Earlier this month, the Ghanaian government hosted the Ghana-UK Investment Summit, a convening of government officials, development finance leaders, institutional investors, and members of the Ghanaian diaspora in London to explore opportunities for economic dialogue between the two countries.
Over the course of two days, President John Dramani Mahama and his ministerial cabinet presented Ghana’s investment priorities, inviting public-private partnerships across industry. This included the diaspora, where the Ghanaian government held a dedicated Diaspora Town Hall ahead of the summit with the Ghanaian community in London.
While diaspora townhalls have becoming increasingly common for government delegations traveling to the West, hosting one ahead of the summit, before the formal investor program began, is a more nuanced approach that deserves a closer look.
A Closer Look at Ghana’s Diaspora Initiatives
Direct signal of the government’s intention to incorporate diasporas into their national investment priorities.
From the days of Kwame Nkrumah to the most recent administration, Ghana’s diaspora policies have long been a part of its national policies. Recent initiatives over the past decade, including the Year of the Return to its subsequent 7-point diaspora policy framework, Beyond the Return, Ghana has gained global attention for its Pan-African diaspora incentives and schemes.
Despite the significant social, cultural and economic impact, it has not avoided criticism from local and diaspora communities. Questions arose about the Ghanaian diasporas’ role in advancing the country’s economic growth – beyond tourism and cultural experiences. Diasporas wanted to become partners and investors in Ghana’s growth, beyond the cultural, social and tourism sectors.
The Mahama administration indicated its diaspora commitment early on, hosting the Diaspora 2025 conference in its first year in office and reinforcing the importance of the diaspora.
For the Ghanaian diaspora in the United Kingdom, they are also one of West Africa’s most professionally accomplished diaspora communities, contributing through remittances, entrepreneurship, technology transfer, and cross-border professional networks that no external research firm can replicate.
Convening the diaspora this past June reinforced the Ghanaian government’s commitment to diaspora partnerships and deepening the inroads made in support of Ghana’s national unity, economic growth and prosperity.
The summit’s own analysis of its diaspora engagement further echoed this sentiment, stating diaspora engagement should be comprehensive and multi-layered, including institutionalized through structured investment programs, advisory councils, diaspora bonds, innovation networks, and strategic partnership frameworks.
That declaration is one of the most important outcomes of Ghana’s most recent diaspora activations, and I want to focus on this notion of institutionalizing diaspora engagement.
What Institutionalized Diaspora Engagement Actually Requires
In policy circles, we can agree that buzzwords like “institutions” and “institutionalize” are overused and considered mere jargon.
But let’s recall what institutionalization is actually about, and what it means for policymakers, diasporas and their ancestral home countries.
Making the case to and with diasporas for policy outcomes requires a much higher level of effort than hosting a side event.
Institutionalizing diaspora engagement means prioritizing it enough as a policy, programs and budget prioritization that it has a permanent home inside an organization’s structure. It requires data, insights, resources and relationship building.
- Investment: There is a budget line that goes beyond events and focuses on programs.
- Planning: An advisory function that engages with stakeholders between convenings.
- Partnership: And finally, there’s an accountability mechanism and set of metrics that adhere to the reality of diasporas as stakeholders and partners.
Ghana’s High Commission modeled one piece of this approach, incorporating the Diaspora Town Hall directly into the summit’s program architecture as part of the event and holding it first, rather than treating it as a post-convening community engagement.
The summit also named these contributions correctly: the diaspora is a strategic development partner, more than an overseas transactional base.
That sequencing and that framing matters. And it sent a key signal to all parties.
Ghana was effectively communicating that Ghana’s diaspora voices belong at the negotiating table before the investor agenda is set – as partners for Ghana’s growth, as investors of a different kind, and with capital of their own that requires a different form of leverage to unlock and access.
But what happens when the delegations return to their homelands? What needs to be built and established to follow through on those intentions?
The Gap Between Recognition And Infrastructure
It is clear that Africa’s development agenda acknowledges and incorporates the diaspora. Formally declared a 6th region of the continent, the AU’s Pan-African diaspora frameworks, its Member States’ efforts, including Ghana’s bilateral investment push, increasingly acknowledge the significance of diaspora capital – their time, talents and treasures – as a necessary variable.
Now what’s needed is the actual operational infrastructure, investment and messaging to deliver these outcomes, including:
- Diaspora partnership budgets and strategies for ancestral and adopted homeland governments.
- Governing charters for advisory councils formed at summits.
- Diaspora matchmaking incentive programs for investors and diasporas.
- Marketing pipelines for diaspora programs designed to reach communities.
- Convening calendars with diasporas outside of delegation visits,
- Embassy programming for public-private diaspora partnership pipelines
Without that infrastructure, diaspora relationships reset every time a new visit is announced or an administration takes office.
Meanwhile, diaspora capital gets resourced elsewhere, and Institutions arrive at diaspora engagement without the correct value proposition for the investments required.
The Way Forward: Recommendations for Lasting Diaspora Partnerships
Ghana’s UK Diaspora Town Hall, government policies, and presidential and ministerial commitments produced a strong offering for diasporas. Now, there are three core recommendations to deepen those partnerships, in Ghana and abroad.
- Structuring Advisory Partnerships for Activation: First, the diaspora advisory function that the summit implicitly activated deserves a published mandate, a defined meeting cadence, and a reporting line into Ghana’s investment promotion infrastructure. Recognition without structure dissolves.
- Creating Pathways for Diaspora Implementation and Partnerships: Second, the investment agreements reached in London should include explicit mechanisms for diaspora-led intermediaries, professional networks, hometown associations, diaspora business chambers, to participate in implementation, not just observe outcomes.
- Prioritizing Clear Diaspora Partnership Roles and Accountability Mechanisms: Third, the Ghanaian diaspora in the UK has told Ghana what it needs: access, transparency, and a clear role. The next summit should open with a report on what changed since the last one. That accountability loop is what separates a convening from a partnership.
Diaspora communities across Africa have been named as co-architects, strategic partners, and essential assets in more summits than any of us can count. Ghana’s June gathering was among the most substantive. The test of that substance is whether it produces a calendar, some cadence and clearer pathways for partnerships.
TDA works with institutions building the operational infrastructure to make diaspora engagement hold past the convening. Learn more at thediasporaacademy.com/consulting.
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