In 1989, John Conyers—the longest-serving African-American member of Congress in history—first introduced the “Commission to Study and Develop Reparation Proposals for the African-Americans Act,” or United States House Resolution 40 (H.R. 40), referring to the unmet promise of granting “40 acres and a mule” to freed slaves. H.R. 40 has been reintroduced in each session of the US Congress since then, but has not been enacted into law.
Its passage into law is unlikely to happen under the current 119th Republican-controlled Congress and administration, which has made dismantling diversity, equity & inclusion (DEI) one of the cornerstones of its domestic agenda. According to the Pew Research Center, only 8% of Republicans and GOP leaners support reparations, compared to 48% of Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents. Yet reparatory justice is essential to addressing the US’s long and continuing history of racial inequality, and supporting the American ideal of “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” for all people irrespective of race.
The consequences of the transatlantic slave trade have, of course, extended far beyond the US, affecting Africa and its diaspora all around the world. The historical injustice that started on the continent of Africa in the 15th century has invariably affected all people of African descent worldwide, with the cultural holocaust, loss of identity, and legacy of discrimination and unequal access to opportunities born out of it continuing to stifle their growth and personal development centuries later.
With this in mind, reparatory justice was the overarching theme of the 38th African Union summit held in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, last month. The summit, involving heads of state and government from throughout the region, aimed to bring together Africa and its diaspora and to galvanize the international community to confront the historical injustice and long-term effects of slavery. To further sustain that momentum the African Union has made “Building a united front to advance the cause of justice and payment of reparations to Africans” the theme of the year for 2025.
Millions of young Africans forcibly transported across the Atlantic Ocean died during the infamous Middle Passage. Those who survived the journey were subjected to atrocious, dehumanizing treatment and exploited. In his 1805 illustrated publication “Injured Humanity”, Samuel Wood provided a vivid representation of what the children of Africa endured as slaves in America, how enslaved people were flogged and branded with a ‘red-hot iron’, how families were ‘violently separated; probably never to see each other more.’
Enslaved Africans and their descendants were given new names by their captors, names with no African root or meaning in their native languages. Superstrate European tongues dominated, contributing most of the vocabulary to the Creole languages that evolved in the ‘New World’, and the African languages became substrate. Today, in Africa itself, European languages also predominate, and African languages are at risk of extinction, reflecting the long-term impact of the colonial education system under which intergenerational transfer of knowledge is no longer carried out through endogenous vectors. The war-torn Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) provides a tragic case in point—though many millions of Congolese were killed under the bloody colonial rule of King Leopold II of Belgium, the DRC is the second-largest French-speaking country in the world after France, and its capital Kinshasa is today home to more French speakers than Paris.
Across Africa, the continent’s flourishing civilizations were systematically destroyed by slavery and the colonial regime, and ordered systems of governance were brought down. Precious symbols of cultural meanings and artefacts were either looted or destroyed, engendering a sense of cultural discontinuity that has fueled alienation and a loss of identity. The slave trade, which primarily targeted Africa’s young and most-able workforce, stunted economic growth and long-term development, setting the region down a lasting path of external dependency, which has become the root cause of aid dependency as well as intergenerational poverty and systemic inequality.
Several factors have contributed to the transatlantic slave trade’s legacy. First, when imperial powers did finally abolish slavery they did not go through a period of atonement or attempt to reverse the hierarchization of races, which fundamentally transformed the world. Second, those countries that benefitted from slavery were more concerned with preserving wealth accumulation and global economic dominance than with ensuring the emergence of equal-opportunity societies after abolition.
So lucrative was slavery to European imperial powers that they felt compelled to compensate slaveholders after its abolition, further widening wealth and income inequality between races within and between countries. For instance, the Slavery Abolition Act of 1833, which abolished slavery in most British colonies, included a compensation package for enslavers worth £20 million (equivalent to more than £2 billion today), representing around 40% of the government’s total annual expenditure at the time. British taxpayers only finished repaying the money borrowed by the government to compensate enslavers in 2015.
Similarly, France granted reparations to enslavers and colonists to compensate for their lost revenues from slavery. The most emblematic case is Haiti, where France imposed a huge independence debt of 150 million Francs (representing 10 years of the Haitian government’s entire revenue) on former slaves. The payment ran for 122 years, from 1825 to 1947, and the money went to more than 7,900 former slave owners and their descendants in France. French economist Thomas Piketty estimates that France should repay at least US$28 billion to Haiti in restitution. Moreover, Napoleon reinstated slavery in 1802, positioning France as the only country in the world that has had to abolish slavery twice.
