Legendary singer-songwriter Stevie Wonder<\/a> is officially Ghanaian.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On Monday – the US musical icon’s 74th birthday – he was granted citizenship of Ghana by the nation’s president.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“This is it, congratulations!” Nana Akufo-Addo told a beaming Wonder, handing the Grammy winner a certificate at a ceremony in the presidential palace where he was also presented with a birthday cake with a Ghanaian flag iced on top.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Wonder told the BBC that gaining Ghanaian nationality on his birthday was an “amazing thing”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The superstar was born and bred in the US state of Michigan but has long had an affinity for Ghana – a West African nation thousands of miles from home.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In 1975, with a string of hit albums behind him, Wonder openly expressed a desire to quit music and move to Ghana. He believed his ancestral lineage could be traced there, reports say.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Wonder stuck with singing and stayed stateside, but after headlining a Ghanaian music festival in the 1990s, he again expressed a desire to set up home there.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On a later trip to Ghana, Wonder wrote the entirety of his album Conversation Peace and in an interview<\/a> just three years ago the star said he was moving to Ghana in order to escape racial injustice in the US.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Wonder’s love affair with the country was ignited by the people he met whilst there.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He told the BBC that one of these encounters was with late Ghanaian President Jerry Rawlings, who in the 1990s hosted him at the presidential residence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“I remember the late President Rawlings, who allowed me to be a co-pilot on a flight,” Wonder said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“I was able to fly with him from one end of Ghana to the other end. The north to the south, and it was amazing.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Flanked by his family and donning a scarf made of traditional kente cloth, Wonder was visibly delighted to have finally become Ghanaian.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ghana has long prided itself on being a bastion of pan-Africanism – its founding leader, Kwame Nkrumah, called the West African state a “Black Mecca”.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Wonder is just the latest African-American icon to celebrate this message – writer W E B Du Bois moved to Ghana and was buried there in 1963, while Martin Luther King, Malcolm X and Muhammad Ali all paid high-profile visits to the country to reconnect with their African roots.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In 2001, Ghana became the first nation on the continent to give the descendants of Africans the right to stay.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Since then, Africans in the diaspora have been able to live and work in Ghana without renewing their visas or work permits.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And in 2019 the Ghanaian government launched the “year of return” initiative to encourage Africans in the diaspora to relocate there.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

More than 300 Africans in diaspora have been granted Ghanaian citizenship since.<\/p>\n\n\n\n