African Americans Granted Citizenship Rights in Former Slave Hub
- Benin to grant citizenship to descendants of enslaved Africans
- More than a million captives were shipped from Ouidah port
This article is for subscribers only.
Present-day Benin, from where more than a million people were shipped to the Americas at the height of the slave trade, has approved a law that makes their descendants eligible for citizenship in the small West African nation.
The law, passed on Sept. 2, says that any person who can trace their ancestry back to a victim of the transatlantic slave trade, and who doesn’t hold an African nationality, “may acquire Beninese citizenship by recognition.”