Introduction
In recent years, issues raised by Afro-descendant people have increasingly gained prominence in public, academic, and political debates. For the most part, these issues pertain to the circumstances of the descendants of African people deported during the transatlantic slave trade and, more broadly, to contemporary forms of mobility that rekindle this historical connection with the African continent. While the issue of Afro-descendant has long been examined from the perspective of the Americas and the spaces of the “Black Atlantic,” it is now increasingly being reexamined from the perspective of continental Africa itself. This shift in perspective is significant: the focus is no longer only on analyzing the condition of Afro-descendants in post-slavery societies outside the continent, but also on examining how African states legally engage with this historical relationship stemming from the transatlantic slave trade.
From this perspective, a new question emerges: are African states capable of translating this memory into effective legal mechanisms? This question is grounded in observable practices. On Gorée Island as well as in Ouidah, memorial journeys and diasporic visits give rise to forms of engagement with the past that are often accompanied by expectations of recognition and mobility. Memory thus appears as a vehicle for activating legal agency (Navarro Alvarado et al., 2024).
Although the African continent is the historical point of departure for the deportations to the Americas (Cunin, 2003), it is, paradoxically, states of the Global South, most notably Brazil, Colombia, and Cuba, that have long taken the lead in advancing the legal recognition of Afro-descendants at the constitutional and legislative levels.
By contrast, African states have only gradually begun to consider the legal formalization of this foundational memorial relationship. Yet Benin and Senegal, each through distinct political trajectories, now find themselves entrusted with a unique responsibility in redefining this historical relationship, both because of their central role in the history of the slave trade and because of the place they hold in contemporary diasporic mobilities.
The contemporary use of the term Afro-descendants emerged, particularly in Colombia during the 1980s and 1990s, through a process of ethnicization whereby Black populations sought to move beyond the racial categorization inherited from slavery and to transform Afro identity into a legal category of recognition. This relatively recent form of ethnicity remains ambiguous, however, and does not enjoy, within the international arena, the same symbolic resources accorded to other groups, especially Indigenous peoples (Cunin, 2006, p. 4). In this article, Afro-descendants refers both to the descendants of African populations deported to the Americas (North America, South America, and the Caribbean) and to all individuals who, through contemporary circulations, identify with this history and claim a cultural, identity-based, or symbolic affiliation with Africa. The term “legal status”, meanwhile, refers to the combination of the objective legal position recognized by a state’s domestic legal order (entry and residence rights, access to public services, property rights, or cultural rights) and the subjective dimension of symbolic or memorial recognition that this history entails. Bringing these two concepts together makes it possible to highlight the tensions between the administrative, cultural, and constitutional dimensions of the reception of Afro-descendants.
Within this framework, the concept of agency is employed in a restricted and operational sense. It refers here to the capacity of Afro-descendants to transform experiences of return, identity reconnection, and engagement with the past into concrete demands for legal recognition (Verdiesen, 2021). This approach allows us to move beyond a strictly culturalist reading of the phenomenon by situating it within a dynamic interaction between social practices and normative frameworks. Thus, as some scholars have asserted:
…the development of the power to act is both the process of increasing agency and that of enhancing the other capabilities of individuals and communities, enabling them to make choices and, if they so desire, to translate those choices into actions and desired outcomes… (Morin et al., 2019).
State responses nevertheless remain uneven. While some countries of the Global South, particularly in Latin America, have developed advanced forms of legal recognition for Afro-descendants, African states have only recently begun to engage in such reflections. In this regard, Benin and Senegal offer two particularly revealing configurations.
Benin, a country historically shaped by the slave trade through the trading posts of Ouidah and Porto-Novo (Law, 2008), has become an unprecedented normative laboratory following the adoption of the law of 2 September 2024. Article 2 of that law stipulates that “any person having a Sub-Saharan African ancestor deported from the continent during the slave trade and the triangular trade” may apply for Beninese nationality through recognition. In 2025, this initiative was followed by the official launch of the “My Afro Origins” platform, designed to administer such applications (Government of Benin, 2025a).
Senegal, by contrast, has long favored a model of recognition grounded in memory, heritage, and cultural diplomacy rather than in the granting of specific rights. This approach is particularly reflected in the central place occupied by Gorée Island within Senegalese memorial policies (UNESCO, 1978), in the diplomatic uses of the memory of the slave trade, as well as in cultural policies inherited from the Négritude movement (Mpegna, 2016) and the First World Festival of Black Arts held in 1966. The relationship with the Afro-descendant diaspora is therefore framed more by a logic of symbolic openness and cultural influence than by a process of juridification. Afro-descendants can find there, opportunities for settlement, identity reconnection, and cultural or economic investment, yet they do not benefit from an autonomous legal status. This configuration makes Senegal a model of recognition that is primarily memorial and diplomatic in nature, in which Afro-descendant agency is expressed mainly through social, cultural, and mobility practices rather than through access to differentiated rights (Guilhaumou, 2012).
Against this background, the article leads us to examine the capacity of African law to develop instruments of recognition-based justice capable of responding to historical legacies, contemporary mobility dynamics, and the symbolic expectations of Afro-descendants, drawing on the legal systems of Benin and Senegal.
Legal scholarship devoted specifically to Afro-descendants within African legal systems remains limited. Most of the existing literature falls within historical, anthropological, or memory studies, while legal research has focused primarily on broader migration issues or cultural rights. Constitutional and administrative approaches specifically addressing Afro-descendants are more developed in the Latin American context, particularly with regard to Brazil (Braga Dos Santos, 2021) and Colombia (Riaño Saad, 2020), but remain marginal in Africa. It is precisely this gap, between the absence of a specific legal framework and the emergence of memorial, identity-based, and mobility claims advanced by certain Afro-descendant populations, that underpins the relevance of a reflection on Beninese and Senegalese public law. The staging of the past (museums, memorial routes, public rituals, and guided visits) in Gorée and Ouidah creates a form of diasporic dramaturgy that transforms collective memory, grounded in historical materials, into a valuable political resource. This staging, therefore, constitutes a niche of agency observed within diasporic mobility.
