By Francis Ntow, GNA
Accra, Sept. 5, GNA – The Pan-African Progressive Front (PPF), a continental solidarity movement, has urged Africa’s youth to champion the struggle for reparations as a central mission for achieving true economic liberation and justice.
The Pan-Africanist movement stressed that embracing the reparations cause gives young people concrete leverage to cancel odious debts and recover stolen wealth essential to finance their future development.
The call follows growing reparations momentum led by Ghana, as Africa seeks justice amid debt, unemployment, climate crisis, and foreign resource control linked to unpaid colonial resource exploit across the continent.
Speaking at the forum, Madam Theresa Boateng, Youth Representative, PPF called on African youth to be instrumental in demanding reparations and not to leave it only in the hands of governments.
She noted that the condition Ghana and its sister African countries found themselves in did not occur in a vacuum, reiterating the need to the youth to join the restitution campaign, citing cultural artifacts in foreign museums as evidence.
In a landmark vote on March 25, 2025, the UN General Assembly adopted Ghana’s resolution declaring the trafficking of enslaved Africans and racialised chattel enslavement as the “gravest crime against humanity.”
Mad Boateng noted that such resolution affirmed that reparations were a concrete step to remedy, with 123 nations in favour, 52 abstentions and three against – the United States, Israel, and Argentina.
“We do ask the question sometimes that after school, what are the chances or what are the prospects for us in terms of jobs, in terms of employment,” she said, describing the situation as a systemic problem linked to how the continent’s resources continued to be plundered.
“The reparations struggle is not going to be given on a silver platter. The institutions that bind us, that continue to keep us in immiseration, and indebtedness need to be recalibrated,” she said.
On what youth could do, she outlined three key actions – studying true African history beyond mainstream distortions, join progressive Pan-African organisations, and mobilise for concrete reparations action and economic justice across continent.
She also urged the youth to read books on reparations, including Walter Rodney’s “How Europe Underdeveloped Africa,” to deepen their understanding of Africa’s history and issues to understand and appreciate the need for reparations.
GNA
Edited by Linda Asante Agyei
Reporter: Francis Ntow