A new law in Benin now grants immediate citizenship to any person who can trace their ancestry back to a victim of the transatlantic slave trade, and who doesn’t hold an African nationality.
According to the provision of the law, such persons, “may acquire Beninese citizenship by recognition.”
More than a million people were shipped from present day Benin to the Americas at the height of the slave trade.
The Atlantic slave trade promoted by West European empires (15th–19th centuries) forcibly moved at least 11 million people from Africa, including about one-third from west-central Africa, to European and American destinations.
According to statistics 55% of the U.S. lineages have a West African ancestry, with <41% coming from west-central or southwestern Africa.
Africa is the most genetically diverse continent. African Americans constitute the second largest ethno-racial group in the US after White Americans.
Historical documentation indicates that many Africans were taken from the West African coast but that a large proportion were also taken from the former Portuguese colonies of Angola and Mozambique.
The perpetrators included the Portuguese, Spanish, and British, and it is estimated that they moved 12 million people (with 10.5 million surviving the voyages) in not more than 4 centuries.
