{"id":321493,"date":"2024-05-15T06:45:26","date_gmt":"2024-05-15T06:45:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.gbcghanaonline.com\/?p=321493"},"modified":"2024-05-15T07:14:36","modified_gmt":"2024-05-15T07:14:36","slug":"stevie-on-the-wonder-of-becoming-a-ghanaian-citizen","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.gbcghanaonline.com\/news\/stevie-on-the-wonder-of-becoming-a-ghanaian-citizen\/2024\/","title":{"rendered":"Stevie on the Wonder of becoming a Ghanaian citizen"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

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

\"\"
Wonder wore a top made of traditional Ghanaian fabric for the ceremony<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

In a statement, Ghana’s interior ministry said Wonder becoming a citizen “marks a significant milestone in the country\u2019s efforts to attract diasporan Africans and recognise outstanding contributions to the African diaspora”.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The man himself said he now plans to engage in initiatives that will create great job opportunities for Ghana’s youth, who make up roughly 38% of the population.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“The youngest generation is in Africa. We need to begin to think about how their greatness can shine,” he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

SOURCE: BBC NEWS<\/p>\n\n\n\n

More stories here <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Legendary singer-songwriter Stevie Wonder is officially Ghanaian. On Monday – the US musical icon’s 74th birthday – he was granted citizenship of Ghana by the nation’s president. “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 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":321501,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[25,8,114,2773],"tags":[16152,18808,21122],"class_list":["post-321493","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","category-entertainment","category-general-news","category-trending","tag-ghanaian-citizenship","tag-nana-addo","tag-stevie-wonder"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.gbcghanaonline.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/05\/STEVIE-WONDER-N-NANA-ADDO.jpg?fit=1024%2C576&ssl=1","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gbcghanaonline.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/321493","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gbcghanaonline.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gbcghanaonline.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gbcghanaonline.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gbcghanaonline.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=321493"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.gbcghanaonline.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/321493\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":321504,"href":"https:\/\/www.gbcghanaonline.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/321493\/revisions\/321504"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gbcghanaonline.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/321501"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gbcghanaonline.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=321493"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gbcghanaonline.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=321493"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gbcghanaonline.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=321493"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}