As part of Ghana's celebration of the "year of return", the country has granted citizenship to 126 people from the diaspora who have been living in Ghana for many years, a statement from the presidency says.

Marking 300 years since the first African was sold in a slave market in America, Ghana - a major hub during the transatlantic slave trade - declared 2019 the year of return for people in the diaspora.

At the ceremony on Wednesday evening, President Nana Akufo-Addo told the new citizens: "You have the responsibility of preserving and promoting the image of a country whose reputation, amongst the comity of nations, is, today, high."

He said that development in the country was not a matter of relying on external assistance, which "is a mind-set that I wish us to discard, a mind-set of dependency and living on handouts".