MARCH 26-28, 2025
ACCRA SUMMIT II
Organizers
The Global Circle for Reparations and Healing (GCRH) and Justice and Repair (J&R) in partnership with the African Union (AU) are co-organizing Accra Summit II: “Centering Healing for Africans and the Global African Diaspora in the context of the African Union Theme of the Year for 2025 on Reparations.”
The Accra Summit II is a follow-up to Accra Summit I of August 2022 and will be hosted by ATJLF. It brings together influencers from across Africa and the Global African Diaspora, including representatives of the African Union, youth and elders, artists, leaders in philanthropy, civil society, and grassroots groups, government officials, and representatives from the United Nations, African think tanks, and Pan-African media and academia, with selected sessions to be shared online.
BACKGROUND &
CONTEXT
Part and parcel of the European justification for the systems of enslavement of Africans and the colonization of Africa was the creation of a false hierarchy of human value. This hierarchy placed Europeans at the top of the human family, Africans at the bottom, and, sometimes, not in the human family at all. The transatlantic trafficking of African human beings marked an entire continent and its people as inferior. This was intended to last, not just for the period of enslavement, but in perpetuity.
This system of racist classification is at the heart of the crime against the humanity of African people as enshrined in the 2001 Durban Declaration and Plan of Action (DDPA). It is at the root of the multigenerational objectification, commodification, and dehumanization of Africans and people of African ancestry. In addition, it is at the root of the socio-economic underdevelopment of the African continent and across the Global African Diaspora.
It has been enforced with physical and psychic terror and violence. It is at the root of centuries of brutal biases against African people, and of continuing physical, psychological, spiritual, and cultural trauma.The International Law Commission prescribes five conditions for full reparations: cessation, restitution, compensation, satisfaction, and rehabilitation. Satisfaction and rehabilitation demand healing from the lasting effects of the damage caused by the system of racist classification that paved the way for the centuries-long denigration and oppression of African people. Healing is essential to full repair.
Healing is also a prerequisite for success in the movement for reparations, or any collective effort aimed at advancing the cause of African people. The history of Africa and the African Diaspora includes many examples of African people working together successfully toward shared goals, including the fight for freedom from enslavement and European domination. Unfortunately, our history also includes examples of the opposite. Too often, we have been unable to sustain unified efforts due to the multigenerational conditioning designed by Europeans to undermine unity among African people. This conditioning has reared its ugly head in the current fight for reparations. To be at our best individually, to build healthier relationships and communities, and to be able to work together effectively in the struggle for reparations or any other cause, we must emphasize healing from, and undoing of, our conditioning.
Accra Summit I
Put the Issue of Racial Healing on the International Agenda
In August of 2022, Accra Summit I brought together a broad base of organizations across Global Africa, culminating in the issuance of the Accra Declaration on Reparations and Racial Healing.
The Accra Declaration advanced a global agenda for reparations and healing – laying the framework for an organizing, engagement, and advocacy strategy moving forward. The Declaration highlighted the importance of healing to the work of reparations, noting that the transatlantic trafficking of Africans, enslavement, colonialism, apartheid, and genocide were a “direct assault on the bodies, minds, and spirits of African people result[ing] in profound injuries that went unmeasured and untreated.”
WHY A GLOBAL SUMMIT ON
healing?
Accra Summit II: Centering Healing for Africans and the Global African Diaspora in the context of the African Union Theme of the Year for 2025 on Reparations,” (Centering Healing), will inspire, inform, and provide models for the development of vibrant grassroots healing initiatives across Africa and the Global African Diaspora during the Year of Reparations and beyond. Centering Healing will build on the success of Accra Summit I, with the objective of, finally, measuring and treating the profound injuries to the bodies, minds, and spirits of African people.
Healing is crucial to the well-being of African people across the Global African Diaspora, to our ability to forge the collaborations necessary for success in the movement for reparations and to advance the interests of African people worldwide.
Centering Healing will share African-centered principles, practices, and processes to help Africans in the continent, the Global African Diaspora, and organizations move beyond unhealed behavior to healed behavior in our relationships with one another. By “unhealed” behavior we mean the negative conditioned responses developed throughout Global Africa as a result of centuries of anti-Blackness. By “healed” behavior we mean healthy responses developed as a result of African-centered healing processes designed to undo the effects of centuries of anti-Blackness.
