The Ghana Must Go Bag: When an Object Outlives Its Memory
A short web story about the checked woven plastic bag known across West Africa as "Ghana Must Go"
How does an everyday object become a carrier of collective memory, and what happens when the object remains recognizable while the history that gave it meaning begins to fade?
Millions of people use this bag and say its name without knowing that the name records a mass expulsion. That makes it a clear case of how memory can survive in everyday language and objects while the knowledge behind it thins out. The story also speaks to the present: migrants are still blamed for economic trouble, and free movement in West Africa is still contested. And as the pattern moves onto runways and into galleries, it raises the question the programme asks: who owns this memory, and who gets to remake it?
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You know the bag. Do you know the story?
The checked woven-plastic carrier bag is familiar in markets, transport hubs and households across West Africa. Yet the words “Ghana Must Go” register a historical experience that many contemporary users no longer associate with the object.
A name born of expulsion
The bag existed before the expression. Its name became associated with Nigeria’s expulsion of Ghanaians and other foreign residents in 1983. A commonplace object thus carries an order directed at people who were forced to leave.
1983: when “go” became a command
On 17 January 1983, Nigerian authorities announced that unskilled migrants should leave by the end of the month. Economic crisis and political scapegoating shaped the expulsion. Estimates of those displaced vary substantially; researchers caution against repeating a single figure without qualification.
What can a bag carry?
The journey towards Ghana often took people through Benin and Togo. Migrants carried clothes and belongings in easily available bags, but the objects could not preserve the homes, relationships and livelihoods they had been compelled to abandon.
An object becomes an archive
The expression outlived the political event. In subsequent decades, a bag used for ordinary travel and trade also preserved the memory of a state-led expulsion, even when that connection was no longer widely understood.
Remade and reimagined
The checked bag has been remade in fashion, art and everyday commerce. Such reinterpretations can increase its visibility while obscuring the history of displacement behind its name.
When a name outlives its memory
The project distinguishes documented historical events from later popular interpretations of the bag. It asks what happens when words endure but the histories that produced them fade.
What the bag remembers
The story returns the bag to a history of movement, exclusion and belonging. A familiar object can open a public conversation about borders, political responsibility and the everyday material traces of forced migration.
Sources & Credits
Original project references, visual sources and creator credits are collected here in one place.
- Creator & project
Doris Anderson. Digital exhibition / web story. Who Owns Memory? Digital Public Exhibition, First Cycle 2026.
1. Samuel Fury Childs Daly, "Ghana Must Go: Nativism and the Politics of Expulsion in West Africa, 1969–1985," Past & Present 259, no. 1 (2023): 229–261. 2. Faisal Garba, Naa Densua Tordzro, Gameli Tordzro and Baindu Kallon, "'Ghana must go': Migration, resilience and mobilisation," MIDEQ case study. 3. MIDEQ, "Omo Ghana, Man For Chop" documentary film (2023). 4. Leicester Museums & Galleries, "Object of the Month: October 2023," on Anthony Amoako-Attah's Take Me Home. 5. Shola Lawal, "Ghana Must Go: The ugly history of Africa's most famous bag," Mail & Guardian long-form site, undated [c. 2019]. 6. Lauren Cunningham, Marie Claire UK, 13 October 2025
Vuyile Madwantsi, Cape Times, 19 September 2025 (on the bag in contemporary fashion).
- Visual and media material
Photographs, documents, illustrations, video and audio are attributed through the project text, captions and contributor documentation wherever that information was supplied. This exhibition page does not grant additional reuse permissions.
- Digital exhibition edition
Web presentation adapted for Who Owns Memory? (2026), with layout and language editing. The original contributors retain authorship of their research, interpretation and creative work.