This reflection is, nevertheless, marked by major theoretical and practical tensions. First, it requires reconciling the hypothesis of a specific status with constitutional principles of equality and non-discrimination, which mandate that the state treat all foreign nationals on its territory without distinction, such that any differentiation based on Afro-descendant identity therefore appears, at first glance, suspect in light of the requirements of universality. Second, it involves confronting the agency claimed by Afro-descendants with the imperatives of legal order without creating a hierarchy of memories or even a competition among historical or cultural groups over victimhood.
Finally, the possibility of a diasporic status remains largely constrained by the absence, in most Francophone African constitutions, of explicit provisions concerning the legal recognition of Afro-descendants, as well as by political concerns over the emergence of competing identity-based claims that states might struggle to regulate through existing normative and administrative frameworks. Indeed, alongside the political constitution (Burgel, 2000; Souty, 2011[1]) and the social[2] constitution, there exists the demotic constitution. The concept of a demotic constitution refers to a conception of constitutionalism that extends beyond the organization of public powers or the abstract protection of individual rights to incorporate real peoples, their historical trajectories, and their effective forms of participation in the political[3] community. Unlike a strictly state-centered or elitist constitutionalism, the demotic constitution emphasizes the capacity of historically marginalized groups to recognize themselves as subjects of the constitutional compact, and to shape the definition of the constitutional “we.”
To what extent, and through what legal and administrative frameworks, can African states, particularly Benin and Senegal, legally recognize the specificity of Afro-descendants without undermining universal principles of equal access to rights or fracturing the internal legal cohesion founded on the neutrality of the general status of foreign nationals?
In light of this question, the main hypothesis is that Afro-descendants do not yet enjoy an autonomous legal status in West Africa. The study, however, explores the idea that recent developments observed in Benin and Senegal may constitute the first indications of an emerging diaspora law.
The secondary hypothesis is that the differences between the two countries are explained less by their constitutional frameworks than by distinct administrative styles in managing Afro-descendant diasporic mobility. Benin favors a more formalistic and legalistic approach, whereas Senegal relies more heavily on flexible and politically driven mechanisms of recognition.
The study adopts a comparative public law approach that combines normative analysis with observation of practices. It draws, first, on legal sources (constitutional, legislative, and regulatory texts, including Benin’s law of 2 September 2024), in order to identify existing or emerging forms of recognition.
Furthermore, it draws on social science research as well as mediated sources (reports and accounts of diasporic visits to Gorée Island and Ouidah). These elements are used as indicators of memorial and social expectations, making it possible to understand how memory is transformed into claims directed toward public institutions.
The analysis therefore proceeds by linking norms and practices in order to assess both the conditions under which recognition of Afro-descendants may become effective as well as the gaps between memory, administrative action, and legal recognition.
The article follows a twofold approach, analyzing on the one hand the still-unequal forms of legal and administrative recognition afforded to Afro-descendant mobility in Benin and Senegal and, on the other hand, the prospects for normative and administrative harmonization in favor of Afro-descendants across the states of the Global South.
Unequal Legal and Administrative Recognition
An analysis of the legal frameworks currently in place in Benin and Senegal reveals that, although neither state recognizes Afro-descendants as an autonomous legal category, Benin has recently distinguished itself by establishing, through Law No. 2024-31 of 2 September 2024, a specific mechanism for access to nationality based on historical lineage (Republic of Benin, 2024). This innovation nevertheless remains limited, as Afro-descendants continue, for the most part, to be subject to the ordinary legal regime applicable to foreign nationals.
From Memorial Constructions to Differentiated Effects
An examination of institutional practices in Francophone West Africa shows that Afro-descendant populations are primarily approached through frameworks related to heritage, memory, and national identity. Although rooted in distinct historical trajectories, these frameworks follow convergent logics: they seek to valorize the history of slavery while shaping contemporary relations with the diasporas.
However, these memorial constructions do not, as they stand, carry direct legal recognition. Rather, they produce differentiated effects in terms of reception, visibility, and opportunities for action, without creating genuine subjective rights. The analysis thus reveals two principal modes through which memory is mobilized, illustrated here by the cases of Senegal and Benin.
- Memorial Recognition as Political Strategy
In certain contexts, the memory of the slave trade is invested as a political and diplomatic resource that helps structure a symbolic relationship with Afro-descendant diasporas. This dynamic is reflected in the institutionalized staging of the past, where heritage preservation, commemorative ceremonies, multilingual visitor itineraries, and the regular reception of diasporic delegations contribute to a form of recognition grounded in memory and international visibility.
This approach can be explained by the place occupied by Gorée Island in global representations of the Atlantic slave trade. Listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1978, Gorée has become a major site of memory, historical transmission, and diasporic pilgrimage. It stands at the center of a public policy framework that combines heritage preservation, memorial tourism, and cultural diplomacy (Gaye, 2020). By way of illustration, one may refer to the renowned House of Slaves, which, beyond the historiographical debates it has generated, functions as a transnational site of memory where descendants of the diaspora, tourists, heads of state, and cultural actors converge.
From a legal perspective, Gorée has been endowed with a protective legal status safeguarding Afro-diasporic memory. Domestically, the island was classified as a historical monument during the colonial period: General Order No. 2272 of 15 November 1944 placed “the entire Island of Gorée” on the list of historical monuments (French West Africa, 1944, p. 384). Following independence, Senegalese Law No. 71-12 of 6 April 1971 established the legal framework governing historical monuments and reaffirmed state authority over archaeological excavations and heritage protection (Republic of Senegal, 1971, pp. 2-7). Internationally, Senegal’s ratification of the 1972 UNESCO Convention and the inscription of Gorée on the World Heritage List in 1978 under Criterion VI conferred upon the island a status of “Outstanding Universal Value” warranting international protection (UNESCO, 1978).
