Nationalists Should Support the Call from Africa
Nationalists Should Support the Call from Africa
African states are courting the diaspora. We should offer support.
White Papers has written extensively on the question of African American repatriation and hinted at the fact that numerous African states are courting the African American population.
Unlike other groups such as Asians, Hispanics, or Black immigrants, African Americans have a long-held, though not particularly deep, connection to the United States, and repatriating this group through the adjustment of immigration and nationality laws would be complicated, and for many Americans is an undesirable prospect. However, this moral dilemma ought to dissolve in the face of our collected data.
As revealed in our piece Those Who Want to Go: A More Expansive Great Repatriation some 45% of African Americans would leave the country if they had the resources and know how to do so, according to a Monmouth University study. In another piece, The Great Repatriation and Blacks - (3/4), we showed that roughly 30% of all African Americans who have visited Ghana (over 50,000 visitors so far) have chosen to permanently relocate to the country, or show a desire to do so. At the moment, more than 10,000 Blacks from North America live in the country. A figure that continues to grow.
Our previous work shows that almost 17 million African Americans are interested in repatriating to the African continent. A number that would likely grow once the process is underway.
The willingness of African Americans to relocate is clear, but this willingness does not in itself make such a relocation possible. Housing, infrastructure, intergovernmental cooperation, access to financing, and assurance they will retain some welfare state-related benefits are necessary preconditions to ensure the smooth and peaceable repatriation of those willing African Americans from North America to their ancestral continent.
In this piece we focus on the willingness and interest of various African states to make this repatriation happen and what White nations could be doing to facilitate it.
Developments in Africa:
One of the most demanding aspects of repatriation will be the need for housing. Many African countries already struggle to finance, build, and provide adequate housing for their populations while Western countries struggle to maintain stable housing markets in the face of incredible levels of mass migration.
Still, several African nations have shown an interest in building ample amounts of housing, indeed entire new cities, for the African American population looking to relocate to the continent.
Senegal:
Senegal’s government and the Senegalese-American singer and songwriter Akon have teamed up to build a $6 billion city called Akon City. The original plans for the city laid out how more than 500,000 homes would be built specifically for the African American diaspora. The goal is to create a “home back home” for Black Americans and provide them with a standard of living at or above what they are used to in the United States.
The Senegalese government has contributed $2 million to the project thus far, and while construction has indeed been slow (so far only youth centers, welcome centers, and sports-related infrastructure have gone in) they are still displaying a keenness for the project to move ahead.
However, does Mr. Akon have billions of dollars in personal wealth simply sitting in bank accounts or investments waiting to be poured into the project? Indeed not, the rapper is in such serious financial straits that he has been unable to move forward with the project and Senegal is preparing to take back some 50 hectares of land which it permitted Mr. Akon to use.
But, this does not mean the idea behind the project must die. Senegal is willing to build diaspora cities, grant the land for free, and oversee the progress of said projects.
Fiscal demands are the largest hurdle for the project, however. Senegal, which has a population of more than 18.8 million people, has a GDP of just $31.141 billion. To finance the project would cost nearly 20% of Senegal’s GDP, a prospect that is simply not realistic.
This does not mean there is no money available for such a project, though. There are already ample resources directed toward Black Americans, namely by the US government. Resources that could be redirected to build the cities that Senegal already supports constructing.
To name but one example: In 2023 the United States spent some $112 billion dollars on its SNAP (foodstamp) program. Roughly 27% of SNAP recipients are Black, and if we assume each racial group takes a share of SNAP benefits equivalent to their demographic share of the program it means that the United States spent some $30.24 billion on food stamps for Blacks in fiscal year 2023 alone.
The United States could, with enough political will and a knowledge of the realities around repatriation and demographic change, redirect a significant portion of this funding to build cities in Senegal. Just $12 billion a year could build more than a million homes in the country, though this cost is likely to drop significantly once the requisite supply chains and infrastructure are already in place.
The American state could and should also recruit large Black-owned businesses in the US to help with these efforts and provide expertise to the Senegalese.
Black-owned enterprises like Millennium Steel Services (which also focuses on logistics and supply chain management), Millennium Steel of Texas, Bird Electric, Georgetown Metal Processing, and many others could provide the backbone for the project. The American state could give them the fiscal support to set up operations in Senegal so that they employ both African Americans (on both sides of the ocean) and local Senegalese.
Uganda:
Uganda has gone down a path extremely similar to Senegal. The Ugandan state procured some 600 acres of land which it handed over to the rapper Akon to build yet another city, also named Akon.
This Ugandan version of Akon’s city-building dream is scant in detail, though we assume its size and scope will be relatively similar to what the Senegalese version of Akon City was meant to be.
But let us not lose focus: this story, just as discussed with Senegal above, is less about a rapper and more about an African nation’s willingness to provide resources (land) and political support to building diaspora-focused cities within their borders. Every suggestion made above for Senegal, such as American funding and Black business involvement, could also be applied to the case in Uganda.
