Beyond reparations: Africa's future demands a mindset shift, not payouts

The debate over reparations for the transatlantic slave trade has resurfaced with renewed intensity. African leaders are demanding compensation. Caribbean nations are pressing their cases in international forums. Activists speak of billions, even trillions, of dollars owed.

I say: enough. Not because the wrongs were not monumental, they were. Not because the suffering was not profound, it was beyond comprehension. But because demanding reparations from the very nations that enslaved our ancestors and colonised our forefathers signals that we are still waiting, still asking, still looking outward for validation and rescue.

It shows that we have not moved on. And until we do, Africa will remain trapped in a mindset of dependency rather than liberated into a future of self-determination.

The transatlantic slave trade was a crime against humanity. Let there be no doubt. For over four centuries, an estimated 12 to 15 million Africans were torn from their homes, shipped across the ocean in conditions of unspeakable horror, and subjected to lifetimes of brutal exploitation.

Families were destroyed. Kingdoms were destabilised. Entire societies were stripped of their youngest and strongest. The effects reverberate to this day .

Admission of guilt

But here is the uncomfortable truth we must confront: the West will never pay meaningful reparations, not because they cannot, but because doing so would require an admission of guilt that their entire global dominance is built on stolen labour and plundered resources.

Their culture of self-righteousness blinds them to justice. Their history has always been one of exploitation disguised as civilisation .

A British MP recently declared that former colonies should be grateful for the legacy Britain left behind. This is not an isolated view; it is the unvarnished arrogance of powers that still believe they civilised us. The West will not hand us dignity. We must claim it ourselves .

Yet while we condemn their hypocrisy, we must confront our own. For decades, we have defined ourselves in opposition to our former colonisers, measuring progress by how much we can extract from them rather than how much we can build for ourselves.

We have made the reparations debate about what is owed to us, rather than about what we owe to ourselves and to future generations.

What reparation means

True reparations begin when a people repair themselves, when they reject inferiority, reclaim their history, and restore their pride .

Consider where we stand today. Africa holds 60% of the world's solar resources yet contributes less than 2% of installed photovoltaic capacity .

We possess over 30% of the proven critical mineral reserves essential for the global energy transition, cobalt, lithium, graphite, rare earths, yet most of these resources are exported raw, with value addition happening elsewhere .

The Democratic Republic of Congo produces over 70% of the world's cobalt, yet only 1% is refined in the country before export. West Africa grows 70% of the world's cacao beans but contributes less than 1% of the global chocolate market.

Ghana exported $9.58 billion in gold in 2024 but retained only 14% of the value due to unfavourable agreements with multinational corporations .

This is not a legacy of slavery alone. This is a legacy of continued exploitation enabled by our own failure to negotiate firmly, to build processing capacity, to demand fair terms. And it will not be solved by a cheque from London or Paris.

The continent loses more than $500 billion every year through illicit financial flows, unfair trade practices, exploitative investment frameworks, and debt servicing. We are net creditors to the world while our people remain among the poorest on earth .

The structures that enabled colonialism have merely morphed into new forms, the commodity trap, unequal treaties, financial architectures that systematically disadvantage African nations.

Healthy scepticism

This brings me to the question of trust. We should never forget what was done to us. We should treat every transaction with Western powers with a healthy scepticism, a pinch of salt. History teaches us that their promises are rarely kept, their interventions rarely altruistic.

Look at Libya. The NATO-led intervention in 2011, justified as humanitarian protection, resulted in the bloody overthrow of Muammar Gaddafi and plunged that nation into chaos that now destabilises the entire Sahel region .

Look at the continued French military presence in former colonies, the currency arrangements that force Francophone African nations to deposit their reserves in the French treasury, the military agreements that require former colonies to purchase only French equipment .

They are not honest. They were not honest then, and they remain dishonest today. Every agreement must be scrutinised, every partnership examined for hidden claws. The West no longer needs whips; they have pens, policies, and propaganda .

But here is the distinction we must make: vigilance is not victimhood. Scepticism is not stagnation. We can be wary of Western intentions while still taking full responsibility for our own destiny.

Indeed, the two must go together. If we know they cannot be trusted, then we must build our own capacity, our own institutions, our own systems so that their dishonesty cannot cripple us.