From an anthropological perspective, this process of “construction of heritage” transformed Gorée into an “island of memory”, situated at the intersection of a national identity narrative and an address to the diaspora, thereby making possible a genuine memorial pilgrimage and a diplomacy of openness (Bocoum & Toulier, 2013). This memorial centrality also possesses a strong material dimension in terms of tourism and diasporic mobility//the diaspora: some institutional estimates suggest that Gorée can welcome up to 500,000 visitors annually during the most dynamic periods of Senegalese tourism, including numerous Afro-descendant delegations, international figures, and visitors engaged in memorial journeys connected to the Atlantic slave trade. It must nevertheless be acknowledged that this growth is largely the result of Gorée’s international heritage designation.
By international designation is meant the process through which a place, narrative, or local memory acquires recognition, protection, and visibility on a global scale, particularly through UNESCO mechanisms and international memory policies. In the case of Gorée, this designation has helped transform a Senegalese historical site into a universal symbol of the Atlantic slave trade and diasporic memory, particularly through guided tours of the House of Slaves, commemorative ceremonies, official speeches, and the regular reception of Afro-descendant and international delegations. The House of Slaves has thus become an emblematic site of remembrance and a focal point for the global narration of the slave trade. This highly ritualized memorial staging (presidential visits, memorial routes, and narratives of return) encourages a form of symbolic agency among Afro-descendants by providing a space for collective identification and the reappropriation of the past, even though such recognition remains largely structured by institutional and diplomatic frameworks (Gaye, 2020).
This memorial dimension has been extended through an active policy of cultural diplomacy. From the earliest years of independence, the Senegalese state made culture a central instrument of foreign policy. The First World Festival of Black Arts, held in Dakar, represented a foundational moment by bringing together intellectuals, artists, and representatives of the Black world around a shared affirmation of dignity and creativity (Harney, 2004). Since then, conferences, festivals, museums, commemorations, and academic partnerships have maintained enduring ties with African diasporas in the Americas, the Caribbean, and Europe. Recognition in this context is achieved through symbolic integration into a broader cultural community rather than through the granting of specific legal advantages.
This approach owes much to the legacy of Léopold Sédar Senghor. Senghor’s thought, shaped by the Négritude movement, championed the idea of a “civilization of the universal” founded upon intercultural encounter and the revalorization of African heritage (Mabana, 2012). Within this framework, the Black diaspora is not conceived as a distinct administrative category but rather as one expression of a broader Black world, united by history and culture. This intellectual matrix has exerted a lasting influence on Senegalese public policies by favoring symbolic inclusion over differentiated legal status.
In practice, this recognition is reflected in relatively flexible forms of reception. Senegal has long attracted Afro-descendant visitors, investors, artists, and residents who find there a favorable environment for settlement, particularly within the cultural, tourism, and real estate sectors. Numerous Afro-descendants from the United States, France, and the Caribbean have settled permanently in Dakar and its surroundings, where they pursue artistic, entrepreneurial, and associative activities linked to African culture, memorial tourism, and transatlantic exchanges (BBC News, 2020). Quashie’s research (2022) further demonstrates that some members of the international Black diaspora perceive Dakar as a space for identity reconnection and relative social mobility, facilitated by administrative practices often considered more flexible than those encountered in Europe or North America. This welcoming environment, however, remains firmly subject to the legal framework applicable to foreign nationals. Neither nationality, residence rights, nor political participation is subject to a specific regime for Afro-descendants. The relationship with the diaspora is therefore valued politically and symbolically without giving rise to an autonomous legal status. This approach differs from the more strictly regulated legal framework observed in Benin.
- A Regulated Legal Framework for Recognition
In certain contexts, the memory of the slave trade has been translated into explicit legal mechanisms without, however, resulting in the creation of an autonomous legal status. Benin provides a particularly significant illustration of this. Through Law No. 2024-31 of 2 September 2024 on the recognition of Beninese nationality for Afro-descendants, memory has become a basis for access to nationality, marking a shift from symbolic recognition to normative recognition that produces concrete legal effects.
This legal framework forms part of a political sequence characterized by intensified interactions between the state and the diasporas. In this regard, President Patrice Talon’s official visit to Martinique from 13 to 17 December 2023 constitutes a revealing moment in this dynamic.
The visit led to several structured meetings with Afro-descendants and Beninese nationals residing in the Caribbean. On 14 December 2023, a meeting with Afro-descendant socio-economic and cultural actors in Fort-de-France highlighted expectations relating to reconnection and return. On 16 December, an expanded session with members of the Beninese diaspora in the French Caribbean and Guiana (Martinique, Guadeloupe, and French Guiana) explicitly addressed the reforms undertaken in Benin, particularly those concerning nationality and diasporic attractiveness.
This dynamic is also embedded within an economic reading of diasporic mobility, whereby the Afro-descendant diaspora is viewed as a potential source of investment and participation in national development (Tall, 2015). Such a perspective contributes to situating policies of recognition within a logic that is simultaneously memorial and strategic.
These episodes demonstrate that the reform was not simply the result of a top-down state initiative. Rather, it emerged through interaction with mobilized diasporic actors. They reflect the transformation of shared memory into structured demands for recognition and helped place the issue of Afro-descendants on Benin’s political and legal agenda (National Assembly of Benin, 2024).
The architecture of the law nevertheless reveals a fundamental tension. Article 3 adopts a broad criterion based on diasporic ancestry linked to the slave trade, while Article 8 subjects access to nationality contingent upon an administrative procedure and the assessment of the competent authority (National Assembly of Benin, 2024). Recognition, therefore, remains contingent upon proof and administrative verification, reflecting the continuing primacy of state sovereignty in matters of nationality.
