Addis Ababa: Undoing the system that reproduces intergenerational poverty is pressing in order to realize Africa’s reparations agenda, Open Society Foundations Programs Managing Director Brian Kagoro said.
According to Ethiopian News Agency, the Pan Africanist who has been campaigning for reparations for 25 years, said AU’s theme of the year looks at the question of justice for Africans and persons of African descent through reparations.
‘If you want to undo the system that reproduces intergenerational poverty, you have to do reparations. And it’s not just about compensation,’ he noted.
The reparations agenda is about the many things that Africans must realize. This is a struggle of the African peoples, Kagoro stressed.
He elaborated that AU’s theme of the year also focuses on addressing the current conditions of Africans such as underdevelopment, poverty, food insecurity, climate injustices, and pandemics, among others.
The theme further focuses on concerns about how to ensure the integration of the continent in a reformed global multilateral system.
African communities had destruction of all ecosystems and infrastructure, erasure of their culture, misappropriation of their knowledge, scientific inventions, and artistic works that continue till today to be alienated in a world where foreign culture and language have been enforced on them, he stated.
For Kagoro, injustices have also been witnessed at the international financial system design, international multilateral system design, security system design, and labor migration system design.
Speaking about the return of African cultural and heritage assets is not a matter for debate, he said, adding that it is pointless to give people aid to survive poverty, poverty that’s manufactured, regenerated through structures, structures that were grown through these historical processes of colonization and apartheid.