Diaspora cities where millions of African Americans take up residence and begin to slowly mingle with the local population could be a reality on the African continent, but only if Whites in the West are aware that these projects are both desirable and feasible.
Sierra Leone:
Inspired by Ghana’s very successful “Year of Return” program to draw African American tourists and immigrants the government of Sierra Leone has established a program to grant citizenship to any member of the African diaspora who can prove they have a genetic or ancestral link to the country.
The country’s president, Julius Maada Bio, has gone so far as to preside over ceremonies where he granted citizenship to African Americans visiting the country and has given speeches where he stressed that the whole diaspora connected to Sierra Leone would be welcome to both visit and resettle in the African nation.
This is very significant, not least because upwards of 80% of African Americans sport West African ancestry. It is likely that millions if not the majority of African Americans can trace their genetic ancestry to a group that has some current presence in Sierra Leone.
This program is also in keeping with the history of Sierra Leone, which was founded as a modern nation by Africans who were repatriated to the continent from Nova Scotia, the United States, Great Britain, and other British and American colonial outposts in the 1780s. This history plays a significant role in Sierra Leone’s current motivations, and the country’s hope to leverage the diaspora for both cultural and economic benefits. This is a sound motivation.
22.6% of African Americans hold a bachelor’s degree, according to the D.C. based Postsecondary National Policy Institute. A further 25.8% of African Americans have attended “some” college. In total roughly 88% of African Americans boast a high school education or above, far higher than the roughly 22% of the Sierra Leonean population who will graduate from upper secondary schools.
Still, Sierra Leone is not without problems that first require solving. The most serious issue is electricity availability. Sierra Leone sports only 150MW of energy capacity that provides electricity for just 27.5% of the population. Yet, the nation has more than 1000MW in potential hydroelectric generation, according to the United States International Trade Administration. If this demand were harnessed the nation would have double the electricity it currently needs and could become a regional power exporter.
The United States and other countries with large Sierra Leonean-connected populations such as the United Kingdom could and should expand initiatives such as “Power Africa” and retool them to build infrastructure. Currently, Power Africa focuses on strengthening regulators, restructuring markets, and developing “roadmaps” for African nations to double their power generation, but this is not enough. If Africa is to grow sufficiently to provide for its own populace and take in the diaspora it so wants to attract then American and other Western aid must be retooled to provide the physical infrastructure that is necessary.
Ghana:
Finally (for this piece at least) there is the nation of Ghana. We have covered Ghana in some detail before, but only ever in regards to its wildly successful “Year of Return” and “Back to Africa” programs which have drawn tens of thousands of African American tourists and thousands of African American immigrants to the country.
Ghana’s courting of African Americans goes far beyond tourism initiatives, though. The country has established a “Right of Abode” for any member of the African diaspora to relocate to the country. Ghana has also gone so far as to offer citizenship to a member of the diaspora who can trace their ancestry to the country.
This is significant in much the same way that it is for Sierra Leone’s citizenship policy as a significant portion, and perhaps even a majority, of African Americans can trace their ancestry back to a group that, at least in part, resides in modern-day Ghana. Indeed of the nearly 10,000 North American Blacks who have made Ghana their home roughly 1,500 have already received Ghanaian citizenship rights, and these statistics are just those collected since the 2019 Year of Return.
The Ghanaian state has negotiated with local chiefs to set aside hundreds of acres of land on which African Americans can build homes. These plots of land can be purchased and built upon without survey or registration fees, so long as the person building on it is a member of the African diaspora.
Ghana’s very strong interest in the diaspora makes great sense as well. The country is one of the most rapidly developing on the African continent. In 2008 just 60% of Ghanaians were connected to the national electricity grid, but this has significantly improved. More than 86.6% of Ghanaians now have access to power, and because of this the country is rapidly industrializing. The country’s economy regularly expands at 4,5 or even 6 percentage points a year and the minimum daily wage has doubled since 2016.
Conclusion:
Africans on both sides of the sea dream of reunification. African Americans, historically unhappy and out of place in the United States, display an eagerness to move abroad, as do millions of young non-Whites in the United Kingdom and other Anglophone countries.
At the same time, the African continent wants to court these comparatively highly educated and highly skilled diaspora members home with glitzy development projects and promises of economic advantage. These projects require a much sturdier hand than a rapper can offer, however.
The project of repatriating the displeased diaspora, reversing the Great Replacement in the West, and developing Africa sufficiently to make it all possible can only be undertaken if Whites are aware that such an option exists in the first place and can be convinced to back it.
Repatriation saves money and heartache. It preserves cultures, encourages the well-being of all people(s) involved, and could serve as the most serious chance for true economic development that Africa has seen in some decades.
Support White Papers’ mission to investigate and promote pro-White policies!
Zelle: whitepapersinstitute@protonmail.com
Buy us a coffee: https://www.buymeacoffee.com/wppi
Linktree: https://linktr.ee/wppi
Snail Mail: White Papers Policy, PO Box 192, Hancock, MD 21750