Justice for Africans

The African Union has declared 2025 as the year of "Justice for Africans and People of African Descent Through Reparations." This is a powerful framing, but it must not be narrowly construed.

As UN Under-Secretary-General Cristina Duarte has argued, reparations in the 21st century cannot be confined to rectifying past wrongs through monetary terms alone. They must address the structural injustices that persist today, the unfair trade rules, the biased financial architecture, the unequal representation in global governance .

True reparations demand a reconfiguration of global trade systems to end Africa's dependence on raw commodity exports.

They demand transforming the international financial architecture that imposes an "African premium", higher borrowing costs simply because of our geography. They demand the restitution of African sovereignty over our natural resources and policy choices .

These are not gifts to be requested. They are changes to be demanded, negotiated, and, where necessary, enforced through unified continental action. When Africa speaks with one voice, the world listens.

Look at what is emerging under leaders like Ghana's President Mahama, who has articulated a coherent reparations doctrine linking historical injustice to contemporary economic distortion.

His argument, advanced at the United Nations, the World Economic Forum, and the African Union, reframes reparations not as charity but as structural correction.

This is the right approach. Not asking for handouts, but demanding a level playing field. Not pleading for compensation, but insisting that the rules of the global economy be rewritten to end centuries of extraction and exploitation.

The West will never hand us dignity; we must claim it. The chains that bind us now are invisible, the chains of economic dependency, cultural imitation, and psychological inferiority, but they can be broken by consciousness. True freedom is not given; it is reclaimed .

Look around Africa and ask hard questions. Why do our lawyers and judges still wear grotesque wigs that belong to another era and another people, remnants of humiliation rather than symbols of wisdom?

Why do our presidents wear suits and ties under the blazing African sun? Why do our children study the rivers of Europe but not the watersheds of their own homelands? Why do we name our regions Eastern, Western, Northern, as though we have no heritage worth naming ourselves after?

No nation has developed by denying its roots. None has prospered by feeding on the leftovers of another's harvest. America listened to Emerson's call to detach from Britain's shadow and grew. Japan developed teaching in Japanese. China teaches in Mandarin. Only Africa still believes fluency in another's tongue is a badge of intelligence .

Borrowed eyes

Language is the first battlefield of liberation. To speak another man's language is to think in his logic and dream in his symbols. The coloniser knew this well, that is why he taught us to despise our mother tongues.

But we can reclaim them. We can develop Swahili, Hausa, Yoruba, Igbo, Shona, Bemba and a hundred others as languages of education, technology, and governance. Until we do, we will continue to think of ourselves through borrowed eyes.

The same applies to our natural resources. We must process our minerals before export. We must refine our oil. We must manufacture our chocolate. We must build our own industries. This is not protectionism; it is the path every developed nation has taken.

The deterioration of global aid frameworks, with OECD assistance falling 9% in 2024 and projected to decline further, should be viewed not as a crisis but as an opportunity .

It is a reminder that reliance on external financing is a dead end. Mobilising domestic resources, strengthening tax collection, curbing illicit financial flows, and harnessing our sovereign wealth funds are the only sustainable paths forward.

Africa needs at least an additional $245 billion annually for development. This gap will not be filled by reparations cheques. It will be filled when we collect the taxes owed to us, stop the $90 billion lost annually to illicit outflows, and negotiate extractive contracts that truly benefit our people .

Let me be clear: I am not saying forget. Never forget. The slave trade and colonialism were crimes whose scars still mark our continent. We should teach our children the full truth of what happened. We should demand that Western nations acknowledge their historical responsibility. We should pursue the restitution of looted artefacts and the return of stolen remains.

Time for building

But we must stop defining ourselves by what we are owed. We are not victims awaiting compensation. We are architects of our own renaissance.

The West wronged us. They will never fully admit it, never fully compensate, never fully change. That is their moral failure. Our failure would be to wait for them.

Let us instead focus on what we can control: our mindset, our priorities, our resources, our future. Let us build the Africa our ancestors fought for, not one begging for justice, but one demanding respect through strength.

Let us treat every Western transaction with the scepticism it deserves, negotiate every agreement with the toughness our interests require, and build every institution with the resilience our children deserve.

The time for asking is over. The time for building is now.

The author, Kennedy Chileshe is the Executive Director of Jubilee Leaders Network