A Ghanaian traveler describes being repeatedly profiled at airports as a drug dealer or illegal immigrant, while white travelers with African passports face no such scrutiny. He argues that Africa's brain drain and reliance on remittances reflect deeper dysfunction at home, and calls for educated diaspora to return and rebuild rather than accept second-class treatment abroad.
What's your worst rejection story?
My worst is at airports. I work on 50 different countries of the world, hundreds of cities. Wow. From Singapore right down to Johannesburg, if you like. I go through airports and I travel with a Ghanaian passport till now. Till now. So they see my passport, they see where I'm coming from, already I'm a drug dealer.
No way. Does it happen to Ghanaians too?
Already I'm a drug dealer because where did I get the money from? Oh, that in the last month alone, I could tell you, I last 2 weeks I was in Morocco, week before I was in Malawi, week before I was in Accra, then I was in Lagos. Wow, you know, so already where did you get the money from? Last time I was going to Korea, check-in person is asking me for, uh, this and that and asking. I said, are you a immigration officer? Call your boss. Well, simply because I'm African, I have an African passport and I, I have an African accent, you've already judged me. Yes, I'm either a drug dealer or I'm an illegal immigrant. I face that every day. That kills me because if I wasn't articulate to fight my corner, what about those who come? I've stood— I don't want to mention the nation's name— where I've seen them take Nigerian students Oh yes, I saw it. This is not somebody telling me about it. Take the Nigerian students aside and talk to them anyhow. And we're standing— I'm going to a conference— we're standing in the queue in Europe, and then they come and they get you, you, all the black people out, all of us with African passport. The ironic thing was the guy who I was talking to, who's standing in front of me, he's white, he has a Malawian passport. They left him because they assumed he was not African. That hurts me more than anything because I think this kind of behavior strips dignity. When you strip dignity of a person, you take hope out of them, you take esteem and value from them. That hurts me deeply to my core. That hurts me for my people, and it causes anger to rise out of me against my people. Why do we give people a chance to treat us like that? Because this thing hasn't just come because of colonialism, it's also come because our government, they'd rather let us go and live in another nation and toil as slaves there because of the remittance that we bring to our economies from abroad. But ask your people, how can somebody get a PhD and go and serve as a cleaner somewhere? That should be a shame to any government. And in many ways, I know some of your Audiences might not like me for saying this. I'm hearing stuff about immigration that I think sometimes is good for us.
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