Come home, Ghana told the African diaspora. Now some Black Americans take its citizenship

By  ANNIE RISEMBERG | Associated PressACCRA, Ghana (AP) — Flipping through a family album, Keachia Bowers paused on a photo of her as a baby on her father’s lap as he held the 1978 album “Africa Stand Alone” by the Jamaican reggae band Culture.Keachia Bowers, second from left, and her husband Damon Smith, third from left, pose for a portrait with their children Tselah, left, and Tsadik, as well as their dog Apollo, at their home in Accra, Ghana, Friday, Dec. 6, 2024. (AP Photo/Misper Apawu)“When I was 10 years old, I was supposed to come to Ghana with him,” she said. A day earlier, she had marked 10 years since her father’s death. Though he was a Pan-Africanist who dreamed of visiting Ghana, he never made it here.Bowers and her husband, Damon Smith, however, are among the 524 diaspora members, mostly Black Americans, who were granted Ghanaian citizenship in a ceremony in November.Bowers and Smith moved to Ghana from Florida in 2023 after visiting the region several times between them since the ’90s. They now run a tour business that caters to Black people who want to visit Ghana or elsewhere in West Africa, or like them have come...