When President John Mahama addressed fellow leaders at the African Union Summit in Addis Ababa, calling for a formal declaration that the transatlantic slave trade was a crime against humanity, he was not simply delivering a ceremonial speech.
He was advancing a carefully layered proposition—one that seeks to reposition Africa within the moral, legal, and economic architecture of the contemporary world.
The central theme of his address—that the world must recognise the slave trade as a crime against humanity—may appear self-evident from a moral standpoint. But this is not merely about the right principles; it is a matter of diplomacy, where words carry consequences.
The conversation must therefore be elevated beyond the language of historical tragedy to one of juridical responsibility.
That shift carries profound implications for reparations, international law, and the future of Africa’s engagement with the global order.
The President’s AU speech did not emerge in isolation; it represents the latest step in a strategic arc that began with the Accra Reset Agenda, gained global traction through his address at the United Nations, and was given economic framing at the World Economic Forum in Davos.
Taken together, these interventions reveal not scattered rhetoric, but a coherent diplomatic project.
At its intellectual core, the Accra Reset Agenda seeks to reclaim Africa’s historical agency.
It reframes the continent not as a passive victim of slavery and colonialism, but as an integral part of the global civilisational order—one now pursuing moral restoration and the correction of structural injustice.
It also links reparations to development, suggesting that the issue is not merely about financial compensation, but about correcting the economic distortions created by centuries of extraction, exploitation and unequal exchange.
The Critical Shifts
This is a critical shift. For decades, reparations discourse had been confined largely to moral appeals and symbolic gestures.
Under Mahama’s framing, it becomes a structural argument: that historical injustices created economic imbalances that still define the global order, and that addressing them is not charity—it is justice.
His address at the United Nations elevated the argument from continental reflection to global contention.
At that level, the reparations narrative ceased to be a regional grievance and became a question of international law and universal morality.
If the transatlantic slave trade is formally recognised as a crime against humanity, it enters a legal category that carries no statute of limitations, yet commands global accountability.
This is where the intellectual precision of Mahama’s argument becomes evident.
He is not merely asking for apologies or symbolic recognition; he is laying out the groundwork for a legal and diplomatic claim that could reshape conversations around global equity, debt, development, and historical responsibility and accountability.
The next stage of this doctrine unfolded in Davos.
At the World Economic Forum, the epicentre of global capital, President Mahama’s reparations discourse acquired an economic dimension.
Davos is not a tribunal of moral judgment; it is a marketplace of ideas and investments.
To raise reparations in that arena is to signal that the issue is not confined to historical memory or diplomatic rhetoric.
It is about the architecture of the global economy.
By placing reparations on the Davos agenda, Mahama effectively linked Africa’s historical exploitation to contemporary wealth disparities.
The argument becomes straightforward: if the foundations of modern global prosperity were partly built on the extraction of African labour and resources, then economic justice requires structural redress.
Reparations, in this sense, are not retroactive punishment; they are forward-looking corrections.
The African Union Speech
The African Union speech in Addis Ababa represents the consolidation of this doctrine at the continental level.
It moves the reparations agenda from national advocacy to collective political action.
If adopted as a continental position, the recognition of the slave trade as a crime against humanity would give Africa a unified moral and diplomatic voice on the issue.
This matters because Africa’s leverage in global negotiations increases exponentially when it speaks collectively.
A fragmented continent makes moral appeals; a united continent makes political demands.
There is also a broader geopolitical context to Mahama’s interventions.
The world is moving toward a more multipolar order where the dominance of Western narratives and institutions is increasingly contested.
In this environment, historical accountability becomes a powerful diplomatic instrument.
Africa’s moral claim gains traction not only because of its inherent justice, but also because global power is being renegotiated.
Mahama’s reparations doctrine, thus, intersects with a wider Global South agenda, which includes demands for fairer trade, reform of international financial institutions, and a restructuring of debt regimes.
Reparations become part of a larger conversation about systemic inequality in the world order.
Yet the success of this doctrine will depend on more than speeches.
It will require a coherent legal strategy, unified continental diplomacy, meaningful engagement with diaspora communities, and practical proposals for how reparations would be structured and utilised.
Without these, the rhetoric risks dissolving into romantic, symbolic politics.
With them, it could become one of the most consequential diplomatic campaigns in modern African history.
What is clear, however, is that Mahama’s approach represents a departure from the politics of remembrance toward the politics of restitution.
He is attempting to transform memory into policy and grievance into structured claims for justice.
From Accra to the United Nations, from Davos to Addis Ababa, a pattern is emerging.
It is the outline of a doctrine that seeks to place Africa not at the margins of global history, but at the centre of a moral and economic reckoning.
Whether the world is prepared for that remains uncertain.
But one thing is becoming increasingly clear:
Africa, under voices like Mahama’s, is no longer content to remember its past merely.
It is preparing to negotiate its future on the strength of that memory.
Source:
www.graphic.com.gh