Ghana has a new citizen: Stevie Wonder. The famous African-American author, composer and performer, to whom we owe the titles “Superstition” and “Living for the city”, received his new passport on Monday May 13 from the Ghanaian President, Nana Akufo Addo. The culmination of a dream come true, according to the artist.
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With our correspondent in Accra, Victor Cariou
A passport Ghanaian on his birthday: for his 74th birthday, the author of the famous hit “Happy Birthday” couldn’t have dreamed of better: “ Becoming a Ghanaian citizen means participating in the realization of a dream, that of bringing together Africans and members of the diaspora, the United States and the Caribbean. », Declared Stevie Wonder on Monday to President Nana Akufo Addo.
His desire to settle in Ghana is not new: in 2021, the American singer-songwriter already announced his desire to move to West Africa. A choice that Stevie Wonder had then motivated, he himself said, by an increasingly prevalent racism in UNITED STATES.
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1,500 African-Americans return to Ghana
During the ceremony in Accra, Stevie Wonder followed in the footsteps of other celebrities like Rita Marley, widow of Bob Marley. Evidence for Ghanaian President Nana Akufo Addo of the testimony of a “ deep respect and admiration for the history, culture and values of our country “.
In 2019, Ghana launched the Year of Return, a program aimed at anyone of Afro-descendants, aiming to invite them to come and settle and invest in the country. In four years, more than 1,500 African-Americans have settled there, according to the Ghanaian Office of Diaspora Affairs.
Read alsoCareer in Ghana, a “triumph” for Afro-descendants