Compensate Africa for slave trade – Akufo-Addo at UN General Assembly

President Nana Akufo-Addo has urged European countries to compensate Africa for the harm caused by the ancient slave trade.

At the 78th session of the UN General Assembly, the president lamented the world’s long-standing reluctance to address the facts, repercussions, and tragedies of the slave trade and urged that such sensitive evils not be overlooked.

“For centuries, the world has been unwilling and unable to confront the realities of the consequences of the slave trade, but gradually this is changing, and it is 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.”

The President posited that, despite the fact that no amount of money could ever atone for the atrocities committed against Africans during the slave trade, paying reparations would be a brave admission of wrongdoing.

“Reparations must be paid for the slave trade. No amount of money will ever make up for the horrors, but it would make the point that evil was perpetrated, that millions of productive Africans were snatched from the embrace of our continent and put to work in the Americas and the Caribbean without compensation for their labour.

President Akufo-Addo revealed that the AU has authorized Ghana to hold a global conference on reparations for the loss of slaves, adding that it is a matter that the world must confront and cannot ignore, as slavery was abolished.

“If there are any hesitations in some minds about the paying of reparations, it is worth considering the fact 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 AU has authorised Ghana to hold a global conference on the issue in November in Accra.”