‘Ghana was the crime scene’: The country leading the demand for slavery reparations
The Nation at the Forefront of Slavery Reparations
Ninoda.com – In July, Dame Sarah Mullally, the Archbishop of Canterbury, made one of her earliest international trips in office by travelling to Ghana. Her destination was Cape Coast Castle, a coastal fortress once administered by the British, where enslaved people were confined before being driven through what became known as the "Middle Passage" toward the Americas. Walking the narrow dungeons and passing through the so-called "door of no return," the Archbishop paused to pray, visibly moved by what she witnessed.
"I felt the weight of the depth of evil that the transatlantic slave trade was. You can't help but be deeply moved by the horrific conditions that people were kept in."
She also offered prayer in a 17th-century chapel built directly above the holding cells below.
"For me that is such a stark illustration of the way the Church was involved in the slave trade. How can the church have sat above the horrors that were going on below?"
The Church's Historical Entanglement
The Church of England's ties to the slave economy ran deep. During the 18th century, its missionary operations managed plantations and held hundreds of enslaved people, using the proceeds to bankroll its work across the Americas and beyond. Individual clergy also owned slaves independently. More recently, a report from the Church's endowment fund revealed that the institution had made substantial investments in the slave trade, generating enormous sums of profit. The Church has issued an apology for its role in the transatlantic slave trade, though it has also stated that concrete action must accompany that apology.
Ghana's Political Mandate
The country that has emerged as the most vocal advocate for formal reparations is Ghana itself. It was Ghana that introduced the United Nations resolution in March recognising slavery as "the greatest crime against humanity." The vote drew opposition from the United States, while every European nation chose to abstain. Then, in June, a reparations summit convened in Accra, drawing delegates from roughly 80 nations who concluded that compensation was long overdue.
The African Union has assigned Ghana the specific mandate to serve as "champion for reparatory justice," a role the country's political leadership treats with evident seriousness. Foreign Minister Samuel Okuzeto Ablakwa frames the nation's position in historical terms:
"Ghana has always been a pan-African leader. We're the first country to attain independence in sub-Saharan Africa and to prove that it is possible to fight imperial might, and win."
Why Ghana Speaks
The scale of loss is staggering. Of the estimated 12 million Africans forcibly uprooted, torn from their villages, and subjected to dehumanisation on an unprecedented scale, between 10 and 15 percent came from the territory that is now Ghana. An even larger number were loaded onto ships from its shores.
"Ghana was the crime scene where these atrocities took place, so Ghana cannot afford to be silent on ensuring that we hold perpetrators accountable."
What Reparations Would Look Like
Ablakwa has outlined a framework of reparatory justice that would fund educational grants, provide venture capital to young African entrepreneurs, and finance research into persistent health conditions that some scholars trace back to the severe malnutrition and brutal conditions of enslavement. While he insists the effort is not about direct financial windfalls for African leaders, the demands articulated at the Accra summit explicitly included debt relief and debt cancellation.
He also calls on individual institutions that profited from the slave trade to be held accountable and to pay compensation. The Church of England sits squarely within that category.
The UK's Stance
Britain, which together with Portugal dominated the transatlantic slave trade, has consistently refused the notion of paying reparations. That resistance is perhaps unsurprising given that estimates of what Britain "owes" in damages to affected nations run into many trillions of pounds. Yet the refusal has not slowed the momentum Ghana has built around the reparations agenda.
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