Ghanaian president urges reparations for Africa over slave trade

Ghanaian President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo delivers a speech at the opening of the Accra Reparations Conference in the Ghanaian capital of Accra, Nov.14, 2023. Ghanaian President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo on Tuesday called for reparations for Africa over the effects of the trans-Atlantic slave trade on the continent.(Photo by Seth/Xinhua)

ACCRA, Nov. 15 (Xinhua) -- Ghanaian President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo on Tuesday called for reparations for Africa over the effects of the trans-Atlantic slave trade on the continent.

Akufo-Addo made the appeal at the opening of the Accra Reparations Conference in the Ghanaian capital of Accra, describing these reparations as long overdue.

The Ghanaian president said the reparations must go along with the restitution of African cultural properties stolen from the continent.

"The effects of the slave trade have been devastating to the continent and the African diaspora. The entire period of slavery meant that our progress, economically, culturally, and psychologically, was stifled," he said.

Akufo-Addo, who raised the issue of reparations earlier in his address at the 78th session of the UN General Assembly in September, said, "It is time for Africa's 20 million of whose sons and daughters had their freedoms curtailed and sold into slavery, also to receive reparations."

The four-day event, on the theme of "building a united front to advance the cause of justice and the payment of reparations to Africans," brought together many African heads of state and government, alongside scholars, legal experts, and representatives of civil society organizations.