Its implementation confirms this regulated character. Approximately one hundred decrees granting nationality to Afro-descendants were adopted before the end of 2024, while the institutional framework was adjusted, particularly through the involvement of the National Agency for the Identification of Persons (ANIP)[4], the public body already responsible for biometric identification and management of the national population register in Benin. Although ANIP was not created for the purposes of the new law, its mandate was expanded to provide administrative support and process applications relating to the recognition of nationality. These elements attest both to the existence of genuine demand and to effective implementation, without calling into question the administrative screening process.
At the same time, memorial policy has complemented and reinforced this process of juridification rather than replacing it. The restitution of the royal treasures of Abomey in 2021, together with the promotion of the Ouidah heritage site, forms part of a broader strategy of reconnection with the diasporas in which law itself becomes a vehicle for symbolic and diplomatic production (Government of Benin, 2024). Benin’s approach, therefore, does not rest on a simple juxtaposition of the normative and the memorial: the strengthening of legal recognition directly enhances the significance of symbolic policies of return and remembrance.
In fact, accounts by Afro-descendant visitors frequently evoke experiences of “return” or reconnection, sometimes described as formative moments giving rise to a desire for renewed affiliation with Africa (Le Monde Afrique, 2026). Such experiences may be interpreted as indicators of an emerging form of legal agency, reflecting the transformation of lived memory into critiques addressed to public institutions, even if some criticisms have questioned the relevance of certain commemorative stagings. Following visits to the Slave Route trail in Ouidah, several visitors expressed concern that these initiatives risk becoming “staged presentations designed to attract tourist flows at the expense of genuine return policies.”
Ultimately, the case of Benin highlights a genuine but regulated process of juridification: recognition is advancing within the law, yet it remains conditioned by administrative procedures and the traditional constraints of nationality law. This dynamic nevertheless calls for further examination of the administrative frameworks through which it operates, since the degree of their completion will determine the effectiveness of this juridification.
Administrative Formalization: A Process Still Incomplete
The differences observed among Francophone West African states stem not only from explicit normative choices, but also from the concrete administrative frameworks through which mobility is managed. Beyond the cases of Benin and Senegal, converging regional dynamics are evident in the region: on the one hand, states have adopted policies designed to facilitate the entry and circulation of foreigners; on the other hand, more recent efforts have sought to formalize and regulate these mobilities administratively without leading to the recognition of a specific legal status for Afro-descendants.
This tension between openness and regulation has produced ambivalent administrative mechanisms. On the one hand, they reflect a desire to enhance attractiveness and hospitality, often grounded in historical or diplomatic considerations; on the other hand, they remain structured around conventional legal categories that fail to account for the particularity of diasporic trajectories.
- Administrative Openness Without Legal Status
Senegal’s openness toward Afro-descendants is also reflected in certain administrative and social practices that facilitate settlement and circulation. Quashie (2022, 2024) demonstrates that some Afro-descendants arriving from Europe or North America have succeeded in occupying relatively privileged positions in Dakar, by mobilizing economic and social resources within a comparatively flexible administrative environment.
This agency manifests itself through ordinary yet meaningful trajectories: residential settlement, cultural and entrepreneurial activities, local investment, integration into urban networks, and the search for sustainable social anchorage (Quashie, 2022). Field accounts and media reports confirm this dynamic. Numerous Afro-descendant visitors describe their stay as an experience of “return” or identity reconnection, accompanied by a feeling of welcome and social recognition. During visits to Gorée Island, some have remarked that they felt as though “their ancestors were speaking to them from the ocean,” expressing a powerful emotional and symbolic appropriation of the site (Le Monde Afrique, 2026). Other testimonies emphasize opportunities for investment, artistic creation, and permanent settlement, reinforcing the idea of a concrete and operational form of agency (BBC News, 2020).
The annual number of visitors to Gorée Island, estimated at nearly 100,000, including a significant proportion from Afro-descendant diasporas, attests to the growing importance of memorial tourism as a space for engaging with the past and cultivating expectations of recognition (Le Monde Afrique, 2026).
These experiences, however, remain highly contingent. Some local actors welcome the influx of Afro-descendant visitors as an economic and symbolic opportunity (Law, 2008), while others criticize what they regard as an externally driven process of s (Gaye, 2020). Such divergent responses underscore the extent to which diasporic recognition is embedded within local balances between memory, economy, and legitimacy. The same sources highlight that successful trajectories depend largely on individual factors: the ability to obtain residence permits, integration into local networks, and familiarity with administrative procedures. Certain narratives also reveal a degree of ambivalence, as memorial initiatives are occasionally perceived as highly scripted and institutionally managed, thereby limiting visitors’ capacity to appropriate their experiences[5] fully.
Finally, several narratives and ethnographic observations report occasional tensions between local residents and newly arrived Afro-descendants, particularly regarding disparities in resources, rising costs in certain areas of Dakar favored by expatriates and returning diasporas, lifestyles, and privileged access to economic and cultural opportunities (Quashie, 2022). Some testimonies collected by Quashie (2024, pp. 107-130) mention, for example, that some Senegalese residents perceive Afro-descendants possessing significant economic resources or international networks as benefiting from more favorable social treatment, particularly in the cultural, real estate, and tourism sectors. In some cases, the social prestige enjoyed by certain Afro-descendants may be viewed as a form of reverse asymmetry, generating misunderstandings or subtle adjustments in social relations. These factors confirm that Afro-descendant agency does not unfold within a homogeneous or neutral space but rather within social configurations shaped by power relations and logics of mutual adaptation.
These limitations call for a shift in focus toward the administrative framework itself, whose formalization mechanisms ultimately determine how such agency is translated into legal reality.
