Professor Wole Soyinka, Nobel Laureate and Playwright, speaking at the Next Steps Consultative Summit in Accra

Literary icon, playwright, and Nobel Laureate, Professor Wole Soyinka, has challenged African leaders to transcend performative diplomacy and execute aggressive, practical strategies to secure reparatory justice for the transatlantic slave trade and colonial exploitation.

Delivering a thought-provoking address at the opening session of the high-profile Next Steps Consultative Conference on Reparatory Justice in Accra on Thursday, 18 June 2026, the 90-year-old laureate cautioned that the continent's pursuit of historical restitution would fail if it remained confined to academic debates and economic arithmetic.

He emphasized that the psychological liberation of both continental Africans and those in the diaspora must form the baseline of the global campaign.

“Let us move mentally and practically towards dynamising the commemoratives which exist. We have to move now beyond the performances, the discussions, the rhetoric, even the economic aspects of a retrieval of an egalitarian relationship between us and them. We have to recognise that even our mental condition is important in the diaspora,” Prof. Soyinka said.

The conference, hosted by President John Dramani Mahama in his capacity as the African Union Champion on Reparations, follows the landmark United Nations Resolution General Assembly adoption on March 25, which designated the trafficking of enslaved Africans as the gravest crime against humanity.

In a sharp piece of political commentary, Prof. Soyinka took aim at a recent, unrevealed retaliatory visa policy enacted by a foreign nation targeting countries that championed the UN resolution. He warned that penalizing the preservation of historical memory was an exercise in international self-isolation, while lightheartedly commending President Mahama for gathering a global coalition that shattered this intended blockade.

“Mr President (John Dramani Mahama), Sir, I hope you realise that you placed both yourself and your citizens in potential quarantine. But you’ve been good about me, because now I see before me all international community out of the quarantine,” he said.

He lamented the foreign state’s hostile reaction, describing it as a tragic rejection of a "golden opportunity to re-examine a divisive history, a divisive spate which went for centuries."

Asserting that humanity is inherently hardwired to remember, the laureate questioned how any state could legitimately sanction the global quest for historical truth.

“We all live within a commemorative environment, negative and positive. We commemorate all the time,” he stated.

Prof. Soyinka warned that Africa's moral authority to demand reparations for past atrocities is heavily compromised by contemporary governance failures. He linked the tragic spectacle of African youth drowning in the Mediterranean Sea to "inorganic development" and a severe lack of vision among the continent's ruling elite.

He fiercely condemned modern systems of local governance that treat citizens as disposable commodities, drawing a straight line from historical chattel slavery to the modern-day human trafficking syndicates operating on African soil.

“I refer to the extant slave markets which still exist on this continent. I refer to the kidnapping of schoolchildren who were sent to these institutions of learning, who end up being kidnapped because there are ready markets for them,” he said.

Sharing a grim reality from his home country, Nigeria, Prof. Soyinka revealed that the state’s Department of the Diaspora had been forced to deploy chartered rescue flights to extract nationals trapped in modern-day slave markets across North Africa.

He detailed the profound trauma of the returnees, noting that their first instinctive act upon landing on home soil was “kneeling and kissing the ground from which they have been taken.”

The celebrated writer concluded with a passionate plea to the delegates—including visiting heads of state and global legal experts—stating that the ultimate goal of the reparations movement must be the comprehensive rehumanisation of African memory.

Without actively dismantling the ongoing exploitation of the youth, he warned, the pursuit of reparatory justice would remain an unfinished historical project.

“The most pernicious of these inequities are the children, the youth, who until today have been kidnapped and sent to the slave markets,” he added.

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Wole Soyinka tells African leaders to wake up over reparations

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