Ghana will turn 50 this year while Zimbabwe will turn 27.

While it is accepted that the vision, mission and strategic framework that informs many African government and the permanent Commission of the African Union is the integration of Africa’s peoples into one economic and political block not blinded by the colonially generated territorial boundaries, the concept of African citizenship is increasingly being undermined by governments who see in citizenship a powerful weapon to silence and intimidate adversaries.

As we complete the first week of 2007, it is important that Africans reflect on the concept of citizenship as it applies to nation states and citizenship as it applies to the inhabitants of the continent.

We need to engage in the conversation on citizenship not only because it confers on natural and artificial persons a bundle of rights that when interfered with even for political expediency can potentially compromise the urgently required economic transformation of the continent.

Citizenship is essentially the relationship between a person and his or her country and confers on the holder a set of rights and duties based on a status acquired birth within a country or through judicial proceedings known as 'naturalization.'

One should ordinarily be also a citizen, even though born outside a specific country; if his/her parents were citizens and one of them had a residence in that country prior to the birth.

A citizen is one who, under the Constitution and laws of the country, has a right to vote for representatives in parliament and other public officers, and who is qualified to fill offices in the gift of the people.

In a more extended sense, under the word citizen are included all persons born in a specific country and naturalized persons born out of the same who have not lost their right as such. This normally includes men, women and children. Accordingly citizens are either native born or naturalized.

Apart from the legal definition of citizenship, it is conveys a cultural affinity to a particular location, a sense of belonging, part of one's identity. Although citizenship is a legal status bestowed upon people by a sovereign nation, for a person born in a specific country, it is birthright that ordinarily would not be negotiable and subject to review as we have seen in a number of countries in Africa.

It is important to define citizenship because it defines who the actors that are relevant to participate in the national affairs of a country. Citizens provide the building blocks for any political society on whom democracy should be located. If citizens are people then people are the basic units who decide the nature of the political system under which they live.

We also need to locate citizenship beyond legal and historical definitions that center citizenship within civic and political rights discourses in Africa to social/cultural hegemonic discourses that seek to dis-empower adversaries using cheap instruments like citizenship.

In the USA, although citizenship was acquired by birth, all natives were at one stage not considered citizens of the United States. The descendants of the aborigines, and those of African origin, were not entitled to the rights of citizens. Anterior to the adoption of the Constitution of the United States each state had the right to make citizens of such persons as it pleased.

That Constitution did not authorize any but white persons to become citizens of the United States; and in the circumstances no one was a citizen who was not white.

In an increasingly globalised world where African heads of state and governments are daily on the road prostituting their countries in exchange of foreign direct investment, Africa needs to redefine the notion of citizenship.

It is important that when the rights of black Africans to citizenship in Africa is increasingly being redefined for political expediency we explore some of the interesting questions about the nature of the actors on the African stage: who they are (people, nation-states, corporations or international institutions?) and what rights and responsibilities they should have if Africa has to escape the poverty trap.

I submit that policies that favor foreign entities in the form of people, corporations and international organizations over indigenous Africans by effectively giving them (particularly Chinese companies and individuals) the "economic rights" that should be democratically available to people of Africa will in the long term undermine the interests of the continent.

For a variety of reasons, Zimbabwe continues to occupy a disproportionate space in the Africa media space for challenging the often taken for granted notions of what it means to be a citizen of a country.

The cases of former Minister of Finance, Dr. Chris Kuruneri, businessman Bredenkamp, and now the case of the Executive Chairman and Publisher of the only remaining independent media group in Zimbabwe raise a number of constitutional, legal, political and social issues that need to be addressed if Africa can remain true to the mission of the African Union.

We read with concern and shock that Trevor Ncube’s citizenship now requires the adjudication of a court in Zimbabwe. This case goes a long way towards exposing what is wrong with Africa and how Africans are made to feel insecure in their own continent for what may be narrow and self serving interests.

Imagine you are born in a country and you then learn that you now need to qualify for citizenship would you invest in such an environment. It is not entirely clear why foreign investors would be immune to policies that compromise the rights of citizens to participate freely in the democratic process.

If for instance, Dr. Kuruneri had not made a financially rational decision to invest in real estate in South Africa; his dual citizenship would not have been of national concern.

There is no evidence to suggest that the fact that he holds a Canadian citizenship made him any less Zimbabwean than anyone. In Mr. Bredenkamp’s case, it was the courts that came to his rescue with a precedent setting judgment that should have informed the decision to pursue Trevor Ncube on citizenship grounds.

There are many Zimbabwean born persons who may mistakenly think that they are immune from bad policies and as such they may regard the three cases as isolated and personal.

I am not sure whether citizenship would have been an issue if Mr. Ncube was not a successful entrepreneur with an independent mind. If citizenship can be used as an instrument to intimidate and silence critics then Africa is doomed as a continent.

One would have thought that even if Mr. Ncube was Zambian, in the interests of African unity, Zimbabwe should welcome him as a fellow citizen. After all, he is born in the country and does not know of any other home except Zimbabwe. That should count for something.

Africa needs citizens who have interests in the continent and it is clear that Mr. Ncube is not only a citizen of Zimbabwe but someone with interests that are critically important for any nation that seeks to build a plural society based on universally acceptable standards that investors need to factor before committing any long term resources to foreign countries.

Without the rule of law and respect for human rights, Africa will continue to negotiate its future as a marginal and inconsequential player in a globally competitive environment.