- Incomplete and Undifferentiated Administrative Formalization
Across all the states of Francophone West Africa, efforts to formalize the administration of international mobility are characterized by a two-fold approach. On the one hand, they seek to rationalize the conditions for entry, residence, and identification of foreigners through the digitalization of procedures, centralization of data, and strengthening of border management. On the other hand, they remain largely structured around general legal categories that classify individuals primarily as “foreigners,” without differentiation based on historical or diasporic trajectories.
This logic produces a form of administrative homogenization: it enables more efficient management of mobility flows, it tends to obscure specific situations, particularly those of Afro-descendants whose movements are embedded within a long history of African mobilities. Such an approach encourages the interpretation of return experiences not as isolated phenomena but as the reactivation of longstanding transcontinental trajectories (Lafont & Fauvelle, 2020).
Consequently, although memorial and diplomatic policies directed toward diasporas have emerged, they rarely find expression within ordinary administrative frameworks.
It is within this context that the case of Benin should be situated. Although the country has undertaken substantial reforms in recent years to modernize its entry regime, its legal and administrative frameworks remain, for the most part, largely centered on a uniform conception of the “foreigner,” irrespective of any connection to the history of slavery or the African diaspora.
This is evident in Decree No. 2023-489 of 20 February 2023, which grants visa exemptions for certain categories of foreign nationals without any specific reference to Afro-descendant status. The mechanism applies indiscriminately to nationals of numerous countries, including non-African and non-Afro-descendant populations, such as French, Brazilian, or Chinese citizens who fall within the relevant exemption or simplified e-visa categories (Republic of Benin, 2023). Similarly, official government communications announcing visa-free entry for nationals of certain African states for stays of up to ninety days apply uniformly and do not target Afro-descendants as a distinct legal group (Government of Benin, 2023).
This development also forms part of a broader process of structured diasporic mobilization: toward the end of President Patrice Talon’s first term, a number of initiatives and meetings involving representatives of Afro-descendant diasporas helped bring explicit demands for recognition and facilitated return into both public and institutional debate, eventually transforming them into advocacy for reform of nationality[6] law.
The reform introducing the e-visa system, accessible through the official platform (evisa.bj), represents a further stage in this process of administrative modernization. It allows foreigners, regardless of diasporic origin, to obtain online tourist, business, or transit visas valid for 30 or 90 days (Government of Benin, 2025b). While this system undeniably facilitates international mobility, its scope remains strictly administrative. It does not include any normative differentiation capable of recognizing a specific historical relationship or a memorial return to Africa.
Within this general framework, recognition of Afro-descendants rests essentially on Law No. 2024-31 of 2 September 2024 concerning Beninese nationality by recognition. Articles 2 and 4 explicitly provide a pathway to nationality for individuals able to establish descent from an ancestor belonging to a sociocultural group present on the territory of present-day Benin prior to colonization. Yet the claims advanced by Afro-descendant diasporas extend beyond nationality to include mobility, settlement, symbolic recognition, and the facilitation of return. In Benin, the state’s response has focused primarily on the issue of nationality, through Law No. 2024-31 of 2 September 2024 on Beninese nationality by recognition, whose Articles 2 and 4 explicitly pave the way for the acquisition of nationality by persons who can establish that they are descended from an ancestor who belonged to a sociocultural group present on Beninese territory prior to colonization. Although this innovation is significant, it does not alter the law governing entry or residence: prior to acquiring nationality, Afro-descendants remain subject to the same procedures as all other foreign nationals. Legal recognition, therefore, remains structured primarily around national belonging and has not yet given rise to a specific administrative regime governing mobility or settlement.
As a result, the normative recognition of Afro-descendant identity in Benin has not yet produced a genuine legal status for diasporic mobility: it operates through the logic of nationality but does not establish a preferential residence regime, a distinct right of circulation, or specific administrative guarantees. Afro-descendant agency, therefore, remains dependent upon the ability to obtain nationality rather than upon any autonomous right to mobility or residence.
In other words, while the Beninese law represents an unprecedented normative institutionalization of diasporic memory and historical belonging, it does not yet create a differentiated legal status governing the residence of Afro-descendants. Recognition is legally valid, but its capacity to generate agency remains limited in the absence of a residence, mobility, and social rights system specifically linked to Afro-descendant identity.
At this stage, a broader project emerges: the construction of an African framework for Afro-descendant mobility, capable of building upon the Beninese precedent of nationality by recognition while incorporating the more flexible administrative practices observed in Senegal and initiatives developed elsewhere in the Global South. This dynamic is unfolding within a continental context increasingly shaped by competition among policies of reconnection with the diaspora, as illustrated in particular by Ghana’s “Year of Return” and “Beyond the Return” initiatives (Government of Ghana, 2019), as well as by recent international debates concerning recognition of the Atlantic slave trade as a crime against humanity, revived before the United Nations General Assembly in 2026 through Resolution 80/250 (United Nations General Assembly, 2026).
This perspective invites consideration of the conditions necessary for a more coherent structuring of legal and administrative frameworks, thereby opening the way toward a possible process of normative and administrative harmonization.
Toward Normative and Administrative Harmonization
Beyond Benin’s recognition of nationality on the basis of Afro-descendant origin, the contemporary legal challenge lies in determining whether broader mechanisms could be established in West Africa — or, more systematically, across the African continent — to provide Afro-descendants with a coherent status combining mobility, historical recognition, and effective subjective rights. Such a reflection necessarily invites comparison with experiences elsewhere in the Global South, particularly in Latin America, where certain constitutions and legislative frameworks have enshrined specific cultural and historical statuses that may serve as models or sources of inspiration for African states.
Emerging Models of Recognition and Their Applicability
Attention to certain Latin American experiences enables putting African hesitations into perspective, while revealing possible legal approaches for the construction of an African diasporic status grounded not only in historical memory but also in the recognition of specific cultural and administrative rights.
