Ghana has been chosen to host a global conference on reparations for Africa later this year, President Akufo-Addo has revealed.
The conference, the President says, will bring together key stakeholders on the Continent that are pushing for reparations, Africans in the diaspora among many other interested parties to make possible, the push for some symbolic benefits to families of victims of the slave trade.
“I’m happy to announce that Ghana has been chosen by the African Union to host in the latter part of the year, a global conference on reparations for Africa which will seek to bring together Africans and members of the African diasporan family to set out a concrete strategy for achieving the goals of reparation,” President Akufo-Addo said.
African governments have renewed their efforts in demanding reparations from European countries who were involved in the trans-Atlantic slave trade and for other wrongs done the continent including the illegal transporting of Africa’s cultural properties.
While speaking at the opening ceremony of a three-day summit by the Open Society Foundation on the restitution of African Heritage, the President said the restitution, return, reparation and repatriation of stolen and looted African cultural properties under pre-colonial and colonial circumstances have to be issues of major concerns to all Africans.
“I support fully, the initiative for the return and reparation of African cultural properties to the continent as it will help Africans and in particular, the descendants of the communities, groups and individuals who created and produced these cultural properties to reconnect to their history, to their pioneers, to their knowledge and their skills,” he added.
