Ghana should look beyond rescuing citizens abroad and tackle why so many want to leave, communications professional Maame Akua Amoah Twum argues, citing data that most Ghanaians have considered emigrating.
Writing after the state assisted return of hundreds of Ghanaians from South Africa amid xenophobic tensions, Twum called the evacuation a necessary first step but said the harder task is building an economy people do not feel they must leave. She co-authored an Afrobarometer study released in 2025, based on a survey of 2,400 Ghanaians conducted in August 2024.
That study found 61 percent of Ghanaians had considered moving to another country, up from 41 percent in 2017. The desire was strongest among the groups the country most needs for its future, 78 percent of those with post secondary education and 72 percent of people aged 18 to 35. The most common reasons were to find work, cited by 55 percent, and to escape economic hardship, cited by 33 percent.
Twum noted that most migration happens within Africa, with more than 70 percent of West African migrants moving inside the region, yet many Ghanaians find borders hard to cross. About 76 percent of those surveyed described crossing international borders as difficult or very difficult, which she said can trap migrants in legal limbo and leave them exposed during local crises.
To curb desperate migration, she urged policymakers to move past reactive measures and target economic causes. Her proposals included creating quality jobs in areas such as technology, value added agriculture and local manufacturing, making credit and training easier for young entrepreneurs, and aligning African immigration systems so that bureaucratic delays do not push legal migrants into undocumented status.
Bringing citizens home in a crisis shows good leadership, she wrote, but “building an economy where they actually want to stay is the ultimate solution.”