And because the abolition of slavery had no cost to France, it was reinstated and later abolished again, still at no cost to the state; because it had no cost to all European imperial powers, it was immediately followed by colonialism and apartheid to perpetuate the system of exploitation and domination which had led to stratified societies in which race and class intersect. People carry the memory of their past sufferings and are often defined by it. For people of African descent, digitalization has created an intercontinental collective imaginary of historical traumas associated with slavery, which is snowballing.
The enslavement of Africans is belatedly being recognized specifically as a crime against humanity. In 2001, France was the first country to declare that the transatlantic slave trade represented a crime against humanity, though President Emmanuel Macron ruled out reparations in 2017, calling instead for reconciliation. In 2020, the European Parliament recognized slavery as a crime against humanity. Last year, California joined a half-dozen US states to officially apologize for slavery, though the state legislature shied away from taking substantial actions relating to reparations. In a more encouraging move, in December 2022, the government of the Netherlands apologized for the country’s role in slavery and established a fund of €200 million (around $208 million) to raise awareness of the Netherlands’ history as a colonial power, as well as “fostering engagement” and “addressing the present-day effects of slavery”.
International law recognizes that those who commit crimes against humanity must make reparations. Several countries have received compensation under this law, including the Republic of Korea, which suffered under the Japanese invasion, and Israel, which received compensation from Germany after World War II. Several communities have also received reparations for state crimes committed within national borders, including Japanese Americans after their internment and ill-treatment at the hands of US authorities and the Maoris of New Zealand, who received compensation for the seizure of their land by British colonizers in 1863.
In a departure from international norms, African slaves and states did not receive compensation. Instead, the abolition of slavery was associated with costs to slaves in a world where imperial nations had the memory of abolitionists and not of slaves. The restorative justice being championed by the African Union prioritizes repairing the damage suffered by the victims of slavery and their descendants rather than punishing the perpetrators. In addition to acting as insurance against the repetition of past and ongoing historical harms, this process is inherently collaborative, bringing together the descendants of enslaved people and slaveowners for a genuine dialogue to create a better world, going beyond monetary compensation. It also outstrips the piecemeal approach underpinning DEI programs, which often serve as ‘reparations-washing’—true justice demands systemic, structural changes to individual mindsets and corporate behaviors.
Despite the increasingly volatile political rhetoric, the long arc of the moral universe is bending toward justice, to paraphrase Martin Luther King Jr. Even in the US, the process of restorative justice is gaining momentum. The country’s experience after the Civil War can also inform current efforts in the quest for restorative justice at the global level. The original 40-acres-and-a-mule proposal, which was reversed by US President Andrew Johnson, resulted from a consultation between Union General William T. Sherman, African-American leaders, and Christian ministers. By endowing former slaves with means of production to strengthen the foundation of entrepreneurship within the African-American community and equalize access to opportunities in a largely agrarian economic environment, the model would have smoothed the transition of landless and uneducated free slaves into a new world of self-reliance.
Restorative justice today should prioritize the renewal of productive capacities across African and Caribbean nations, but also within the African diaspora in the US and other countries. This will drive entrepreneurship, expand their contribution to global output and trade, and break the vicious cycle of economic dependency and recurrent balance of payment crises that have dominated the post-abolition and independence era. This requires significant investment in physical and human capital to drive endogenous growth and structural transformation in a world where growth is increasingly powered by technology, as well as support from the international community as the African Union intensifies its efforts to pursue restorative justice.
At the same time, African leaders should, in memory of the victims of slavery, establish an International Day of Commemoration to be observed throughout Africa and beyond. They must also reform their institutions and education systems to memorialize and reappropriate their history and cultural heritage. It is equally important and urgent for African leaders to aggressively invest in preserving and restoring their cultures and revitalizing their languages. Language is identity; it is also a powerful vector of projection into the future, and Africa, the cradle of civilization, cannot afford to miss out on the ongoing digital and Artificial Intelligence (AI) revolution. That revolution is also taking a linguistic shape and will be represented by voice.
The process of restorative justice cannot be unidirectional. It requires more than atonement and money—if we are all to heal, collaboration between both descendants of slaves and slave owners is crucial. Recognizing slavery’s lasting impact as a crime against humanity, in addition to the steps being taken now by the African Union and other world leaders, are essential milestones amid ongoing efforts to create a better and equitable future for all people. But genuine success will depend on the commitment of all actors on both sides of the restorative justice equation.
Hippolyte Fofack, a former chief economist at the African Export-Import Bank, is a fellow with the Sustainable Development Solutions Network at Columbia University, a research associate at Harvard University, a distinguished fellow at the Global Federation of Competitiveness Councils, and a fellow at the African Academy of Sciences.