- Latin American Experiences and Diasporic Statuses
In Latin America, Afro-descendant identity was recognized at an early stage as a legal category capable of generating collective rights that extend beyond the strictly individual logic of civic equality. Colombia provides a notable example. Its 1991 Constitution recognizes the nation as “pluricultural and multi-ethnic,” notably in Article 7, thereby establishing a constitutional framework for the recognition of Afro-Colombian communities and enabling the subsequent adoption of legislative measures designed to guarantee specific cultural, territorial, and social rights (Colombia, 1991, Art. 7). Colombian constitutional jurisprudence has further consolidated this recognition by treating these communities as genuine collective subjects endowed with distinct prerogatives — particularly in matters of territory and self-governance — thereby transforming Afro-descendant identity into a legal and political status rather than just a historical inheritance.
The Brazilian experience confirms this orientation through the constitutional recognition of quilombola communities, descendants of formerly enslaved people who established autonomous settlements. The 1988 Federal Constitution and its implementing legislation grant quilombola communities rights to land as a form of historical reparation, enabling public policies specifically directed toward the material and cultural recognition of Afro-descendants (Brazil, 1988, Art. 68; Rossi & Capato, 2025). Here, Afro-descendant identity ceases to be simply an individual affiliation and becomes a legal category that, in itself, grounds collective rights linking history, territory, and political memory.
Ecuador and other Andean states have followed a comparable trajectory. Since the constitutional reforms adopted during the 1990s and 2000s, the Ecuadorian state has recognizes Afro-Ecuadorians as a constituent element of national diversity and granted them specific cultural and identity-based rights. These developments have fostered mechanisms of collective protection grounded in the recognition of ethnic and memorial pluralism within the state. The objective is not only to guarantee sociocultural rights; recognition also seeks to integrate Afro-descendants into decision-making processes, enhance their institutional visibility, and make the history of slavery a criterion for the design of contemporary public policies.
Constitutional experiences in Latin America demonstrate, for Senegal and Benin, that it is legally possible to transform diasporic memory into a normative category and to connect a legacy with present-day territorial, cultural, and political rights (Fraser, 2005). In other words, they attest to the legal feasibility of an Afro-descendant collective status and its integration into the constitutional architecture of nationality (Colombia, 1991, Art. 7).
Nevertheless, direct transposition would be problematic. Whereas the Colombian and Brazilian constitutions recognize “Afro-descendant communities” as collective subjects endowed with specific rights (Brazil, 1988, Art. 68), Benin’s recent trajectory has favored an individualized approach through Law No. 2024-31 of 2 September 2024 on Beninese nationality by recognition, which grants access to nationality on the basis of ancestry predating colonization. The Beninese model, therefore, rests on integration into the national body rather than on the recognition of internal pluralism.
Furthermore, some limitations of the Latin American model appear particularly problematic from a Beninese perspective. The construction of collective rights presupposes the legal identification of territorially situated Afro-descendant “communities”. In West Africa, however, the historical reality is different: Afro-descendants do not constitute a “territorial group” but rather an external diaspora returning to Africa through contemporary mobility. The Brazilian notion of “territorial reparation” cannot therefore be directly transposed to a state in which Afro-descendants claim not a specific territory but rather a “right of return” (Rossi & Capato, 2025).
For Senegal, the contribution of Latin American models lies primarily in the possibility of conceiving Afro-descendant identity as a constitutional category, particularly with respect to a more substantial recognition of the cultural and memorial rights associated with Gorée. Yet the Senegalese approach, characterized by pragmatic administrative openness without normative differentiation, diverges significantly from Latin American constitutional constructions by maintaining recognition without status (Quashie, 2022).
It may therefore be argued that Latin American experiences possess heuristic value insofar as they outline a possible legal horizon. At the same time, they reveal several structural constraints in the Beninese and Senegalese cases: the absence of an internalized Afro-descendant community, the primacy of national unity, and Benin’s preference for individual integration through nationality rather than through a collective status (Republic of Benin, 2024). In other words, while Latin America offers advanced examples of normative recognition of Afro-descendants, the African issue points more toward the development of a transatlantic public law of Afro-descendant mobility, consistent with the spirit of the African Union (Protocol on Free Movement of Persons in Africa, 2018).
Such a perspective could rest not only on mechanisms of nationality and return but also on legal and administrative bridges linking both sides of the Atlantic, particularly in relation to mobility, recognition of qualifications, documentary validation, and cultural and academic cooperation.
The analysis, therefore, turns to the possibilities offered by Beninese and Senegalese public law for structuring such a dynamic.
- The Potential of Beninese and Senegalese Public Law
The adoption of Benin’s Law No. 2024-31 of 2 September 2024 constitutes a remarkable normative precedent within the West African legal landscape. This initiative nevertheless forms part of a broader continental environment in which other states have also developed mechanisms of diasporic reconnection. Ghana, for example, has established a “Right of Abode” regime (Government of Ghana, 2024) allowing persons of African descent from the diaspora to reside, work, and move freely without a visa, complementing its “Year of Return” and “Beyond the Return” initiatives.
The Beninese case remains distinctive because it explicitly relies on nationality law as the principal vehicle for legal recognition. In doing so, it modifies the traditional legal framework of nationality, historically based on descent or residence, by introducing an identity-based dimension rooted in historical memory. As emphasized in a report submitted to the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, history and collective memory play a direct role in the reconstruction of contemporary Afro-descendant identities by generating expectations of recognition, justice, and cultural valorization (Harwood, 2024). In this context, diasporic belonging itself becomes a factor of legal agency in relation to nationality.
Such a criterion of agency raises questions regarding its constitutional foundations. No prior constitutional amendment was adopted in Benin, so the reform of the nationality regime is being carried out through ordinary legislation. Legal scholars may therefore question the existence of a possible implicit constitutional principle linking the national community to Afro-descendants, which would constitute a shift from the conceptual framework traditionally adopted by African constitutions regarding national belonging.
