Slavery reparations are just, but who exactly owes whom?

Some African elites benefited from slave trade and colonisation. This must be taken into account in reparation debates.Published On 18 Apr 2026On March 25, the International Day of Remembrance of the Victims of Slavery and the Transatlantic Slave Trade, the United Nations General Assembly passed a landmark resolution. Proposed by Ghana, it recognised the Transatlantic Slave Trade as the “gravest crime against humanity” and called for reparations. A total of 123 countries supported the resolution; three opposed it, including the United States and Israel, while 52 abstained, Britain among them, and several European Union countries.The UN’s slavery resolution is a historic moment, but what comes next is even more important. Leading up to the resolution, the African Union urged its 55 member states to pursue slavery reparations through formal apologies, the return of stolen artefacts, financial compensation, and guarantees of non-repetition.This raises a question the resolution does not directly ask: reparations from whom, and to whom? If the answer is simply from European governments to African governments, then the reparations movement risks ignoring the long history of European engagement with Africa, and in doing so delivering justice to the wrong people.What the reparations debate missesThe contemporary framing of the reparations debate is seductive in its simplicity: Europeans arrived in Africa, Africans were enslaved, Europeans grew rich, and Africans became impoverished. Therefore, Europe owes Africa. This narrative carries moral force, but it risks flattening the complex history of European engagement with the continent.