Time for Africa to get reparations - Ghana's president

Ghana’s president, Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo has called for slavery reparations to Africa and the African diaspora.

Speaking at the Reparations and Racial Healing Summit on Monday (August 1), President Akufo-Addo said these reparations were “long overdue” and needed to be intensified.

He questioned doubled standards in the debate when it came to other races and ethnic groups that were wronged historically.

“Native Americans have received and continue to receive reparations; Japanese-American families, who were incarcerated in internment camps in America during World War II, received reparations. Jewish people, six million of whom perished in the concentration camps of Hitlerite Germany, received reparations, including homeland grants and support”.

He also complained that all the owners of enslaved Africans received reparations to the tune of 20 million pounds sterling, “but enslaved Africans themselves did not receive a penny.”

Haiti also had to pay reparations amounting to $21 billion to French slaveholders in 1825 following the Haitian Revolution.

Whilst reiterating that no amount of money can restore the damage caused by the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade and its consequences, which have spanned many centuries, the President stated that “nevertheless, it is now time to revive and intensify the discussions about reparations for Africa. Indeed, the time is long overdue.”

He, thus, asked participants at the summit not to overly concern themselves with modalities for the payment of reparations, but, rather, work to establish, unequivocally, first the justice in the call for reparations.

“And, even before these discussions on reparations conclude, the entire continent of Africa deserves a formal apology from the European nations involved in the slave trade for the crimes and damage it has caused to the population, psyche, image and character of the African the world over,” the President added.