What Happened to Africa?: Reparations summit reconvenes to construct a more accurate African-centred narrative of our history

In August of 2022, a groundbreaking

summit entitled ‘Advancing Justice:

Reparations and Racial Healing’ was

co-organised by the African Union

Commission (AUC), Africa Transitional

Justice Legacy Fund (ATJLF), the

Africa-America Institute (AAI), and the

Global Circle for Reparations and

Healing (GCRH). Accra Summit I, which brought together a broad base of

organisations across Global Africa,

culminated in the issuance of the

Accra Declaration on Reparations

and Racial Healing. A declaration which seeks to advance a global agenda for reparations and healing – laying the framework for an organising, engagement and advocacy strategy

moving forward. Next week, a follow-up action-focused summit brings together influencers from across Africa and the Global African Diaspora, including representatives of the African Union, to apply their expertise in helping to answer that boggling question; ‘What Happened to Africa?’ PaJohn Dadson examines the premise of the theme of the meeting. 

Noting that the transatlantic trafficking of Africans, enslavement, colonialism, apartheid and genocide were a “direct assault on the bodies, minds and spirits of African people resulting in profound injuries that went unmeasured and untreated, the Accra Declaration at the first summit in August of 2022 highlighted the importance of healing to the work of reparations.

This is what the meeting is reconvening to explore, and find ways to confront the challenges it presents.

Running on the theme ‘Centring Healing for Africans and the Global African Diaspora in the context of the African Union Theme of the Year for 2025 on Reparations’, the Accra Summit II comes off from 26th – 28th March at Big Blue Resort and Spa Hotel in Nyanyanor.

The Accra Summit I identified that the root of the multi-generational objectification, commodification and dehumanisation of Africans and people of African ancestry is the root of the socio-economic underdevelopment of the African continent and across the Global African Diaspora.

That, with centuries of brutal biases against African people, there is continuing physical, psychological, spiritual and cultural trauma enforced with physical and psychic terror and violence.

The International Law Commission prescribes five conditions for full reparations: cessation, restitution, compensation, satisfaction and rehabilitation.

It noted: “Part and parcel of the European justification for the systems of enslavement of Africans and the colonisation of Africa was the creation of a false hierarchy of human value.

This hierarchy placed Europeans at the top of the human family, Africans at the bottom, and sometimes not in the human family at all. The transatlantic trafficking of African human beings marked an entire continent and its people as inferior. This was intended to last, not just for the period of enslavement, but in perpetuity.

This system of racist classification is at the heart of the crime against the

humanity of African people as enshrined in the 2001 Durban Declaration and Plan of Action (DDPA)”.

Navigating these themes will be the deep dive that the upcoming Accra Summit II will have. It will premise that “as a result of centuries of global anti-Blackness, African people are miseducated about Africa, our history and ourselves.”

Thus, among the topics to be explored are “the role of Africans in the enslavement of other Africans, the nature of enslavement across the continent, the nature of European enslavement, and how the legacies of both appear across Global Africa today”.

All these questions will seek to guide the conversation at the upcoming meeting, and explore how – as Africans – we can construct a more accurate African-centred narrative of our history. How do we construct a history of human enslavement as a way of illuminating our understanding of the transatlantic trafficking and enslavement of African people?

To what extent was the enslavement of human beings a part of the African experience before the transatlantic trafficking? What role did Africans play in the enslavement of other Africans during the transatlantic trafficking? What was the nature of African enslavement? And, what was the nature of enslavement in Europe and the Americas?

“Black people are on the bottom of every good list and the top of every bad list.” This was as a result of the lie of white superiority and black inferiority, which created a hierarchy of human value that placed Europeans and whiteness at the top; and Africans and blackness at the bottom. We see the effects in every nation when it comes to life conditions. It has been a key justification for the transatlantic trafficking and enslavement of African people.

So so many questions arise? When and how did this hierarchy of human value take root? What role did religion play? How did the hierarchy evolve?

What are its effects today? What are the psychological, emotional and physical effects of the transatlantic trafficking on people in various parts of Africa and on the descendants of the people removed from Africa and scattered throughout various parts of the world today?

How can Global Africa heal? Collectively, Africans are suffering from trans-generational trauma, and this is evidenced in different ways in different places across Global Africa.

What is unhealed behaviour? What is healed behaviour? What are promising strategies for individual and collective healing? How do we craft African-centred principles, processes and practices for institutionalising the transformation from healed to unhealed behaviour?

In the movement for reparations, what role(s) do a cultural revival and a Pan-African cultural reconnection between Africans and the global African Diaspora play in fostering healing?

How can the decolonisation of our institutions and structures help to accelerate healing? How can we build a durable and sustainable infrastructure for healing for Africans and the Global African Diaspora? What are our next steps?

Representatives from the United Nations, African think tanks and Pan-African media and academia, youth and elders, artists, leaders in philanthropy, civil society, government officials and grassroots groups are expected to be among those attending this event.

With selected sessions shared online at Accra Summit II, it is hoped that centring healing within the framework of the dialogue will inspire, inform and provide models for the development of vibrant grassroots healing initiatives across Africa and the Global African Diaspora during the ‘Year of Reparations’ as designated by the African Union.

Centring ‘Healing’ will build on the success of Accra Summit I, with the objective of, finally, measuring and treating the profound injuries to the bodies, minds and spirits of African people. It must be noted that ‘Healing’ is a prerequisite for success in the movement for reparations, or any collective effort aimed at advancing the cause of African people.

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