We, the participants in the conference on the theme: "The London Conference, 125 years later: Pan-Africanism and dialogue on reparations", composed of representatives of African civil society and people of African heritage from Africa, Europe, Abya Yala (the so-called Americas), Caribbean and the Antilles, gathered in London on April 9, 2025;
HONORING OUR COMPLETE HISTORY:
Africa, as the birthplace of humanity and cradle of civilisations, has a rich heritage that predates the periods of exploitation; nevertheless, African chattel enslavement, Transoceanic Trafficking of Enslaved Africans, colonisation, apartheid, and neocolonialism have, for centuries, caused deep harm to African people and those of African descent, who continue to suffer the effects of these exploitative systems today;
The Berlin Conference of 1885, 140 years ago, violently carved up the African continent without African people’s consent or participation, imposing arbitrary borders that deliberately fractured ethnic communities, severed Indigenous nations, and continue to undermine African unity, sovereignty, and development to this day;
Faced with contempt and denial of dignity and justice, generations of Africans and people of African descent have forged powerful movements of resistance and liberation, culminating in the development of Pan-Africanism as a unifying philosophy, political movement, and framework for collective action;
AFFIRMING OUR PAN-AFRICAN FOUNDATIONS:
The first Pan-African Conference took place in London from 23 to 25 July 1900, marking the formal crystallisation of a movement that has continued through subsequent Pan-African Congresses, establishing our collective struggle for liberation and justice;
HONORING OUR PAN-AFRICAN HERITAGE:
The 1987-1988 African Jubilee Declaration laid foundational groundwork for our continued movement;
The historic 1993 Abuja Proclamation on Reparations arising from the 1st Pan-African Conference on Reparations For African Enslavement, Colonisation and Neo-Colonisation established a comprehensive Pan-African approach to reparatory justice, formalised the call for redress of historical injustices and catalysed global reparations movements;
The 1994 Birmingham Declaration articulated the "severe and crippling damage done to Africa and its diaspora by European enslavement, colonialism, and neo-colonialism" and united "all people of African origin in the Caribbean, Africa, Europe, the Americas and elsewhere to support the movement for reparations and join forces with a view to forming a strong united front capable of exposing, confronting and overcoming the psychological, economic and cultural harm inflicted upon us by peoples of European origin";
RECOGNISING INTERNATIONAL FRAMEWORKS:
The United Nations 2001 Durban World Conference Against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance and its Durban Declaration and Programme of Action (DDPA) represented a turning point in the campaign for reparations with its affiliated Declarations establishing global recognition of our cause;
The United Nations International Decade for People of African Descent (2015–2024 and 2025–2034) under the Theme: Recognition, Justice and Development provides an ongoing platform for advancing our agenda;
Various affiliated policies, programmes, and activities have focused on restorative justice for Africa, Africans and people of African heritage, and combating Afrophobia/Afriphobia;
AFFIRMING CONTINENTAL GOVERNMENT SUPPORT FOR PAN-AFRICAN IDEALS:
The African Union (AU) Article 3Q of the AU Constitutive Act (2003) invited "the full participation of the African diaspora as an important part of our continent, in building the continent," complemented by the (2012) AU Diaspora Declaration;
Decision Assembly/AU/Dec.807(XXXIV) of February 2021 established the decade 2021–2031 as the Decade of African Roots and the African Diaspora;
Decision Assembly/AU/Dec.848(XXXVI) of February 2023 set the path for the 9th Pan-African Congress in Lomé, Togo in 2025 on the theme "Renewal of Pan-Africanism and Africa's role in the reform of multilateral institutions: mobilising resources and reinventing itself to act";
Decision Assembly/AU/Dce.884(XXXVII) of February 2024 called for "a united front to advance the cause of justice and the payment of reparations to Africans";
The African Union's theme for 2025: 'Justice for Africans and people of African descent through reparations' and the historic February 2025 decision to classify slavery, deportation and colonisation as crimes against humanity and genocide against the people of Africa mark a watershed moment in our struggle;
BUILDING ON RECENT MOMENTUM:
Six regional preparatory forums have been held across AU regions preparing for the 9th Pan-African Congress in Lomé 2025, with this London conference serving as the seventh preparatory gathering;
Significant recent advances include the November 2023 Accra Conference on Reparations (supported by the AU, CARICOM, and Global African Diaspora Civil Societies), the 2023 UK Reparations Conference statement calling for an All-Party Parliamentary Commission of Inquiry for Truth, Justice and Reparations, the 2024 Bahia regional forum focused on restorative justice, and the 8th Pan-African Congress of 2014 in Johannesburg which emphasised reparations;
MOVING FORWARD TOGETHER:
We affirm that Pan-Africanism is fundamentally a movement of African people rather than states, though we welcome the committed participation of African states that align themselves with African people's aspirations for liberation and unity;
We welcome the participation of representatives of African states and countries where people of African origin are domiciled, as well as the presence of Prof. Robert DUSSEY, Minister of Foreign Affairs, Cooperation and African Integration.
