Ghana’s president Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, has called for slavery reparations to Africa. According to Mr. Akufo-Addo, slavery reparations to Africa are long overdue and needs to be intensified.
The African leader made the demands during his speech at the Reparations and Racial Healing Summit yesterday. 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”.
President Akufo-Addo 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.”
You will recall that 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.
To date, many Whites – especially those in parliament are against the idea of reparations to Africa. In a 2020 article on Quarts Africa by Thai Jones, it was clearly discussed that slavery reparations might be the single most divisive idea in American politics.
Advocates have spent decades calling on the U.S. government to assess how such a policy could be implemented and to enact a law that might offer financial restitution to the descendants of enslaved people.
But minds are made up — according to a recent Associated Press poll, 74 percent of African Americans now favor reparation payments, while 85 percent of whites oppose them — and Congress seems unlikely to take up the matter.
What are your thoughts?
Source: Africa News, Quarts Africa
