The president of Ghana, Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, is requesting compensation from the US and Europe for the slave trade.
The African leader said reparations for Africa and the African Diaspora are long overdue while speaking on August 1 at a summit co-hosted by the AU Commission, the Africa Transitional Justice Legacy Fund (ATJLF), the Africa-American Institute (AAI), and Global Black with funding from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation.
“Reparations for Africa and the African Diaspora are long overdue. Predictably, the question of reparation becomes a debate only when it comes to Africa and Africans. We believe the calls for reparations for Africa are just,” President Akufo-Addo said at the opening of a four-day summit on the theme: “Advancing justice: Reparations and racial healing” in Accra on Monday.
He believed that the European countries that participated in the slave trade owed a formal apology to the entire continent of Africa for the crimes and harm the trade had caused to the people, psyche, image, and character of Africans around the world.
He continued by saying that no amount of money could undo the harm caused by the trans-Atlantic slave trade and its long-lasting effects: “We need to heal from the wrongs of the past in order to capitalise on the opportunities that await us in the future.”
In order to advance the reparations cause, President Akufo-Addo urged the AU to talk to “our kith and kin from the Diaspora.” He said that the Caribbean community had taken the initiative in the reparations discussion.
He recalled that when the British abolished slavery, all the owners of enslaved Africans received reparations totaling 20 million pounds sterling, which is equal to 20 billion pounds sterling in today’s money. However, he claimed that the Africans who were held in slavery did not receive a single penny.
He added that whereas slaves received nothing in the US, owners received $300 for each slave they owned.
“Take the case of Haiti, which had to pay reparations amounting to $21 billion to French slave holders in 1825 for the victory of the great Haitian Revolution, the first in the Americas and the Caribbean where slaves were freed.
“It was a payment made under duress which impoverished Haiti throughout the 19th century till today,” he said.
