At the conclusion of the African Union (AU) summit in Addis Ababa, Ghanaian President John Mahama announced his intention to introduce a resolution at the United Nations.

The resolution aims to classify the transatlantic slave trade as the “gravest crime against humanity.” Mahama stated that while such a resolution cannot undo history, it would serve to acknowledge it. The initiative, he emphasised, is not solely about financial reparations but also about historical reckoning. Through the transatlantic slave trade, millions of people were forcibly taken from West and Central Africa to North and South America.

As early as 2023, Mahama’s predecessor, Nana Akufo-Addo, had made a similar appeal, calling on African states to advocate for reparations for the injustices suffered through slavery and colonialism.
In recent years, several Western heads of state and government have acknowledged the crimes of the colonial era. Germany’s Federal President Frank-Walter Steinmeier, for example, has issued an apology. There has also been a growing trend of returning looted African artworks and other cultural artefacts from museums to their countries of origin. However, demands for formal reparations payments have so far been consistently rejected.