Africa-Press – Ghana. Professor Nene Lomotey-Kuditchar, Vice President of the Association of African Political Scientists, has advised that Africa should not be preoccupied with material gains in the demand for reparation concerning the Transatlantic Slave Trade.
The focus, he said, ought to be on regaining the dignity, recognition, and respect for the African among the comity of nations.
“It is imperative the discussion is not reduced to material gains or material benefits. Of course, there may be economic benefits but that should not be the reason we are advancing that noble cause,” he said.
“It is a matter of regaining self-respect. It is about reconstructing what it means to be an African in the world, and it is about being proud of who we are, our history, and the future that we would have to fight for,” he told in an interview.
This was on the sidelines of the historic African Diaspora Town Hall Meeting in Accra, a programme hosted by the Institute of African Studies (IAS), University of Ghana.
The two sessions were held under the auspices of the Decade of Our Repatriation (DOOR), a Pan-Africanist-based non-governmental organisation, The Black Agenda, and African American Association of Ghana.
The gathering, including human and civil rights activists, political scientists, historians, genealogists, and some representatives of the Diasporan community in Ghana, engaged in critical dialogue on citizenship, representation in governance, investment, and the UN resolution on the Transatlantic Slave Trade.
The programme comes against the backdrop of the recent adoption of the United Nations (UN) resolution that formally recognises the trafficking and racialised chattel enslavement of Africans as the gravest crime against humanity.
Arguments still rage on as to the form of compensation deserving of the atrocities committed during that dark period (16th-19th Centuries), which saw more than 12 million Africans of varied ethnic backgrounds being virtually sold into bondage.
Prof Lomotey-Kuditchar described the slave trade as one of the worst forms of any inhuman treatment ever recorded in history.
The impact on the psyche and self-esteem of Africans had been greatly impacted since then, he noted, explaining that “it is about the dignity of being an African, which as we speak, is dented, to say the least.”
He lauded the one-hundred and twenty-three (123) countries that voted in support of the resolution adopted by the UN, saying studies had shown that slavery in whatever form could be devastating to humanity.
In the June 2022 edition of the “The Journal of Economic History”, a detailed account of how the slave trade underdeveloped Africa was spelt out using recent econometric research findings.
The modern evidence begins with Nathan Nunn’s influential article published in 2008, where he develops new anthropological data on African slave exports in the distant past.
Researchers have used these data to identify a number of long-term legacies of the slave trades that manifest today in a variety of ways.
These include lower national incomes per capita, greater ethnic diversity, more polygyny as a family organisation, heightened conflict and mistrust, underdeveloped access to credit, greater political corruption, and less local schooling.
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