THE PRESIDENT of Ghana has led calls for reparations for slavery across Africa and the African diaspora as the latest country to join the Caribbean in demands for restorative justice.
President Akufo-Addo addressed crowds at the Reparations and Racial Healing Summit this week and said atonement for the horrors of the transatlantic slave trade was “overdue”.
He called for increased demands in the fight for reparations that Caribbean nations such as Grenada, Antigua and Barbuda and Jamaica have made at the end of the royal tour of the region earlier this year and rejected the “double standard” for other ethnic groups. affected. by the colonial powers.
“It is time for Africa, whose 20 million boys and girls were denied their freedoms and sold into slavery, to also receive reparations,” he said.
“Reparations for Africa and the African diaspora are long overdue. Predictably, the issue of reparations only becomes a debate when it comes to Africa and Africans. We believe that the calls for reparations for Africa are fair.
“Native Americans have received and continue to receive reparations; Japanese-American families who were imprisoned in American internment camps during World War II received reparations. The Jews, six million of whom were killed in the concentration camps of Hitler’s Germany, received reparations, including grants and support for the homeland.”
Ghana’s president faced backlash for his comments after critics claimed it was an attempt to distract attention from Ghana’s worsening economic woes.
However, the President hit back at the claims and said the legacy of slavery has been “devastating” to the continent and the diaspora, which has hampered Africa’s “economic, cultural and psychological progress”.
Mr Addo rejected the £20m loan that compensated established slave owners when the Abolition Loan Act came into effect in 1833, which left many of Britain’s African slaves unwittingly paying off a loan that left them and their penny ancestors.
In 1825, reparations were also paid to French slaves from Haiti after the Haitian Revolution, amounting to 21 billion dollars.
Although, he emphasized that money alone cannot restore the endemic damage of slavery, he said that “nevertheless, now is the time to revive and intensify discussions on reparations for Africa. Indeed, time has passed a long time.
He added: “And, even before these discussions on reparations are concluded, 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 African population, psyche, image and character. worldwide.”
