PREVIEW
An Accra summit agrees a plan with debt relief and restitution of cultural heritage, but lacks financial commitments from ex-colonial powers
A three-day summit in Accra ended with leaders from Africa and the Caribbean agreeing an 18-point global framework for reparatory justice, described by President John Dramani Mahama’s government as the next step towards reparations for the transatlantic slave trade (AC Vol 67 No 11, Much more than optics).
The framework includes commitments to ‘fair and adequate compensation for Africans and people of African descent, including those affected by legacies of enslavement, colonialism, genocide and apartheid’. It also calls for plans to ‘accelerate the return of cultural property, human remains, archives and heritage to countries of origin.’
Though Mahama’s government has been the driving force in the campaign so far, its allies include Mia Mottley, the highly respected Barbadian Prime Minister and Senegal’s President Bassirou Diomaye Faye. They will serve on an advisory panel on reparatory justice, together with Mahama, Liberia’s President Joseph Boakai and Namibia’s Netumbo Nandi-Ndaitwah.
Other recommendations cover sovereign debt burdens, including debt relief, restructuring and cancellation ‘to address enduring socioeconomic consequences of enslavement, colonialism and related historical injustices.’
A convert to the cause could be French President Emmanuel Macron who spoke by videolink. Macron’s France was one of 52 abstentions in the vote on a UN resolution on reparations in March, but he gave his support for the return of artefacts stolen during the colonial period (Dispatches 30/3/26, Mahama and the African Union win UN vote on slavery). ‘Making reparations can never just be a cheque written to bring the story to a close,’ he said.
Ghanaian officials had pitched the gathering, which concluded with a ceremony at Osu Castle in Accra, a fort built by Denmark-Norway in the 1660s to hold enslaved people, to build on the momentum from March’s UN resolution.
‘We won the battle against slavery, we won the battle against colonialism, we won the battle against apartheid, and we are confident that we shall win the battle against reparatory injustice,’ Ghana's Foreign Minister Samuel Okudzeto Ablakwa told delegates.
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