Reparative Citizenship in Africa: Distant Connections but Legitimate Preference
Bronwen Manby (London School of Economics)
The African example that fits most closely into the scheme of reparatory citizenship proposed by David Owen and Rainer Bauböck comes from Namibia. Just one year after gaining independence from South Africa in 1990, the new government adopted the Namibian Citizenship (Special Conferment) Act, which provided that any descendant of a person who would have been a Namibian citizen except that he or she left Namibia “owing to persecution by the colonial government which was in control of the country before 1915” had a five year period in which to apply for citizenship. Citizenship would be granted as of right, subject to renunciation of the citizenship of any other country (in line with Namibia’s usual rules on naturalisation; although dual citizenship is allowed for citizens by birth) and establishment of ordinary residence in Namibia. In 2015, a further ten-year window for applications was enacted.
Namibian responsibility for a genocide perpetrated by Germans?
This law addressed the genocide carried out by the German colonial authorities of what was then South West Africa, in retaliation for an attack on German settlers in 1904. Tens of thousands of Herero and Nama people were killed — driven into the desert, enslaved, and imprisoned in concentration camps, where they died of starvation, dehydration and disease. Some thousands of those who escaped reached what was then British Bechuanaland, today’s Botswana, where they were granted asylum.
The grant of Namibian citizenship to descendants of these refugees is clearly considered reparatory by the Namibian government. It also fits the major part of the definition proposed by Owen and Bauböck: it concerns people who live permanently outside the state’s territory and are the descendants of people who lost their citizenship (unjustly is implied but not stated in their formulation) and could not pass it on to a next generation. However, it does not fit the final part of the definition, that citizenship was lost “under conditions for which the current state bears responsibility and for which it accepts remedial duties”. Despite the rules on continuity of legal obligations in case of succession of states, the current state of Namibia can only with difficulty be argued to have responsibility for the genocide of the early 20th century carried out on its territory. As argued by Owen and Bauböck themselves, it would more logically be Germany itself that should be offering citizenship to this group; the possibility might perhaps be included within the other reparatory measures negotiated between Germany and Namibia, starting from an apology first offered by Germany in 2004. And yet I don’t think that this divergence from the definition proposed should disqualify the Namibian case from being included for analytical purposes within the set of cases of reparatory citizenship. Nonetheless, and for the same reasons, it is also hard to argue that Namibia is obliged to grant citizenship in this way: except, perhaps, if any of those who might benefit face statelessness in the countries where they are now resident.
If there were any descendants of the Herero and Nama resident in Namibia who were stateless, then Namibia would surely also be obliged to grant citizenship. (In fact, the question almost certainly does not arise, since the Namibian constitution provides that almost all children born in the territory with a parent who is ‘ordinarily resident’ in Namibia are attributed citizenship at birth.) However, I am in (partial) disagreement with Christoph Sperfeldt on the framing of the grant of citizenship in these cases as ‘reparative’. In case of multi-generational resident stateless populations, citizenship should be attributed automatically at birth by operation of law – in line with the obligation in international law to prevent statelessness among children. Even if an individual application process is likely to be necessary, possibly even as an adult, a stateless person born on the territory should have the right to citizenship if the facts are proved. There should be no ‘repair’ here, but a right at birth. Where reparative citizenship might be a useful frame, however, is for the grant of citizenship to resident adults (not born in the territory) who were left stateless by rips in the citizenship space-time continuum caused, notably, by succession of states. Here I agree with Sperfeldt that a conceptual frame of reparation may assist in overcoming suggestions that a discretionary naturalisation process is sufficient in such cases; a solution whose inadequacy was forcefully argued by Amal de Chickera in an earlier GLOBALCIT forum. Indeed, the Namibian government has recently enacted legislation to provide a right to citizenship to stateless residents who had held South West Africa identity documents but did not acquire citizenship in 1990 (albeit with a qualification that this application may be refused if ‘not in the national interest’).
Preferential and exclusionary citizenship for people of African descent
The Namibian grant of citizenship to the descendants of the Herero and Nama refugees has received curiously little international attention – with the spotlight on the Germany-Namibia relationship. Other recent initiatives by African states that might fit the definition of reparatory citizenship have proved more eye-catching: those that are providing preferential access to citizenship to people of African descent. These grants of citizenship, mainly adopted in West Africa, have quite a different logic. They are generally presented as a form of recognition for the devastating harm caused by the slave trade, the particular connection that people of African descent have with the continent from which they were kidnapped and enslaved, and the partial responsibility also borne by those Africans who acted as intermediaries in the slave trade.
