Follow Us on Google
By Michael Momodu
For too long, the conversation about reparations has been trapped in a cycle of polite requests and diplomatic evasion. It has been treated as a historical debate rather than a contemporary economic imperative. But across Africa and its diaspora, a decisive shift is underway. The call for reparatory justice is no longer a whisper, but a collective roar — and Africa must now speak with one unstoppable voice.
The African Union’s designation of 2025 as the “Year of Justice for Africans and People of African Descent Through Reparations” signals a historic turning point. This is not a new struggle. It is the continuation of a movement stretching back decades, including the 1993 Abuja Proclamation where African nations first declared that reparations must address “the responsibility of those states and nations whose economic evolution once depended on slave labour and colonialism.” What has changed today is the clarity, unity, and urgency with which Africa is prepared to press its claim.
Yet the resistance from former colonial powers remains as entrenched as ever. Many insist the past is “settled,” that apologies or symbolic gestures are sufficient, or that development aid should count as compensation. These arguments are not only morally hollow—they ignore the deeper reality that reparations are not simply about confronting past atrocities. They are about transforming the global systems of extraction and domination that grew out of those atrocities and that continue, in restructured form, to define Africa’s position in the world.
The historical record is impossible to dispute. Between the 16th and 19th centuries, an estimated 12.5 million Africans were violently enslaved and transported across the Atlantic by European empires. Nearly two million died during the Middle Passage alone. Entire societies were ravaged, economies derailed, and cultural and political systems shattered. When the age of enslavement gave way to the colonial era, the exploitation merely shifted form. By the early 20th century, European powers controlled nearly 80 percent of the globe, including vast swaths of Africa. Today, 127 of the 193 UN member states experienced some form of European colonial rule.
These crimes were not isolated historical events. As UN experts have stated plainly, “European colonialism and slavery built the world that we inhabit today.” From the borders that divide African nations to the languages spoken across the continent, from the educational structures that shape our minds to the global economic order that governs trade, finance, and technology—the fingerprints of colonialism are everywhere.
And crucially, the damage has not ended. It has simply evolved into new and more sophisticated forms.
Africa remains locked in a global economy that mirrors colonial patterns of extraction. Ghana exported $9.58 billion worth of gold in 2024 but retained only 14 percent of the value. The Democratic Republic of Congo produces more than 70 percent of the world’s cobalt—vital for the global digital and green economy—yet less than 1 percent of that cobalt is refined within the country. West Africa produces 70 percent of the world’s cocoa but earns less than 1 percent of global chocolate profits.
These statistics are not accidents. They are symptoms of a global economic architecture designed during colonial rule and preserved, intentionally or otherwise, in the post-colonial era. Unfair trade terms, exploitative investment structures, resource dependency, profit repatriation, and illicit financial flows drain more than $500 billion from Africa every year. Despite being home to some of the world’s poorest populations, Africa is a net creditor to the world.
This is why reparations must be understood not only as the settlement of a historical debt but as an economic necessity for Africa’s future.
International law already recognizes that victims of human rights violations have a right to reparations that are “adequate, effective, prompt, and proportional to the gravity of the harm suffered.” These rights include restitution, compensation, rehabilitation, public acknowledgment, and institutional reform. In the 21st century, however, reparations must also include systemic transformation: redesigning global trade systems, dismantling racialized financial hierarchies, ending the artificially inflated “African Premium” on borrowing, and returning Africa’s full sovereignty over its natural and economic resources.
Other News
Reparations are not charity. They are justice. They are a restructuring of the global order so that Africa is no longer forced to compete within a system designed to keep it subordinate.
Yet, predictable resistance persists. Former colonial powers often claim they cannot be held responsible for the actions of their ancestors, or that colonial exploitation was legal at the time. Others argue that development aid and debt forgiveness serve as modern forms of reparations. But these arguments ignore the continuity of benefit. Nations that built their wealth on African labour, African land, and African bodies continue to profit from those foundational advantages today, while Africa continues to suffer from the structural constraints imposed during that era.
The few exceptions—such as Germany’s reconciliation with Namibia or the UK’s compensation to Mau Mau survivors—remain small, symbolic, and far from the scale proportional to the harm done. They must not become excuses for silence.
This is why continental unity is essential. No African nation can successfully demand reparations alone. Many are economically dependent on former colonial powers. Many fear political or financial retaliation. Many face internal pressures that make unilateral action risky. But collectively, Africa holds immense moral weight, geopolitical significance, and economic leverage.
The African Union’s 2025 mandate is therefore an opportunity that must not be wasted. African nations must articulate a unified and unambiguous demand. They must coordinate legal strategies, invest in research and documentation, build partnerships with the Caribbean Community and Black diaspora globally, and frame reparations not as backward-looking grievance but as a forward-looking project for global justice.
Reparations must be connected to Africa’s long-term strategic goals: ending the commodity trap, building value-added industries, reforming global financial institutions, and asserting the continent’s role as a co-author — not a passive recipient — of global governance norms.
This is a generational project. It requires political courage, diplomatic persistence, and economic vision. But above all, it requires unity. As UN experts remind us, “These injustices targeted Africans and continue to negatively impact their descendants as a people, so justice must be collective.”
Africa stands at a crucial crossroads. The path of division leads only to continued marginalization. The path of unity leads to historic transformation. The global movement for reparations is gaining momentum — in the Caribbean, in the Americas, in Europe, and across the African diaspora. Africa must now rise to meet this moment.
2025 cannot be another symbolic year on the AU calendar. It must be remembered as the year Africa decided to stop asking and started demanding. The year Africa chose coherence over fragmentation. The year a continent came together to assert that justice delayed will no longer be justice denied.
Africa has been patient for centuries. It has negotiated, appealed, reasoned. Now it must speak with one unstoppable voice and declare what the world has avoided for too long: reparations are not optional. They are owed. And the time to pay that debt — financially, politically, and structurally — is now.
