President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo has demanded that perpetrators of the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade pay reparations to countries that were affected by their exploitation.
The President said even though no amount of money would ever make up for the horrors, it would make the point that evil was perpetrated on millions of productive Africans who were snatched from the continent and put to work in the Americas and the Caribbean without compensation for their labour.
Delivering Ghana’s national statement at the 78th Session of the United Nations General Assembly, President Akufo-Addo said the time had come that Europe and the United States of America acknowledged that the vast wealth they enjoy was harvested from the sweat, tears, blood and horrors of the trans-Atlantic Slave Trade and the centuries of colonial exploitation.
“Maybe we should also admit that it cannot be easy to build confident and prosperous societies from nations that for centuries, had their natural resources looted and their peoples traded as commodities,” he added.
President Akufo-Addo stressed that the world has been unwilling and unable to confront the realities of the consequences of the slave trade.
He, however, indicated that this was changing gradually and it was time to bring the subject of reparations firmly to the fore.
“Granted that current generations are not the ones that engaged in the slave trade but that grand inhuman enterprise was state-sponsored and deliberate, and its benefits are clearly interwoven with the present-day economic architecture of the nations that designed and executed it,” he said.
President Akufo-Addo said if there were hesitations about the payment of reparations, “it is worth considering that when slavery was abolished, the slave owners were compensated for the loss of the slaves, because the human beings were labelled as property, deemed to be commodities.”
Surely, this is a matter that the world must confront, and can no longer ignore. The African Union (AU) has authorised Ghana to hold a global conference on the issue in November in Accra, Ghana.
Speaking to the vexed matter of illegal financial flows from Africa, he referred to the report of the panel chaired by the highly respected former South African President, Thabo Mbeki, on the illicit flow of funds from Africa, which states that Africa is losing annually, more than eighty-eight billion United States dollars ($88 billion) through illicit financial outflows.
“Yes, those monies too must be returned to the continent. It is difficult to understand why the recipient countries are comfortable about retaining such funds and are happy to call those countries from whom the monies are taken as corrupt,” President Akufo-Addo indicated.
He believed that a joint task force of the African Union Commission and the OECD Secretariat, under the auspices of the UN, should be charged to find ways of stopping the damaging outflows.
On the matter of the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals, the President stated that before the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, Ghana, like many other parts of the world, was making progress with the 17 SDGs, and she had good reason to believe she would achieve the 2030 target.
“Today, the picture we have of our performance is not very bright. Most of the 21 targets designated for achievement by 2020 have not been met, and we are not on track to achieve many other targets by 2030,” he said
Indeed, according to the 2023 SDG report, just 12% of the SDG targets are on track to be achieved.
“Progress on 50% of the targets is weak. The most disappointing part is that we have stalled or retrogressed more than 30% of the targets. We need to accelerate action on the entire project,” the President stated.
Rex Mainoo Yeboah, ISD
