Dual citizenship not political bigamy
Prosper A. Batinge
Features
The early 1990s ushered in an incipient legislation sympathetic to dual citizenship globally. Of some 115 countries examined around this period, “nearly half … recognised dual citizenship, compared to just a handful in the 1950s” (Elise Whitaker, 2011, p. 757).
The trend in Africa aligned with this global uptick in legislative discourse amenable to dual citizenship with some 30 of its 53 countries welcoming of “dual citizenship, particularly for [Africans], who naturalised elsewhere” (Elise Whitaker, 2011, p. 777).
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Even of the few African countries resistant to dual citizenship laws, the evidence strongly suggested that their suspicion would yield to a more embracive posture in the future.
The evidence turned out right. As envisaged three decades ago, an overwhelming majority of African countries now permit dual citizenship, admitting of dual citizenship by one of two approaches: a top-down or bottom-up.
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