The earliest African state to frame its citizenship law in this way was of course Liberia, which has offered citizenship to any person of ‘negro descent’ since its first constitution of 1847. The problematic nature of this offer despite the justice of its origins, however, is that it is framed rather as a restriction than an extension of citizenship – only persons of ‘negro descent’ can be citizens. This restrictive racial element was then picked up in the post-independence era by other states, including Sierra Leone and Malawi (Malawi has since repealed this provision). Other newly independent countries provided for general preferential access for nationals of other African states, or have since introduced presumptions in favour of members of certain ethnic groups (provisions which may, in different measures, be both helpful and problematic in overcoming the challenges of the post-colonial environment).
Much more recently, there has been a trend to adopt new laws explicitly aimed at facilitating the acquisition of citizenship by the broader African diaspora.
Since 2000, Ghana has provided for a special ‘right of abode’ for people of African descent. In 2019, the government announced a ‘year of return’, aimed primarily at attracting tourists – but also granting citizenship to 126 people who had taken up this offer, joined in 2024 by a further 500. Sierra Leone has also naturalised several groups of African Americans. In January 2025, Guinea-Bissau granted nationality to a handful of people who could show that they are descendants of the Balanta ethnic group dominant in the country. Similar proposals have been made in The Gambia, Namibia, and in Kenya.
The most notable initiative, however, is from the Benin Republic. In September 2024, Benin adopted a law on the rights of afro-descendants to acquire Beninois citizenship, in favour of anyone who has a sub-Saharan African ancestor deported from the African continent in the context of the African slave trade. Those acquiring citizenship ‘by recognition’ in this way would not in the first instance have political rights, but would have the right to naturalise as full citizens after five years of residence – according to the normal provisions of the revised Beninois nationality code adopted in 2022. Despite the name of the law, therefore, the structure of the process is perhaps more like that in Ghana, where the initial privileged access is for a special immigration status, whereas full citizenship will follow later.
Is preferential grant of citizenship to people of African descent reparatory or discriminatory?
These initiatives are not simply contagious among African states, but fit within a much broader policy dialogue at both international and continental levels – as explicitly recognised by the resolution adopted by the Council of Ministers in Benin that approved the new law.
At the end of 2024, the United Nations declared the launch of a second International Decade for People of African Descent (following on immediately from the first), billed as “an opportunity to take concrete actions to confront the legacies of enslavement and colonialism, deliver reparatory justice, and secure the full human rights and freedoms of people of African descent worldwide”. The question of reparations for slavery has been emphasised by the African Union since at least the Abuja Declaration of 1993. In 2003, a protocol on amendments to the AU Constitutive Act (not yet in force) recognised the diaspora as “an important part of our continent”, a decision that has led to an ongoing programme of activities. In 2012, a summit for the African diaspora convened by the AU adopted a declaration that specifically endorsed the idea of a right to return. The continental body has designated 2025 as the Year of Justice for Africans and People of African Descent Through Reparations.
Yet even more than in the case of Namibia or Spain’s grant of citizenship to the descendants of Sephardic Jews driven out in 1492, the preferential grant of citizenship to the African diaspora raises questions about the connection of the current states to the pre-colonial polities implicated in the slave trade. There is no continuity between the 18th and 19th century political borders of Africa at the time of the slave trade and those imposed following the Berlin conference of 1885; and little (though no doubt some) historical connection for members of the ruling class.
But does that mean that we should not consider these processes to fall within a definition of ‘reparatory’ citizenship; more importantly, does it mean that we should object because of the racially discriminatory aspects of this facilitated access to citizenship? I would answer yes to the first, and no to the second. The grant of citizenship to people of African descent is too far removed from the contemporary responsibility of today’s African states to consider it to be reparative. In any event, the objectives of these initiatives seem at least as much to be to attract investment as to recognise historical hurt – explicitly so, in the case of Sierra Leone. Similar doubts about motivation arise as those highlighted in the case of Spain and Austria by Alfons Aragoneses and by Reinhard Schweitzer and Tina Magazzini. In relation to the second question, the grant of facilitated access to citizenship on ethno-cultural grounds is sufficiently common across all countries that it would be foolish to object. Moreover, the historical injustice here is real, and the wide geographical scope for facilitated acquisition of citizenship in these cases is also a response to the colonial origins of Africa’s borders. The type of discrimination that raises concern in citizenship matters is when access to citizenship is – in law or fact – restricted on such grounds. Legally, this is much less common; in practice, there is work to do in many countries.