Conversely, this uncertainty may help explain why Senegalese public law has not, to date, assigned normative value to the diasporic dimension. The absence of a comparable mechanism in the domestic legal framework does not reflect not a legal impossibility, but a political orientation marked by the prevalence of historical and diplomatic engagement with the diaspora over formal codification of law.
Benin and Senegal, therefore, embody two distinct conceptions of the relationship between diaspora and nationality. In Benin, nationality is grounded in law and memory, though its constitutional implications remain to be clarified. In Senegal, nationality remains politically inclusive but legally uniform, consistent with a classical republican conception of nationality.
Despite these differences, neither approach has yet led to the establishment of a regional African diaspora status. Neither the African Union, ECOWAS, nor WAEMU has developed a binding or harmonized framework recognizing an African diasporic category endowed with concrete legal effects. Since the 2000s, the African Union has recognized the African diaspora as the continent’s “sixth region,” primarily within a political, memorial, and cooperative framework. This recognition has not yet translated into a specific regional legal status (African Union, 2005). The emergence of such a status remains contingent upon the political will of member states and upon clarification of the constitutional implications such a development would entail.
The Legal Conditions for an African Diasporic Status
Although the idea of a specifically African diasporic status remains largely theoretical, it nonetheless represents a plausible legal horizon, provided that the normative instruments capable of supporting it and the institutional frameworks able to sustain it are clearly identified.
- Recognition Justice and Emerging Rights
The attribution of a legal status to Afro-descendants requires a reconsideration of the very foundations of recognition justice within African public law. Indeed, the recognition of historical and memorial ties increasingly appears as a normative imperative, one that legal scholarship associates with the contemporary transformation of traditional categories of nationality in response to postcolonial mobility. Afro-descendant recognition cannot be understood only through conventional public law categories. Rather, it reflects a conception of justice that integrates both material and symbolic dimensions, since contemporary claims are rooted simultaneously in histories of dispossession and in present-day demands for recognition. Collective memory, from this perspective, is not simply a heritage resource; it becomes a vehicle for legal recognition insofar as it structures collective identities and grounds claims addressed to public institutions (Fraser, 2005).
In West African contexts, these dynamics invite a rethinking of belonging beyond the national framework alone. Diasporic mobilities, return experiences, and reconnection policies reveal the emergence of plural forms of affiliation that challenge traditional conceptions of nationality and political participation (Ricœur, 2000).
Within this framework, the principle of equality before the law, widely enshrined in Francophone African constitutions, does not preclude all forms of legal differentiation. On the contrary, it permits adjustments where they are objectively justified and pursue goals of substantive justice. The issue is therefore not whether equality should be abandoned, but whether its application can legitimately take into account the historicity of forced migration and its enduring consequences (Demart et al., 2017; Nkepseu, 2022).
Legal agency, in this context, does not refer to an abstract capacity for action. Rather, it denotes the ability of Afro-descendants to transform memorial experience into legally relevant practices. It manifests concretely through administrative procedures, forms of territorial anchoring, collective mobilizations, and claims articulated in the language of rights. Agency thus appears as a process of legal translation: through which collective memory becomes a demand capable of being addressed by legal institutions. Historical connection could therefore serve as a legitimate criterion of differentiation, provided that it does not establish a hierarchy among categories of foreigners or create differentiated grades of nationality. The objective would be to introduce a form of symbolic reparation grounded in the historical experience of the slave trade without undermining the integrity of existing nationality regimes.
The ultimate outcome of such an approach could be the creation of a status of “memorial mobility”, conceived as an instrument of gradual integration capable of accommodating the diversity of Afro-descendant trajectories in both their historical and contemporary dimensions. Such an innovation would require the establishment of strong procedural safeguards (rights to appeal, reasoned decisions, transparent criteria, and judicial review), to prevent arbitrariness while ensuring the effectiveness of a right to recognition.
From a jurisprudential perspective, the African Court on Human and Peoples’ Rights has recognized that identity constitutes an essential element of human dignity and may justify proportionate legal accommodations (African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights v. Kenya, Ogiek case, judgment of 26 May 2017). This reasoning opens the way to the proposition that recognition of collective identities may be constitutionally compatible with equality.
In the same vein, the South African Constitutional Court has held that substantive equality requires due consideration of historical forms of exclusion and does not preclude the adoption of remedial measures grounded in historical memory (Minister of Finance v. Van Heerden, CCT 63/03, 2004). Although these court decisions do not directly concern nationality, they provide a useful interpretive framework for the acceptance of differentiated memory-based regimes within African public law. The recognition, in certain African judicial decisions, of differentiation based on the historicity of particular situations thus opens the way for broader reflection on contemporary forms of legal recognition. These developments, however, are not driven only by institutional dynamics: they are also propelled by the mobilization of Afro-diasporic actors, claims for return, applications for nationality, memorial initiatives, and transnational networks seeking to transform the memory of the slave trade into concrete rights relating to mobility, settlement, and belonging. The gradual development of an Afro-descendant legal framework, therefore, appears as the product of ongoing interactions between memorial claims and state responses, encouraging a move beyond strictly national frameworks toward regional or transnational forms of legal recognition. Thus, the recognition of differentiation grounded in the historical context of particular situations, a principle enshrined in certain African court decisions, invites broader reflection on contemporary forms of legal recognition. In particular, it calls for moving beyond strictly national frameworks to consider the conditions for regional or transnational levels of the mobility and legal status of Afro-descendants.
- Toward South–South Harmonization of Mobility and Legal Statuses
The Beninese experience, when considered alongside Senegalese practices and Latin American models, invites reflection at both the regional and continental levels on the development of an Afro-descendant mobility status tailored to African states. Such an evolution would respond to demands increasingly articulated by Afro-diasporic organizations and actors, who now link memorial claims for recognition to more concrete expectations regarding return, circulation, settlement, access to nationality, and the administrative security of transatlantic trajectories.
