We Left Home to Build Our Lives. What Do We Owe the Places We Left Behind?

In 2011, I left Ghana’s Volta Region for Cape Coast to study Environmental Science at the University of Cape Coast.

At the time, I thought I was simply going to university.

Looking back, I was also beginning a journey that many young people from rural and smaller communities know well: the journey away from home in search of opportunity.

I had spent my basic and secondary school years in the Volta Region. English and Ewe were the languages in which I could express myself most comfortably. Then I arrived in Cape Coast, Ghana’s former capital city, where Fante and Asante Twi were part of the everyday rhythm of life.

I had to adjust.

Sometimes adjustment happened in small, almost invisible ways: listening carefully to conversations, learning expressions, understanding jokes later than everyone else, and discovering how much language shapes whether you feel like an insider or an outsider.

Cape Coast was also physically and socially different from the Volta Region I knew.

The Volta landscape of my childhood was green and mountainous, marked by smallholder farming communities, close family connections, and smaller settlements where people often knew not only your name, but your family and where you came from.

Cape Coast introduced me to another Ghana.

It was coastal and historic, shaped by tourism, education, commerce, and centuries of movement. As a university town, it brought together people from different regions, ethnic groups, and social backgrounds.

My education therefore happened both inside and outside the classroom.

I studied environmental science, but I was also learning how to live beyond the world I knew.

And something unexpected happened.

The further I travelled from home, the more clearly I began to see it.

The Places We Leave

Across Ghana, there is an unspoken geography of ambition.

If you grow up in a village or small town, success often seems to lie elsewhere.

Accra.

Kumasi.

Takoradi.

Cape Coast.

Perhaps London, Toronto, Berlin or New York.

You leave because the university is there.

The job is there.

The company is there.

The professional network is there.

The investor is there.

The opportunity is there.

So when young people leave rural communities, it is tempting to describe the movement as a problem.

We speak of rural-urban migration, brain drain and the loss of productive young people from local communities.

Those concerns are legitimate.

But sometimes the discussion becomes unfair to the people who leave.

Most people do not leave because they have stopped caring about home.

They leave because home cannot yet provide what they need to build the life they imagine.

There is an important difference.

And if we ignore it, we risk romanticising rural life while asking young people to pay the price for development failures they did not create.

I do not believe young people should be told to remain in places where their opportunities are limited simply in the name of community development.

Go.

Study.

Travel.

Build the career.

Take the opportunity.

Create wealth.

Learn new languages.

Meet people who do not think like you.

Allow the world to stretch you.

Leaving can itself be part of development.

But it should not necessarily be the end of the story.

What Do We Bring Back?

We often imagine migration as a straight line:

home → city → success.

But perhaps it can also be a circle:

home → opportunity → knowledge → networks → capital → home.

The return does not have to mean physically relocating.

That is where I think our development conversation needs to change.

A young professional living in Accra can contribute to a community in Volta.

A Ghanaian engineer in Germany can support infrastructure planning in his hometown.

A nurse in London can mentor students interested in health careers.

A banker can help local entrepreneurs understand finance.

An agricultural scientist can connect farmers to new knowledge and technology.

A tourism professional can help a community recognise that its waterfalls, mountains, festivals, food and cultural history are not simply local features but potential economic assets.

A successful businessperson can invest.

A university lecturer can mentor.

A lawyer can advise.

A communications professional can tell a community’s story better.

Sometimes the greatest thing we bring back is not money.

It is perspective.

Leaving allows us to see how other places organise themselves.

How institutions work.

How businesses grow.

How public spaces are managed.

How tourism is marketed.

How farmers access markets.

How young people are supported.

How communities tell their stories.

Once you have seen what is possible elsewhere, it becomes difficult not to ask why it cannot be possible at home.

The Development Resource We Rarely Count

When we talk about the resources of a community, we usually think about land, forests, minerals, water, agriculture or tourism.

But perhaps one of the most valuable resources of many rural communities is scattered across Accra, Kumasi, Europe, North America and elsewhere.

It is their people.

The teacher who left.

The engineer who left.

The doctor who left.

The entrepreneur who left.

The public servant who left.

The researcher who left.

The young person who moved to Accra ten years ago and now understands a sector, has a professional network and knows how to get things done.

We count remittances.

But we do not always count knowledge.

We count donations.

But we rarely count connections.

We celebrate people who “made it.”

But perhaps we should also ask what happens when some of what they have made finds its way back into the places that shaped them.

Not as charity.

As investment.

Not simply through funeral contributions or festival donations.

But through enterprises that employ people.

Tourism initiatives that create income.

Agricultural ventures that improve productivity.

Mentorship that changes the trajectory of a child.

Support for schools.

Scholarships.

Professional advice.

Research partnerships.

Community planning.

Civic leadership.

Sometimes development begins with someone deciding that the place they came from deserves more than nostalgia.

A Question I Now Ask Myself

As I have moved through different educational and professional spaces, my understanding of home has changed.

My training in environmental science changed how I viewed land, agriculture and sustainability.

My experience in development work changed how I understood institutions, communities and opportunity.

Exposure to different people and places expanded my networks and my confidence.

And gradually, I began asking a different question.

Not only:

What opportunities can the world give me?

But also:

What can the opportunities the world has given me make possible for the places I came from?

That question is uncomfortable because our societies have taught us to measure success personally.

What degree did you obtain?

Where do you work?

How much do you earn?

Where do you live?

What car do you drive?

How many countries have you visited?

These are visible measures of progress.

But perhaps development requires another measure.

What changed because you succeeded?

Who gained an opportunity because you had access to one?

What institution became stronger because of something you learned elsewhere?

What business exists because you invested?

What young person sees a different future because you opened a door?

What part of your hometown is better because you remained connected?

We Do Not All Have to Move Back

There is a danger in this argument.

It can easily become moralistic.

It can sound as though people who leave owe their communities their lives.

I do not believe that.

Not everyone should return permanently.

Sometimes the best opportunities will remain elsewhere.

Sometimes your profession will require you to live in a city.

Sometimes your family will build a life abroad.

Sometimes returning physically will simply not make sense.

The challenge is not necessarily to move back.

It is to refuse to disappear.

You can belong to more than one place.

You can build a life in Accra and help build something in Avatime.

You can pursue a global career and contribute locally.

You can succeed elsewhere without treating home merely as the place you visit at Christmas, attend funerals or build a house that remains empty most of the year.

Perhaps this is the opportunity before our generation.

To redefine what return means.

Return can be investment.

Return can be mentorship.

Return can be knowledge.

Return can be tourism.

Return can be agriculture.

Return can be philanthropy.

Return can be entrepreneurship.

Return can be civic responsibility.

Return can simply mean refusing to forget.

I left the Volta Region because I wanted to build my life.

Cape Coast expanded my world.

The places, people and experiences that followed expanded it further.

But the more the world has opened to me, the more I have come to appreciate a paradox:

Sometimes leaving home is what gives us the capacity to contribute to it.

Our communities may not need all of us to come back permanently.

But they may need more of us to look back deliberately.

We should leave when opportunity calls.

We should go as far as our dreams take us.

But perhaps success should not only be measured by how far we travelled from home.

Perhaps it should also be measured, in part, by what eventually travelled back with us.