125 years after the first Pan-African Conference, we recognise the crucial need to reassess progress and formulate concrete actions for Pan-Africanism's future;
The time has come for a frank, sincere, and sustainable dialogue on reparations among the protagonists, which are an integral part of the concerns of Africans and people of African descent; this dialogue needs to be seen as part of the process of advancing Pan-Africanism;
Having considered the valuable recommendations presented by our distinguished speakers and contributors at this historic conference;
WE HEREBY DECLARE:
1. To bring together the voices of Africans on the African continent and throughout the African diaspora, to advocate for a sincere and sustainable dialogue for reparative justice for Africa and her people, taking into account international, regional and national mechanisms and instruments relating to human and peoples' rights, including special resolutions concerning the human rights, Indigenous rights and fundamental freedoms of the African people;
2. To strengthen African coalitions and alliances with people of African origin to demand dialogue for reparatory justice by establishing strong partnerships and improving advocacy capacities across the African continent and the rest of the world;
3. To establish and harmonise reparatory justice frameworks to ensure their effective application, to obtain reparations, and to educate African communities and people of African heritage throughout all sectors and strata of society;
4. To encourage the respective governments of Africa and countries where the African diaspora are domiciled to incorporate into school and university curricula comprehensive education and training on Pan-Africanism, the history and impacts of African chattel enslavement, colonisation, neocolonialism as the last stage of imperialism and movements for reparations;
5. To commit to rigorous self-examination and self-repair as essential dimensions of the reparations struggle; to acknowledge and address the internal weaknesses, divisions, and harmful mentalities that have prolonged African people’s exploitation and continue to undermine our unity; to recognise that unless we overcome these weaknesses in the spirit and ethos of Pan-Africanism, we will sabotage our peoples' sacred cause of reparations; to understand that reparations must begin with ourselves through the making of new African consciousness and institutions; to implement participatory approaches at all levels that safeguard against the seduction of movement-capture, elite capture, and state capture of our reparations cause; and to ensure that the benefits of reparations that we struggle for reach all African people rather than being diverted to a privileged few;
6. To transform existing regional bodies such as the African Union and CARICOM, which have begun addressing reparations formally, into effective vehicles for the realisation of Pan-Africanism by ensuring substantive African representation and direct participation of African people, Indigenous leadership formations, and grassroots movements in their decision-making processes, moving beyond state-centered diplomacy to people-centered emancipatory institutions that truly serve the restoration and unification of African people on the continent and throughout the diaspora;
7. To welcome the organisation by the Republic of Togo, in collaboration with the African Union (AU), of the 9th Pan-African Congress, scheduled for December 2025 in Lomé, Togo, and calls on Africans on the continent and in the diaspora, Pan-African civil society organisations, Pan-African movements, associations, and committed Pan-African scholar-activists, scholars, and leaders to mobilise and participate in order to continue and complete the struggle for total Pan-African liberation, decolonisation, self-determination, and reparatory justice for African people worldwide until Africa is restored to her rightful place at the center of world politics.
Pan-African Reparatory Justice Agenda for Action:
1. Pan-African Legacy, Knowledge and Education:
- To conduct a comprehensive review of all resolutions and declarations from the 1900 London Conference through subsequent Pan-African Congresses, examining both their collective insights on manifestations of ongoing harm and the progress made toward Pan-African unity and liberation, through establishing a Permanent Pan-African Congress Review Commission and developing a unified archive and digital platform for Pan-African proceedings.
- To create a strategic implementation framework that prioritises unfulfilled historical Pan-African Congress mandates while adapting methodologies to the current geopolitical landscape and technological capabilities.
- To engage in continual struggle against all forms of Eurocentrism that delegitimise African knowledges and governance systems.
- To comprehensively transform educational systems across Africa and the diaspora, decolonising curricula and elevating Indigenous African knowledges.
