Ghana’s President John Dramani Mahama is under growing pressure from a global coalition of scholars and activists to marshal African leaders behind a unified push for reparations for slavery and colonialism, as the African Union (AU) prepares to make 2025 a defining year for the issue.
At meetings in Accra this week, an international delegation urged Mahama to “choose courage over comfort” and use Ghana’s symbolic weight in Pan‑African history to move reparations from conference halls into the heart of continental diplomacy and UN debate.
Mahama at the Center of a Global Campaign
Mahama, who serves as the AU’s Champion for Reparations, met in Accra with a delegation of legal experts, historians and campaigners drawn from Africa, the Caribbean, Europe, Latin America, and the United States. The group laid out a set of “priority actions” under the AU’s reparations agenda, pressing Ghana’s leader to use his influence to forge a common front among Africa’s 55 states as negotiations with former slave‑trading and colonial powers intensify.
According to statements released after the talks, the delegation challenged Mahama and his peers to stand more visibly with civil society and communities of African descent, insisting that reparations must be treated not as “symbolic reconciliation” but as a tangible demand for justice and redress. Mahama, for his part, reiterated that he does not see reparations as a plea for charity but as a “demand for justice and restoration,” promising to carry the case into upcoming AU and UN forums.
AU’s “Year of Reparations” and a Decade of Action
The lobbying campaign comes as the African Union formally designates 2025 the “Year of Reparations and African Heritage,” launching a coordinated, decade‑long initiative running from 2026 to 2036. Endorsed at the AU’s mid‑year coordination meeting, the program seeks a “unified vision” of what reparations should entail, from financial compensation and debt restructuring to formal apologies, institutional reforms, and educational initiatives.
The AU’s mandate urges member states and AU organs to pursue concrete steps addressing the legacies of the transatlantic slave trade, colonial exploitation, arbitrary borders, institutional destruction, and contemporary economic imbalances. Mahama has already signaled that Ghana intends to file a motion at the United Nations to have slavery formally recognized as one of history’s gravest crimes against humanity, calling on African and Caribbean nations to back the move at the General Assembly.
Ghana’s Role: From “Year of Return” to Reparations Hub
Ghana has become a diplomatic and symbolic center for the reparations movement, thanks in part to high-profile events like the “Year of Return” in 2019, which invited descendants of enslaved Africans to reconnect with the continent. At a recent luncheon in Accra honoring Grenadian Prime Minister Dickon Mitchell, Mahama argued that the struggle for reparative justice resonates deeply in both West Africa and the Caribbean, urging joint action to confront “historical injustices of slavery, colonialism, and other forms of exploitation.”
Ghana’s foreign minister, Samuel Okudzeto Ablakwa, echoed that message at the 2025 Diaspora Summit in Accra, calling for the gathering to mark a “decisive shift” in the global reparations struggle and describing the demand as both a moral duty and a political responsibility. The delegation that met Mahama this week also held talks with Ablakwa and Mahama’s envoy on reparations, Ekwow Spio‑Garbrah, in what Ghanaian media cast as early groundwork for a more assertive diplomatic push in 2026.
What Reparations Might Look Like
While activists often speak of reparations in the language of historic wrongs, AU documents and expert briefs presented in Accra emphasize a broad toolbox of possible remedies rather than a single cash payment. Options under discussion include:
Financial measures such as direct compensation, concessional financing and cancellation or restructuring of legacy debts tied to colonial‑era economic arrangements.
Formal acknowledgments and apologies from states and institutions that profited from the slave trade and colonial rule, accompanied by memorialization and curriculum reforms.
Policy changes and institutional reforms, ranging from fairer trade rules and technology transfer to the return of looted artefacts and cultural property held in European museums.
For many in the movement, the core argument is that the profound wealth gap between Africa and former colonial powers is not an accident of history, but the cumulative result of centuries of extraction, violence, and racial hierarchy whose effects still shape contemporary inequalities.
Obstacles: Fragmented Politics and Cautious Partners
Even though the AU has a new framework, campaigners are still worried that African political leaders are still divided and cautious, often because they don’t want to upset important donors in Europe and North America. The group in Accra stressed the need for “strategic coherence and unity” across the continent. They warned that individual national efforts will have a hard time against well-funded legal teams representing European states and businesses.
Recent diplomatic signals underscore that challenge. At a European Union–AU summit in Luanda last month, leaders jointly acknowledged the “untold suffering” caused by slavery and colonialism but stopped short of embracing reparations, a line that disappointed activists who had hoped for stronger language on restitution. In Brussels, questions from some European Parliament members about the EU’s Africa policy highlight unease over how far Europe is prepared to go beyond aid and investment into the terrain of historic liability.
Diaspora, Civil Society, and the Moral Argument
Beyond presidential palaces and summits, much of the energy behind reparations is coming from grassroots groups and diaspora communities. Delegates at the Accra meetings represented networks spanning the Caribbean, African‑American institutions, and European antiracist organizations, many of which have spent decades compiling documentation on the economic and human toll of slavery and colonialism.
Civil society actors argue that the issue is no longer only about historical recognition; it is about present‑day structures from unequal trade regimes to migration policies, that, in their view, echo older hierarchies. Their appeal to Mahama to “choose courage over comfort” was as much a challenge to domestic elites as to foreign governments, urging African leaders to align more visibly with communities that experience the legacies of these injustices in poverty, underfunded schools, and limited mobility.
What Comes Next for Mahama and Africa’s Leaders
Diplomats and analysts expect the coming year to feature a flurry of activity: draft resolutions at the UN, test cases before international courts, and more coordinated messaging from AU capitals. Mahama’s next moves, whether he can secure a robust mandate at upcoming AU summits, and how forcefully Ghana tables its proposed UN motion will help determine whether reparations stay at the fringes of international law or move closer to the center.
For now, the message from Accra is clear: Africa is seeking not only apologies, but structural change. As the AU’s “Decade of Action on Reparations and African Heritage” begins to take shape, the question is less whether the demand will persist, leaders have vowed it will remain on the agenda for years to come, than how the rest of the world will respond. In that unfolding story, Mahama has been cast, by allies and advocates alike, as one of its central narrators.