In 2026, the global discourse surrounding the transatlantic slave trade has shifted dramatically, with growing, unignorable pressure on former colonial powers and complicit institutions to issue formal apologies, cancel unjust national debts, and pay billions in reparations for one of the worst atrocities in human history. This movement finds its most vocal and unyielding leader in Ghana, a West African nation whose soil holds the deep scars of the trade and whose political and traditional leaders are driving a global campaign for reparatory justice.
Earlier this year, Ghana spearheaded a landmark United Nations resolution that formally classified the transatlantic slave trade as “the greatest crime against humanity.” The vote laid bare global divides on the issue: while the resolution passed, the United States voted against it, and every European nation chose to abstain. Among Western powers that built vast wealth from the trade, the United Kingdom — which alongside Portugal controlled the largest share of the transatlantic trafficking network — has repeatedly rejected calls for reparations. This refusal comes as no surprise: independent estimates put the potential value of reparations owed by the UK to affected African nations in the many trillions of pounds.
This resistance has done nothing to weaken Ghana’s resolve. As the first sub-Saharan African nation to win independence from colonial rule, Ghana has a long history of pan-African leadership, and the African Union has formally designated the country the global champion for reparatory justice. The nation’s connection to the atrocity is deeply personal: of the roughly 12 million African people forcibly kidnapped from their homelands and shipped across the Atlantic, 10 to 15% were taken from what is now modern Ghana, and millions more passed through its coastal trading forts before embarking on the deadly Middle Passage. “Ghana was the crime scene where these atrocities took place, so Ghana cannot afford to be silent on ensuring that we hold perpetrators accountable,” Ghanaian Foreign Minister Samuel Okuzeto Ablakwa explained in an interview.
Ablakwa has laid out a clear vision for reparatory justice that goes beyond one-off cash transfers. He proposes a systemic framework that would fund need-based educational grants across Africa, provide seed venture capital for young African entrepreneurs, and support long-term research into intergenerational health issues linked to the malnutrition and violence of enslavement. While he emphasizes that the campaign is not aimed at lining the pockets of African political leaders, one core demand agreed at the June reparations summit in Accra — which drew delegates from 80 nations — is full cancellation of odious debts owed by former slave-trading affected states to Western powers. The foreign minister also called out individual Western institutions that amassed wealth from slavery to step forward and accept accountability, singling out the Church of England as a key example.
Historical records confirm the Church of England was deeply complicit in the trade: in the 18th century, its missionary wing operated slave plantations and owned hundreds of enslaved people, while scores of independent clergy owned enslaved people themselves. A recent internal audit of the Church’s endowment fund also confirmed the institution made massive, profitable investments in the transatlantic slave trade that generated wealth that persists to this day.
In July, the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dame Sarah Mullally, made a high-profile visit to Ghana, one of her first international trips since taking office. Her itinerary included a stop at Cape Coast Castle, a British-built coastal fortress where tens of thousands of enslaved people were held in overcrowded, inhumane dungeons before being marched through the iconic “Door of No Return” to waiting slave ships bound for the Americas. After touring the dark holding cells and walking through the door, a visibly moved Mullally stopped to pray, and later prayed in the castle’s 17th-century chapel — a space built directly above the dungeons where enslaved people were held.
“For me that is such a stark illustration of the way the Church was involved in the slave trade,” Mullally told reporters. “How can the church have sat above the horrors that were going on below?” The Archbishop acknowledged that the Church of England has previously apologized for its role in the trade, but said action must match words. In response, the Church established a £100 million ($135 million) social impact fund to support communities still grappling with the intergenerational legacy of slavery. Even so, the fund has faced internal resistance from Church leadership, mirroring the broader global pushback against national reparations.
Critics of reparations often argue that some African leaders and communities were complicit in the capture and sale of fellow Africans, a point used to deflect blame from Western powers. Ablakwa has forcefully rejected this framing, calling it a deliberate divide-and-conquer tactic designed to obscure the core responsibility of Western colonial powers. “The entire architecture of chattel enslavement was curated by Western slave-owning powers, who simply utilised local actors to help carry out their plans,” he said, noting that no African representatives were present when Western powers drafted the laws, insurance policies, and financial systems that underpinned the trade. “We denounce and totally reject those claims that Africans are as guilty and complicit as those who masterminded this whole atrocity,” he added.
Within Ghana itself, however, the conversation about local complicity is far more nuanced, and some traditional leaders have argued that acknowledging local involvement in the trade is a necessary step toward national and global healing. Earlier this year, King Tackie Teiko Tsuru II, the Ga Mantse and traditional leader of Ghana’s Ga people, made history with a public apology for the role his ancestors played as middlemen for European traders. For centuries, the Ga people operated as intermediaries, trading gold, ivory, and eventually captured enslaved people from internal African conflicts to British and Dutch traders in exchange for manufactured goods including textiles, alcohol, and firearms.
“I stand on the same point of apologising on behalf of all traditional authorities and my ancestors and forebears for the part they also played in the slavery of our brothers and sisters,” the king said. “It has affected lives and societies up to now, and to be able to go forward, you have to look at your past. It dawns on us to admit our fault and correct it.” King Tackie Teiko Tsuru II also committed to contributing to financial reparations, arguing that taking responsibility for local involvement does not weaken the case against Western powers — instead, it strengthens Africa’s moral standing and sets an example for accountable global healing.
Beyond its diplomatic campaign for reparations, Ghana has also led the way in efforts to heal the intergenerational trauma of the slave trade through its high-profile initiative to invite members of the African diaspora — particularly African-Americans who trace their ancestry to enslaved people shipped from West Africa — to visit and reconnect with their ancestral homeland. The initiative was originally framed as a people-centered effort to repair broken family and cultural ties, bringing a shared sense of closure for a trauma that has separated communities for centuries.
But not all observers are satisfied with how the initiative has evolved. Yaw Asare, a Ghanaian PhD student at Howard University who previously worked for Ghana’s Presidential Diaspora Office, which administers the program, said that while the initial gatherings of diaspora and local communities were profound and focused on healing, the Ghana Tourism Authority quickly co-opted the initiative to drive commercial tourism growth. Over time, the program shifted away from trauma-informed repair to hitting visitor revenue quotas, he said, with diaspora visitors increasingly framed as a source of foreign currency rather than people seeking healing.
Asare explained that the commercialization of the initiative has driven up local prices for basic goods and services, pushing low-income local Ghanaians to the economic margins. Even more concerning, he argues, is that the focus on profit has overshadowed the deep psychological work that is needed for both local Ghanaians and returning diaspora members to address intergenerational trauma. The impact of that trauma remains visible in Ghana today, he points out: in Accra’s historic Jamestown district, the oldest settlement built around a British slave fort, residents still build their homes in tight, clustered arrangements, a habit rooted in centuries-old fear that people living further from the community core would be kidnapped by slave traders.
“We are dealing with humans, we are dealing with people. We cannot reduce them to, ‘come see this site, pay this entrance fee’,” Asare said, noting that it is particularly problematic that diaspora visitors are charged the same high entrance fees as white European tourists at sites like Cape Coast Castle, even though the initiative is meant to address their trauma. For Asare, true reparatory justice must prioritize human connection and healing over financial gain and tourist revenue. “We have to remove the band-aid and then look at the sore, the gaping wound that’s present,” he said. “And see how we can dress it and nurse it and heal.”
The BBC will air a full documentary on Ghana’s reparations campaign on its program *Global Eye* on BBC Two at 19:00 Monday for UK viewers.
