By Marcella Mwinkoma Babing
President John Dramani Mahama has said the transatlantic slave trade was deliberately designed to deny African people their humanity, describing it as a system built on racial hierarchy and injustice.
Speaking on March 24, 2026, at the United Nations Headquarters on reparatory justice, President Mahama said the ideology underpinning slavery placed whiteness above blackness without any scientific or factual basis.
He argued that the atrocities committed against enslaved Africans, and the injustices that followed across generations, were rooted in the perception that Africans were not human but objects.
According to him, “the atrocities that were committed against enslaved Africans, the myriad injustices that were borne of slavery and carried forward into successive social frameworks, took place specifically because they were considered objects.”
President Mahama stressed the need to confront slavery from the standpoint of restoring dignity and equality, adding that discussions on the subject must begin with a recognition of the humanity of Africans and their descendants.
He also criticised how enslaved Africans were stripped of their identities, noting that names were replaced once they arrived on plantations.
“Once they were on the plantation where they would work and live, they were stripped of their names. No longer Fatou, Bubakar, Kofi, Nana Yaw, Emeka, Nahnyong or Hamisu, they were given names like Ben, Jemima, Toby or Mary,” he said. He added that enslaved people were often referred to as “boy” or “girl” regardless of age, and subjected to degrading language.
President Mahama said such practices were part of a broader system that sought to erase identity and reinforce subjugation.
He further warned against efforts by governments and institutions to downplay or erase the history of slavery, saying such tendencies risk normalising historical denial.
“This resolution is a safeguard against forgetting,” he said, referring to ongoing international efforts to formally recognise the transatlantic slave trade as a crime against humanity.