KEY DESIRED
OUTCOMES
A deepened understanding of where we stand as African people across Global Africa today, how we got here, and how we can escape
A detailed outline of African-centered principles, practices, and processes to help African people and organizations move beyond unhealed behavior to healed behavior in our relationships with one another
A detailed outline for building an infrastructure for physical, emotional, and psychological healing across Global Africa.
THEMATIC STRANDS
OF THE SUMMIT
Centering Healing is a targeted and action-focused Summit, and all participants are asked to apply their expertise to help us answer the specific questions posed below.
What Happened to Africa?
How Did What Happened Wound Africans Around the World?
How Can Global Africa Heal?
Day one
What Happened to Africa?
Premise: As a result of centuries of global anti-Blackness, African people are miseducated about Africa, our history, and ourselves. Among the topics to be explored are the role of Africans in the enslavement of other Africans, the nature of enslavement across the Continent, the nature of European enslavement, and how the legacies of both appear across Global Africa today.
Questions to guide the conversation: How do we construct a more accurate African-centered narrative of our history? How do we construct a history of human enslavement as a way of illuminating our understanding of the transatlantic trafficking and enslavement of African people? To what extent was the enslavement of human beings a part of the African experience before the transatlantic trafficking? What role did Africans play in the enslavement of other Africans during the transatlantic trafficking? What was the nature of African enslavement? What was the nature of enslavement in Europe and the Americas?
Premise: As a result of centuries of global anti-Blackness, African people are miseducated about Africa, our history, and ourselves. Among the topics to be explored are the role of Africans in the enslavement of other Africans, the nature of enslavement across the Continent, the nature of European enslavement, and how the legacies of both appear across Global Africa today.
Questions to guide the conversation: How do we construct a more accurate African-centered narrative of our history? How do we construct a history of human enslavement as a way of illuminating our understanding of the transatlantic trafficking and enslavement of African people? To what extent was the enslavement of human beings a part of the African experience before the transatlantic trafficking? What role did Africans play in the enslavement of other Africans during the transatlantic trafficking? What was the nature of African enslavement? What was the nature of enslavement in Europe and the Americas?
Day two
How Did What Happened Wound Africans Around the World?
Premise: The key justification for the transatlantic trafficking and enslavement of African people was the lie of white superiority and black inferiority, which created a hierarchy of human value that placed Europeans and whiteness at the top and Africans and blackness at the bottom. We see the effects in every nation when it comes to life conditions—"Black people are on the bottom of every good list and the top of every bad list.”
Questions to guide the conversation: When and how did the hierarchy of human value (the lie of white superiority and black inferiority) take root? What role did religion play? How did the hierarchy evolve? What are its effects today? What are the psychological, emotional, and physical effects of the transatlantic trafficking on people in various parts of Africa and on the descendants of the people removed from Africa and scattered throughout various parts of the world today?
Premise: The key justification for the transatlantic trafficking and enslavement of African people was the lie of white superiority and black inferiority, which created a hierarchy of human value that placed Europeans and whiteness at the top and Africans and blackness at the bottom. We see the effects in every nation when it comes to life conditions—"Black people are on the bottom of every good list and the top of every bad list.”
Questions to guide the conversation: When and how did the hierarchy of human value (the lie of white superiority and black inferiority) take root? What role did religion play? How did the hierarchy evolve? What are its effects today? What are the psychological, emotional, and physical effects of the transatlantic trafficking on people in various parts of Africa and on the descendants of the people removed from Africa and scattered throughout various parts of the world today?
Day three
How Can Global Africa Heal?
Premise: Collectively, Africans are suffering from transgenerational trauma, evidenced in different ways in different places across Global Africa.
Questions to guide the conversation: What is unhealed behavior? What is healed behavior? What are promising strategies for individual and collective healing? How do we craft African-centered principles, processes, and practices for institutionalizing the transformation from healed to unhealed behavior? In the movement for reparations? Across Global Africa? What role(s) do a cultural revival and a Pan-African cultural reconnection between Africans and the global African Diaspora play in fostering healing? How can the decolonization of our institutions and structures help to accelerate healing? How can we build a durable and sustainable infrastructure for healing for Africans and the Global African Diaspora? What are our next steps?
