Benin Grants Citizenship To Descendants Of The Enslaved
December 16, 2024
Benin is one of the few African countries that is invested in offering citizenship to descendants of the enslaved
Benin’s President, Patrice Talon, passed a law in September 2024 that gives citizenship to those who can trace their lineage to the slave trade, part of an attempt by the country to reckon with their participation in the slave trade.
According to The Associated Press, Benin is one of the few African countries that is invested in offering citizenship to descendants of the enslaved, alongside Ghana, who invited Black Americans to “come home” in 2019 as part of their commemoration of the 400th anniversary of the arrival of the first enslaved Africans to North America in 1619.
The way the law works is that anyone over the age of 18 who does not already hold African citizenship and can provide proof that an ancestor was deported via the slave trade anywhere in Sub-Saharan Africa is eligible to become a citizen of Benin.
In Benin, however, the olive branch carries additional significance because Benin was often a port of departure for many Africans during the slave trade; an estimated 1.5 million enslaved people were sent out from the Bight of Benin, territory that includes present-day Benin, Togo, and part of present-day Nigeria.
In Ouidah, a town on the coast of Benin, close to one million Africans were forced onto ships and sent to destinations such as the United States, Brazil, and the Caribbean.
The town is also home to the majority of Benin’s memorial sites, like the “Door of No Return” and the “Tree of Forgetfulness.”
Benin’s authorities will accept a variety of materials, including DNA tests, authenticated testimonies, and family records.
One of the websites the country accepts is “Anchoukaj,” which translates to “Affiliation” in Antillean Creole, which was used by Nadege Anelka, a 56-year-old travel agent from the French territory of Martinique, an island in the Caribbean.
According to Anelka, upon her arrival to Benin, the people felt familiar to her.
“A lot of the people reminded me of my grandparents, the way they wore their headscarves, their mannerisms, their mentality,” she told the AP.
Anelka’s sentiments were shared by actor Samuel L. Jackson, and his wife, LaTanya Richardson, who chronicled Jackson’s journey to Benin in the documentary series Enslaved.
As Richardson told The Guardian in 2020, “I see some aspects of their culture that he inhabits naturally in his DNA. He loves the sea – he always did – only to find out that these people [the Benga tribe] were beach people, they were people at the edge of the sea. It’s a joy for me to see him in that setting.”
In order for Anelka’s citizenship to be validated, she will have her application vetted, receive a provisional certificate of nationality, which is valid for three years, and in order to complete the process, she has to stay in Benin at least once within the three years to become a citizen.
Although Anelka doesn’t believe she will become Beninese in the eyes of Benin’s people, she is going through the process mostly to connect to her heritage.
“I know I will never be completely Beninese. I will always be considered a foreigner” Anelka told the AP. “But I am doing this for my ancestors. It’s a way to reclaim my heritage, a way of getting reparation.”
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