accra.
Ghanaians in Germany are Ghanaian immigrants in Germany and their descendants living and working in Germany. Ghanaians in Germany are said to form the second largest of the country’s diaspora populations in Europe, after the United Kingdom.