From Commodity to Community: A Reparative Audit of Ghana’s Diaspora Engagement Policy
Keywords:
African indigenous communitarianism, Akan hospitality protocols, cultural capitalism, Ghana Diaspora Engagement Policy, reparation, repatriationAbstract
This article critically evaluates Ghana’s Diaspora Engagement Policy (DEP), arguing that it commodifies the repatriation experience by reducing the sacred, communal act of return to a transactional framework of cultural capitalism. While Ghana presents itself as a symbolic homeland for the global African diaspora, the DEP positions repatriates as resources to be “harnessed” for national development, thereby commodifying identity and belonging. Using Akan hospitality protocols—Agoo, Akɔaba, Nkyea, recounting of one’s mission, and the Shared Meal—as a conceptual framework, the study evaluates whether the policy aligns with indigenous ethics of kinship and communal integration. Our analysis reveals that each stage is undermined: ancestral clearance becomes bureaucratic, restorative welcome is reduced to economic extraction, mutual recognition is commodified, historical truth is sanitised, and reintegration is contingent on investment. Drawing on the concept of African indigenous communitarianism theorised by scholars such as Ifeanyi Menkiti, Kwame Gyekye, Kwasi Wiredu, and Ọbádélé Kambon; Homi K. Bhabha’s “Third Space”; Stuart Hall’s identity theory; and Pierre Bourdieu’s social capital, the paper contends that sustainable integration requires treating repatriates as kin rather than commodified assets, and as such, the DEP fails to prioritise the spiritual and communal essence of the very people it is meant to integrate.
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