For generations, scholars and citizens alike have grappled with a persistent question: “Why is Africa poor?”. Despite the continent’s vast natural resources and decades of independence, the endurance of extreme poverty and underdevelopment has led many to assume its fate is fixed. S
ome dismiss the continent as a lost cause, while others lay the blame solely on corrupt leadership. However, beyond these familiar narratives, it is necessary, even if uncomfortable to examine how Africa’s unique history of slavery and colonization continues to shape its developmental trajectory.
These two forces are deeply intertwined; the slave trade established the initial systems of global exploitation that colonial powers later formalized into extractive institutions designed to enrich the West at Africa’s expense.
While slavery and colonialism are often shunned in “polite” discourse, this avoidance reinforces a convenient but misleading narrative.
Institutions such as the IMF and World Bank frequently attribute poverty in the Global South to internal failures, implying Western success is merely the reward for “right” values.
This framing oversimplifies history and erases the structural injustices that enriched Western nations while impoverishing African ones.
The Lasting Impact of Exploitation
Modern international law recognises slavery, genocide, and racial discrimination as Erga omnes obligations owed to the international community.
Yet empirical research overwhelmingly shows that colonisation was one of the earliest and most extensive forms of global exploitation. Harvard economist Nathan Nunn has demonstrated how these “historical shocks” keep many African societies trapped in low-development outcomes.
His research, alongside that of Acemoglu, Johnson, and Robinson, reveals that former colonies governed by “indirect rule” often suffer from weaker rules of law today.
Furthermore, colonial powers deliberately established weak property rights to facilitate the extraction of wealth, creating fragile structures that have endured for generations.
There is a direct, measurable correlation between the intensity of the slave trade in a specific region and its subsequent economic failure.
Slavery as Institutionalized Corruption
Historian Patrick Manning describes slavery as one of the world’s first forms of systemic corruption, involving theft, bribery, and brute force. Ironically, the African societies that were once the most prosperous regions like the Gold Coast (modern Ghana), Nigeria, and Angola became the primary targets for the slave trade due to their high population density.
The tragic trajectory of the Kongo Kingdom serves as a prime example. Once a centralised state with a noble class and a complex economy, it collapsed when Portuguese interest shifted from goods to human beings.
In 1526, the Kongo King pleaded against the “corruption and licentiousness” of the trade that was depopulating his country, but his pleas were ignored in favour of fuelling internal conflicts to increase the supply of enslaved people.
The Economic Argument for Reparations
The scale of the wealth extracted through these systems is staggering and serves as the foundation for the modern case for reparations. It is estimated that between 1619 and 1865, Europeans extracted over 222 million hours of forced labour. If valued at modern US minimum wage, this labour alone would be worth approximately $97 trillion a figure exceeding the entire current global GDP.
Beyond labour, the direct profits from the trade generated tens of billions of today’s dollars for traders in Britain, Portugal, Spain, France, and the Netherlands.
This production provided the essential capital base for Europe’s Industrial Revolution and the growth of major financial institutions like Barclays and Lloyd’s of London. Current scholarly estimates, including those by economist Thomas Piketty, place the cumulative extracted wealth in the tens of trillions, with some global models suggesting the total long-term benefit to Western nations falls between $50 trillion and $150 trillion.
The Precedent of International Restorative Justice
The demand for a “Decade of Reparations” is grounded in established international legal frameworks that have addressed historical wrongs of similar magnitude. The legal bedrock for such claims was solidified in the 1928 Chorzów Factory case, where the Permanent Court of International Justice established the principle that reparation must “wipe out all the consequences of the illegal act”.
This standard has been applied throughout the 20th century, most notably in the case of Germany. Following World War I, Germany entered a 91-year payment schedule for war reparations that concluded only in 2010.
Furthermore, under the Luxembourg Agreement (1952) and modern compensation programs, Germany has paid over $89 billion to survivors of the Holocaust and forced labourers. Similarly, the United States provided more than $1.6 billion in redress to Japanese Americans interned during World War II under the Civil Liberties Act of 1988.
These cases, alongside Germany’s 2021 acknowledgement of colonial-era genocide in Namibia, which included a €1.1 billion reconciliation agreement, demonstrate that international law recognises the necessity of financial restitution to correct “historical shocks” that disrupt a nation’s development.
Ghana’s Leadership and the “Accra Proclamation”
Ghana has recently rekindled this conversation on the global stage, making the need for a deeper understanding of these historical shocks more relevant than ever. In November 2023, the country hosted the Accra Reparations Conference, which resulted in the Accra Proclamation on Reparations.
This landmark document forged a “united front” between the 55-member African Union and the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) to demand justice for historical mass crimes. The importance of this modern dialogue is underscored by the African Union’s designation of 2026–2036 as the “Decade of Reparations,” ten years intended to move the agenda from declarations to tangible action.
As the officially appointed AU “Champion on Reparations,” the President of Ghana is now leading diplomatic efforts to file formal motions at the United Nations to declare slavery a crime against humanity.
To support this, the movement has established new global mechanisms, including a Global Reparations Fund based in Africa and a Committee of Experts tasked with developing a unified African position on how repairs should be managed.
The Path Forward
In 2023, the “Battle Group Report,” led by UN judge Patrick Robinson, estimated that thirty-one (31) former slave-holding states owe a total of $107.8 trillion in reparations based on five categories of harm.
Under international law, Article 34 of the Draft Articles on Responsibility of States for Internationally Wrongful Acts outlines forms of reparation such as restitution, compensation, and satisfaction.
While raising the issue of reparations in Africa is often met with distractions regarding “corrupt leadership,” these internal issues are separate from the historical debt owed.
Until the full economic impact of slavery and colonialism is recognized and addressed through the frameworks established by the Accra Proclamation, the true roots of African poverty will remain misunderstood.
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