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What It's Like To Move To The Motherland

In September of 2018, the President of Ghana, Nana Akufo-Addo officially announced the Year of Return 2019 – an initiative designed to encourage people of the African Diaspora to return to the Continent whether that be for business, tourism or to settle.   

The initiative, which includes cultural events spread over the year, is expected to attract half a million people to the country; in the process boosting Ghana’s fledgling tourism sector and attracting new generations of Africans, born or living abroad, to consider Ghana as home.

Amongst those moving back was me - although the impetus didn’t come from Akufo-Addo’s public announcement. I returned to Ghana in May 2018 to join my husband, having lived in England all my life - bar a previous eight-month stint in Ghana a decade earlier and a three-month spell in Brazil. My plan has always been to live in Ghana, which I believe has been fuelled by an unbridled desire to learn more about my heritage, but also an unconscious feeling of alienation and discomfort from my experiences of living in Britain.