Ghana has repatriated more than 5,000 stranded citizens from around the world since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, after bringing home 327 nationals left homeless by a demolition drive in neighbouring Côte d’Ivoire this week.
The Foreign Affairs Ministry said in a statement on Friday that the group had been stranded in the Port Bouët district of Abidjan after a mass demolition exercise destroyed their homes and livelihoods. The government moved them by road over two days, with 228 arriving on Thursday and the rest on Friday, providing buses and trucks free of charge to carry the returnees and their belongings.
The operation came barely two weeks after Accra began a larger evacuation of citizens from South Africa, where anti-immigration protests have stoked fears among foreign nationals.
Ghana’s most recent repatriation efforts date to March 2020, when the closure of its borders to contain the coronavirus left thousands of citizens stranded overseas.
By the middle of that year, the government said it had flown home 856 stranded nationals in phases, including 224 from the United Kingdom, some of whom complained about the conditions of their return. Kuwait separately sent back 245 Ghanaians under a migrant amnesty arrangement, most of them returning voluntarily rather than as deportees.
The largest single stream of returns has come not from government evacuations but from the International Organisation for Migration’s voluntary return programme, funded mainly by the European Union. Most of those assisted are migrants who tried to reach Europe irregularly through Libya, where many were detained and abused. The IOM said it helped 835 Ghanaians home in 2023 and a record 1,723 in 2024, a 106% increase on the previous year, including 1,597 flown from Libya on nine charter flights.
The pace of returns quickened in 2026. After summoning South Africa’s ambassador over reported attacks on its nationals, Ghana launched a voluntary repatriation programme in late May as protests over unemployment, crime and pressure on public services fuelled hostility toward migrants.
The first chartered flight carried about 300 people to Accra on May 27, among them 26 who had been jailed in South Africa over visa violations. A second flight returned 295, and by mid-June, Ghana had brought home about 1,000 citizens, according to figures cited as Nigeria began organising its own returns. More than 1,500 Ghanaians had registered for evacuation, prompting the High Commission in Pretoria to suspend new applications while it cleared a backlog.
The exercise became entangled in a dispute over how many of the returnees were in South Africa legally. Pretoria said the overwhelming majority were undocumented. South Africa’s Border Management Authority found that only about 10% of the first group of 300 had correct papers, and the international relations minister, Ronald Lamola, said most of those flown out had broken immigration law rather than fled persecution.
“With the bulk of all Ghanaians that have come back home, almost 74% had overstayed, and they had been declared undesirable through our processes, and this is the law, and this has been communicated to the High Commissioner,” Lamola said in a June 10 radio interview. Many had overstayed their visas by more than 30 days, immigration officials said, and some by a year or more, leaving them declared undesirable under Section 30 of the Immigration Act.
Ghana rejected that characterisation. Foreign Minister Samuel Okudzeto Ablakwa, in an interview, ew told JoyNews that most of the departing Ghanaians were in fact legal residents, with only a few still finalising paperwork, and dismissed any link between his compatriots and crime as false and misleading. He said South Africa had stationed its own crime agencies at Ghana’s High Commission to screen the evacuees against a database of wanted suspects, and that none had been flagged. “Could you believe that not a single Ghanaian has been of interest to them?” he said. “Ghanaians are generally law-abiding,” he added, casting the returnees as victims of robbery rather than perpetrators.
Ablakwa also revealed Ghana had petitioned the African Union to hold South Africa accountable for recurring xenophobic violence, and did not rule out action in international courts. He also disclosed that the evacuation was being financed from the government’s contingency budget, with parliamentary approval, promising “full accountability” for the funds.
Lamola hit back at the JoyNews remark, dismissing the claims as “a deeply disappointing interview, replete with misinformation.” He disputed Ablakwa’s casualty figures, saying no Nigerian had been killed in the unrest and that two Mozambicans had died, not five, and said his ministry had no record of Ablakwa’s claim that 15 Ghanaians were hospitalised. He also warned Accra against legal action. “Let there be no misunderstanding: we will vigorously defend any frivolous or baseless lawsuit emanating from Ghana against South Africa,” he said.
Ablakwa, who met returnees at the airport with patriotic songs playing over the terminal speakers, framed the operation as a duty of protection. “Wherever Ghanaians are, we will make sure you are protected,” he told the first group on arrival. Ghana’s high commissioner in Pretoria, Benjamin Quashie, separately blamed South African processing backlogs for leaving some Ghanaians unable to renew their permits.
Alongside the South Africa airlift, Ghana has mounted a string of smaller rescues. In March, 44 Ghanaians lured to Nigeria under a multi-level marketing scheme were freed from suspected trafficking camps in Akwa Ibom and driven home. On May 28, mostly young Ghanaians were rescued from a trafficking network in Côte d’Ivoire in a joint operation with Ivorian security forces, against a backdrop of reports that hundreds more remained trapped.
Friday’s return of 327 from Port Bouët was different in character, a displacement crisis rather than a trafficking case. The Foreign Affairs Ministry said Ivorian authorities had expressed a desire to compensate those affected by the demolition, and that Ghana would press to ensure the promised payments were made.
Officials have pledged transportation and reintegration allowances for returnees and promised to place them in a database for jobs and start-up support. “The Government of Ghana remains committed to the welfare and protection of Ghanaians,” the Foreign Affairs Ministry said on Friday, adding that it would step up efforts to help the latest returnees rebuild their lives.
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source: Joynews