Immigration control in Ghana under Kwame Nkrumah, 1957–1966

Abstract

Independent African governments inherited the division of Africa into nation-states and the introduction of immigration regulations to control movements in Africa from the erstwhile European imperialist governments. These African governments also introduced several measures to control immigration in their respective countries. When it assumed power, Nkrumah’s government designed a number of immigration measures, some of which defined the legal or political status of immigrants and regulated their movements and economic undertakings in the country. Therefore, this study, using both primary and secondary documents, examines the immigration legislations or policies which the Nkrumah administration devised to control the entry of immigrants into Ghana as well as their stay in and exit from the country. It investigates and analyses the specific attitude of the government towards immigration and examines the relative effectiveness of the execution of immigration control measures. It maintains that on the whole, the Nkrumah administration had been generally liberal towards immigrants in Ghana so that most of the immigration policies the government formulated remained dormant in the statute books. This phenomenon contributed in a way to Ghana having a relatively large immigrant community in Ghana in the late 1960s. The study concludes that the manner in which immigration control had been handled under Nkrumah was partly influenced by the politics of the colonial period, partly by Nkrumah’s pursuit of the policy of African brotherhood, and partly by Nkrumah’s need of the labour of immigrants to contribute towards building the economy of the country