In 1961 de Freitas was nominated to be British High Commissioner to Ghana, and was knighted in October of that year. He resigned his seat in the Commons on 20 December 1961, taking the sinecure of Steward and Bailiff of the Manor of Northstead. He was the first Labour appointment to an important role in one of the newly independent former British colonies. In 1957 he had chaired a Hansard Society conference on parliamentary government in West Africa. After Accra, he was briefly in Nairobi, as British representative supporting an attempt to build a Federation of East Africa which would include Uganda, Tanganyika and Kenya.