Contemporary African law already contains legal instruments that could support the gradual development of a diasporic status grounded in mobility and historical memory. At the continental level, the Treaty Establishing the African Economic Community has been complemented by the Protocol on Free Movement of Persons, the Right of Residence and the Right of Establishment, adopted by the African Union on 29 January 2018, which notably guarantees the right of any citizen of a member state to enter, move freely within, and reside in the territory of another member state (African Union, 2018). At the West African level, the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) has, since 1979, developed a legal regime governing free movement, residence, and establishment based on its Protocol of 29 May 1979, often described as the first African framework for regional nationality, this regime is closely linked to the construction of a common legal space (ECOWAS, 1979). Although these instruments do not expressly establish a diasporic status, they nevertheless outline a logic of regional belonging that could be further developed, particularly through the creation of a status of “memorial resident” or a form of African mobility nationality.
At the same time, the African framework for fundamental rights provides a robust legal basis for the recognition of collective identities rooted in memory and history. The African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights explicitly protects cultural rights, the right to development, and the equal dignity of peoples, thereby allowing for the recognition of rights grounded in historical belonging. The jurisprudential orientation emerging from the Ogiek Community Case (African Court on Human and Peoples’ Rights, 2017) more broadly reflects the emergence, within African human rights litigation, of a recognition-based logic of justice attentive to historical forms of dispossession, exclusion, and identity erasure. Although the case did not concern Afro-descendants directly, it nevertheless contributes to legitimizing the idea that certain collective historical trajectories may justify differentiated legal mechanisms of protection or recognition, in accordance with its traditions and customs, thereby endorsing a logic of recognition-based justice applicable to an indigenous[7] community.
Thus, far from being without foundation, an African diaspora status could draw upon the combination of these two normative frameworks. On the one hand, free movement, residence, and settlement make it possible to envision a supranational form of nationality or a memorial mobility regime recognized across Africa. On the other hand, the protection of collective rights and historical identity opens the possibility of normative recognition for Afro-descendants, whose condition lies at the intersection of continental history, the memory of the slave trade, and contemporary mobility. The African institutional architecture, therefore, does not preclude the creation of such a regime; indeed, it appears to outline its contours, provided that member states demonstrate the necessary political will and adopt an appropriate legal framework.
Conclusion
The analysis undertaken in this article has made it possible to identify a set of operational criteria for the recognition and legal agency of Afro-descendants. These criteria take the form of observable practices: administrative procedures (applications for nationality or residence), forms of territorial anchorage (residence, investment, economic or cultural activities), collective mobilizations (diaspora networks, institutional interactions), and the articulation of claims in legal terms. The study shows that these elements are not abstractions but are embedded in lived trajectories, evidenced by return experiences, interactions with public authorities, and processes of diasporic reconnection.
Viewed through these criteria, the configurations observed in Benin and Senegal reveal distinct approaches to the accommodation of Afro-descendant legal agency. In Benin, such agency finds partial expression in nationality law through Law No. 2024-31 of 2 September 2024, whose implementation demonstrates a form of effective yet regulated recognition, conditioned by evidentiary requirements and administrative procedures. In Senegal, by contrast, legal agency manifests itself primarily through social and administrative practices of openness that facilitate settlement and mobility without establishing a specific normative framework. In both cases, Afro-descendant legal agency exists and produces tangible effects, but it has not yet culminated in the creation of an autonomous legal status.
These findings provide an answer to the article’s central research question. At this stage, the developments observed do not herald the emergence of a fully constituted diasporic status in West Africa. Rather, they reflect an ongoing process of juridification in which memory functions as a vehicle for legal claims that cannot yet be directly translated into law. The divergence between Senegal and Benin stems less from constitutional differences than from distinct styles of administrative governance of mobility, oscillating between normative formalization and pragmatic openness.
The principal contribution of this study lies in highlighting an intermediate space within African public law where memory, mobility, and normativity intersect without fully converging. It therefore encourages a shift in focus away from the issue of status alone toward the conditions under which law itself emerges, demonstrating that diasporic agency constitutes a factor in the gradual transformation of legal categories.
Any movement toward a more structured legal regime will require addressing several unresolved issues, including the identification of beneficiaries, alignment with the principle of equality, and compatibility with the requirements of state sovereignty in matters of nationality. In this context, regional coordination, particularly within ECOWAS or WAEMU, could provide a fruitful horizon for future reflection, provided that such efforts proceed through a gradual and carefully regulated legal approach.
Ultimately, the recognition of Afro-descendants reflects a slow but tangible transformation of African public law, which is increasingly called upon to accommodate, in a measured manner, the legal implications of a historical memory that has become, through the agency of social actors, a source of contemporary claims.
The study’s most significant contribution is to illuminate a still underexplored field of African public law: the juridification of the historical relationship between Africa and its diasporas. The analysis moves beyond an exclusively cultural reading of the diaspora phenomenon to identify issues of nationality, mobility, memory, and recognition-based justice. In doing so, it distinguishes between two approaches to public engagement: memorial recognition and normative recognition, although both may coexist within the same national system, albeit to different degrees and scales.
Finally, these developments call for close monitoring of the administrative and regional implications of these dynamics. The implementation of Benin’s framework, the possible normative consolidation of the Senegalese model, and African instruments governing free movement and regional integration may, over time, strengthen the legal position of Afro-descendant diasporas.
Beyond the specific cases considered, the contemporary challenge lies in the ability of African legal orders to integrate the legacies of the transatlantic slave trade into their public-law categories. Viewed from this perspective, the recognition of Afro-descendants serves as a revealing indicator of the ongoing transformations of African public law at the intersection of historical memory, transnational mobility, and the reconfiguration of belonging.