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Emil Kirkegaard

Mar 8, 2025 • 8 tweets • 5 min read • Read on X

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Can Europe learn from Ghana? Buried on Wikipedia is a 3 sentence part about how Ghana deported 20% of the population -- 3 million people -- all the non-Ghanans. And it only took 3 months. The "Ghana Aliens Compliance Order" (GACO)

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illegal_i…

This website provides the history. It begins, of course, with economic migration since Ghana was the gold coast. In fact, these migrants were going into a British colony, probably for the usual reasons of wanting to live under European domain: rule of lawand prosperity.

European rule eventually declined, and just after they left (1957), the economy goes bad. At least, so they say, but it doesn't look that way until 1970s by GDP stats.

So the government decides to expel the foreigners, and it works out in 3 months despite being a staggering number of people. It the economy keeps failing for another 15 years, but then recovers and growth looks good since 1983.

Can Europeans now learn from Ghanaians?

.ghanaremembers.com/stories/histor…

What were the reasons to remove the foreigners? Well, they sure sound eerily familiar.

"ensure cultural homogeneity, clear the streets of immigrant destitutes and beggars"

ir.ucc.edu.gh/xmlui/handle/1…

Wikipedia seems to be wrong about the number. It's not 3 million people out of Ghana. It was some hundreds of thousands. Sources don't really know. But Ghana had 12% foreign born in 1960, similar to a typical western country.

web.archive.org/web/2013091716…

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