President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo has called for reparative justice for people of African descent for the injustices inflicted on them.
Speaking at a side event during the 2024 UN General Assembly in New York, the President said, “We are not convening this evening to share words, nor are we merely reflecting on history, we are here to envision a new future—a future that corrects the injustices of the past and ensures that our children, and their children, are born into a world that embraces their dignity and humanity.”
President Akufo-Addo underscored the brutal legacy of slavery, colonialism and systemic racism that continues to reverberate in the lives of people of African descent.
He emphasised that reparations are not just about compensation but about rebuilding the dignity and future of a people whose humanity was denied for centuries.
President Akufo-Addo highlighted the historical examples of Haiti and the United States, where former enslaved peoples were further burdened instead of compensated.
He recounted the harrowing case of Haiti, a nation that was forced to pay reparations to France for the audacity of gaining its independence from colonial rule in 1804. Haiti was shackled with an unjust debt of $21 billion that crippled its economy and prospects for generations.
“Haiti’s example illustrates a fundamental truth: reparations, when wrongly administered, do not serve justice. Rather, they can reinforce the very power structures that perpetuate dominion and inequality,” President Akufo-Addo asserted.
“It was the enslaved who paid their former slave masters, a story that still resonates across the Global South.”
President Akufo-Addo also recounted the injustices perpetrated in the United States and the United Kingdom, where compensation for the abolition of slavery was perversely awarded to the slave masters, rather than to those who had endured years of forced labour and inhumane treatment.
In the United States, $300 was paid to slave owners for each enslaved person they lost, while the enslaved were left with nothing but their hard-won freedom.
Similarly, in the UK, £20 million—a figure now equivalent to £20 billion—was paid to former slave owners but not a penny was awarded to those who had suffered under slavery.
“This was a perverse inversion of justice, one that allowed the structures of inequality to endure long after the formal end of slavery,” Akufo-Addo said, noting the enduring economic disparities and systemic racism that continue to afflict people of African descent to this day.
At the recent Reparations Conference in Accra, held in November 2023, the groundwork was laid for defining reparative justice for Africa and the African diaspora.
The President outlined several key actions agreed upon at the conference, including establishing a global reparations commission, the return of stolen cultural artefacts and investments in African nations and communities worldwide.
“This is the vision of reparations that we must hold onto—one that looks not only at compensation for past injustices but also at the creation of sustainable, just futures for our people,” the President declared.
The concept of Afro-diplomacy was also central to the President’s speech. Akufo-Addo called on African nations and their diaspora to be the architects of their future, pushing for reparations through global diplomacy, partnerships and solidarity with other oppressed peoples.
“Reparations will not be handed to us freely—we must actively seek them,” he said, urging the world to see Africans as equals on the global stage, not beggars.
President Akufo-Addo expressed confidence in the youth of today, whom he believes will be the ones to transform global systems and build a future of justice, equality, and empowerment for all Africans.
“We stand at the threshold of a new world—a world that we must imagine, design and build. This is the world of reparative futures, a world where the wrongs of the past are righted, and where African nations are free to define their destinies,” he said.
Rex Mainoo Yeboah