The Minister for Foreign Affairs and Regional Integration, Samuel Okudzeto Ablakwa, has passionately challenged newly repatriated Ghanaian evacuees to hold their heads high and reject any notion that their motherland is an inferior nation, revealing that thousands of foreigners, including South Africans, are actively moving to Ghana to secure their economic fortunes.

The minister delivered the charge on Saturday night, June 6, 2026, at the Accra International Airport while welcoming the second batch of 345 Ghanaian nationals evacuated from South Africa following a terrifying wave of anti-immigrant street violence and property destruction.

Interacting with the visibly shaken returnees, Mr Ablakwa urged them to view their sudden repatriation not as an economic dead-end, but as a golden opportunity to reinvest their skills and capital into a booming domestic market that foreign nationals are already capitalising on.

The Statistics of Opportunity

Stripping away any sense of national inferiority, the minister backed his message with compelling immigration statistics. He pointed out the irony of Ghanaians fleeing an African country in search of greener pastures when citizens of those exact same nations are quietly migrating to Ghana to build wealth.

“Official data shows more than 10,000 South Africans have already visited Ghana. So, so, so don't allow anybody to make you think that your country is some second-rated country,” the minister stated authoritatively, drawing applause from the returnees.

He explained that while the evacuees were enduring hostile conditions abroad, global investors and regional peers had identified Ghana as a safe, lucrative haven for long-term commercial expansion.

“A lot of these people are travelling here, coming here, seeing opportunities here, investing here, and establishing businesses here,” he pointed out.

A Call to Believe in the Motherland

The evacuation exercise, executed by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in coordination with Ghana’s diplomatic mission in Pretoria, was triggered by targeted xenophobic attacks against foreign nationals across major South African metropolitan areas.

While many of the returnees lamented abandoning their retail shops, jobs, and personal belongings to escape with only their lives, Mr Ablakwa insisted that the Ghanaian economy possesses more than enough resilience to absorb them if they change their mindset.

He challenged the returnees to show the same level of aggressive entrepreneurial drive at home that they exhibited in a foreign land.

“So if others, including where you are coming from, come to Ghana and invest in Ghana, why can't you also believe in Ghana and invest in Ghana?” the minister questioned, rallying the evacuees to look toward the future with absolute confidence.

Comprehensive Reintegration Protocols

Following the minister's address, officials from the Ghana Immigration Service (GIS) and the Ministry of Gender, Children and Social Protection processed the returnees, providing them with psycho-social trauma counselling and an initial transport allowance to facilitate their journey back to their respective regions.

With a third emergency flight scheduled to land later today, Sunday, June 7, the government has reiterated that it will continue to act with maximum speed to secure the lives of every Ghanaian trapped in the xenophobic crossfire while providing the necessary enabling environment for them to successfully rebuild their livelihoods at home.