The international discourse surrounding the transatlantic slave trade has intensified this year, with renewed demands for formal apologies, debt relief, and financial compensation from nations and institutions that profited from slavery. In March, the United Nations passed a resolution designating slavery as “the greatest crime against humanity,” though the United States opposed the measure and European nations abstained.
Ghana has emerged as the primary advocate for reparations on the global stage, having tabled the UN resolution and convening a major summit in its capital, Accra in June that attracted representatives from approximately 80 countries. The nation holds this position partly because 10-15% of the estimated 12 million enslaved Africans originated from present-day Ghana, with many more shipped from its ports. Ghana’s Foreign Minister Samuel Okuzeto Ablakwa has been instrumental in advancing the reparations agenda, calling for a comprehensive system that includes educational grants, venture capital for African entrepreneurs, debt relief and debt cancellation, alongside compensation from individual institutions complicit in the slave trade.
Among the institutions facing accountability demands is the Church of England, which operated plantations and enslaved hundreds of people in the 18th century, generating substantial profits. In July, the Archbishop of Canterbury visited Cape Coast Castle in Ghana, a coastal fortress where enslaved people were held before transport across the Atlantic. The Church has responded by establishing a £100m social impact fund for communities affected by slavery’s legacy, though this measure has faced internal resistance.
Opponents of reparations often cite African participation in the slave trade, but Ablakwa contends that Western powers orchestrated the entire system and merely utilized local actors. Meanwhile, within Ghana itself, dialogue remains more complex. King Tackie Teiko Tsuru II of the Ga people recently publicly apologized for his ancestors’ role as middlemen traders who exchanged enslaved Africans for European manufactured goods, acknowledging this historical involvement as necessary for healing and accountability.
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