Premise: Collectively, Africans are suffering from transgenerational trauma, evidenced in different ways in different places across Global Africa.
Questions to guide the conversation: What is unhealed behavior? What is healed behavior? What are promising strategies for individual and collective healing? How do we craft African-centered principles, processes, and practices for institutionalizing the transformation from healed to unhealed behavior? In the movement for reparations? Across Global Africa? What role(s) do a cultural revival and a Pan-African cultural reconnection between Africans and the global African Diaspora play in fostering healing? How can the decolonization of our institutions and structures help to accelerate healing? How can we build a durable and sustainable infrastructure for healing for Africans and the Global African Diaspora? What are our next steps?
FEATURED SPEAKERS
Nana Akufo-Addo
His Excellency, President of The Republic of Ghana
Keynote speaker
Jason Craige Harris
Healing Facilitator
Brian Kagoro
Moderator
Lead
Facilitator/
Moderator
Facilitator/
Moderator
Dr. Amara Enyia
Strategist, Social Innovation & Social Impact Professional & Public Policy Expert
Facilitator/
Moderator
Moderator
Dr. Liliane Umubyeyi
Co-Founder & Co-Director
Of The African Futures Action Lab
Nikole Hannah-Jones
Bellagio Summer Resident Fellow,
Knight Chair
Makmid Kamara
Director, Africa Transitional Legacy Fund (ATJLF)
Akwasi Awua Ababi
Director of Diaspora Affairs, Office of the President
Kofi Appenteng
President & CEO Of The
Africa-America Institute
Kamm Howard
National Director,
Reparations United
Reparations United
Dr. Sir Hilary Beckles
Vice-Chancellor Of The
University Of The West Indies
Dr. Joy Angela DeGruy
President and Chief Executive Officer of Joy DeGruy Publications Inc.
Dr. Ron Daniels
President, Institute Of The Black World 21st Century, New York, NY
Miriam Ekiudoko
UN Special Mandate Holder and Expert
Member of the Working Group of Experts on People of African Descent
Chandra Roxanne
SPECIAL AMBASSADOR, COMMUNITY HEALING NETWORK AND HEALING SESSION CO-facilitator
H.E. Amb. Bankole Adeoye
AU COMMISSIONER, POLITICAL AFFAIRS, PEACE AND SECURITY
DR. KOLE SHETTIMA
CO-DIRECTOR, ON NIGERIA BIG BET, DIRECTOR FOUNDATION'S NIGERIA OFFICE
Prof. Darrick Hamilton
SPEAKER / PANELIST
Dr. Cheryl Grills
community healing network and california reparations task force.
SPEAKER
SPEAKER
robin rue-simmons
Executive Director, First Repair. SPEAKER
AmbASSADOR Thomas KWESI Quartey
SPEAKER
RESOURCES
This page contains speeches, statements and other resource materials for the summit. It will be updated on a regular basis.
PROGRAM AGENDA
Convenors
Dr. Ron Daniels
Institute of the Black World 21st Century, National African American Reparations Commission
Kamm Howard
Reparations United, National African American Reparations Commission
Dr. Amara Enyia
Global Black, Movement 4 Black Lives
Steering committee
Dr. Enola Aird
Community Healing Network
Kofi Appenteng
Africa America Institute
Emannuel Ayoola
Africa Transitional Justice Legacy Fund (ATJLF)
Dr. Ahmed Bugre
Africa Transitional Justice Legacy Fund (ATJLF)/AU
Kimberly Collins
MacArthur Foundation
Yvonne Darkwa-Poku
MacArthur Foundation
Dr. Joy DeGruy
Be The Healing
Phillis Hill
MacArthur Foundation
Nikole Hannah-Jones
Howard University Center for Journalism and Democracy
Robin Rue Simmons
First Repair, National African American Reparations Commission
Hauwa Kazeem
MacArthur Foundation
Dr. Kole Shettima
MacArthur Foundation
Dr. Godfrey Odongo
Wellspring Philanthropic Fund
Dr. John Ikubaje
AU Political Affairs, Peace and Security
CO-CONVENED BY
HOSTED BY
COORDINATED BY
FUNDED BY
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