- To systematically document and integrate the historical and contemporary achievements of African civilisations and communities, developing curricula that catalyses African agency, resilience, and self-representation, and ensuring accurate, empowering narratives of intellectual, scientific, technological, and cultural contributions that have been historically marginalised or overlooked.
- To establish 'Critical Pan-African Studies' as a mandatory component of educational processes throughout Africa and the diaspora.
- To create a dynamic, interactive Pan-African Digital Archive documenting the Global African Reparations Movement's history.
- To develop Pan-African research initiatives on food sovereignty, climate resilience, and water security as strategies of reparative justice.
2. Governance, Self-Determination and Sovereignty:
- To establish new Pan-African governance institutions rooted in African political philosophies, ethical systems, jurisprudence, and social practices, moving beyond the limitations of colonially imposed state structures to create more participatory, representative, and people-centered systems of governance.
- To transform existing colonial-imposed state structures into plurinational polities that authentically reflect and honour the diversity of African people, nations, and civilisations existing within current borders; to recognise and uphold the inherent rights of Indigenous people to their territories, resources, cultural practices, and self-governance in accordance with their own jurisprudence and political philosophies; to develop constitutional and governance models that provide for autonomy, peoples sovereignty, and proportional representation of distinct Indigenous, ethnic, cultural and linguistic communities; to implement participatory processes for reconfiguring state structures to align with the historical realities and aspirations of the plurality of African people they encompass; to establish mechanisms ensuring equitable resource distribution, cultural rights, and political voice across all constituent people and nations, with special protections for Indigenous communities; and to advance a vision of Pan-Africanism that forges principled operational unity through diversity rather than forced homogeneity, creating more legitimate and responsive states rooted in African realities rather than colonial impositions.
- To declare the urgent necessity to reimagine Pan-African statehood—dismantling the colonial legacy of Westphalian state models through Africa’s transformation into Maatubuntuman; a Pan-African Union of Communities grounded in Maat (justice/balance) and Ubuntu (collective flourishing). This self-repair will birth Ubuntudunia: an anti-imperialist, multipolar, pluriversal world order where governance emerges through communal participation, weaving our nations into a just coexistence while recognising that our peoples’ sovereignty is eternally rooted in the restoration of the sovereignty of Mother Earth.
- To develop and implement Ubuntunomics as a revolutionary economic paradigm that challenges extractive global economic models, rooted in African philosophical principles of collective well-being, mutual care, and interdependence, integrating cooperative economics and indigenous economic wisdom to restore African economic sovereignty and regenerate community wealth.
- To transform the African Union into a self-financing and self-sufficient institution that effectively facilitates continental integration, coordinates policies advancing Pan-African unity, develops a robust defence architecture protecting African sovereignty, implements development strategies reducing external dependency, and serves as a genuine vehicle for collective sovereignty and shared prosperity.
- To strengthen and expand initiatives like the Alliance of Sahel States and other regional integration efforts that challenge colonial borders, reunite historically connected people, and forge strategic alliances; to support frameworks welcoming the African diaspora’s participation in these cooperation structures; and to recognise these initiatives as vital pathways toward an African unity that transcends continental boundaries and heals separations between continental Africans and her diaspora.
- To pursue the complete decolonisation and restoration of all colonised African territories as a non-negotiable component of reparations.
- To demand the immediate end of all colonial occupations and foreign military presence on African soil.
- To establish a binding Pan-African covenant prohibiting the ceding of African land to external interests.
- To identify and counteract domestic actors who function as agents of foreign powers against African interests.
- To support and fund indigenous mapping initiatives that document pre-colonial territories, traditional governance boundaries, cultural connections, and inter-community relationships as a foundation for reconstituting African geographies based on historical realities rather than colonial impositions.
- To develop frameworks for dual governance systems that elevate indigenous African authority while navigating present geopolitical realities.
3. Gender Justice and Women's Leadership:
- To acknowledge and increase the visibility of the essential experiences, knowledge, and leadership of African women in both Pan-African movements and reparations movements and frameworks.
- To document and amplify women Pan-Africanists' contributions that remain underrepresented in public discourse.
- To recover and document women's knowledge systems and contributions to Pan-African thought and resistance.
- To address how colonial systems deliberately disrupted African gender relations and undermined women's established positions of authority, leadership, and decision-making power.
- To transform Pan-African institutions through women's equal representation and decision-making power at all levels, ensuring gender parity in leadership structures, recognising that colonialism imposed gendered forms of violence requiring specific reparative approaches; and to ensure reparations frameworks address the particular harms experienced by African women while supporting their leadership in solutions.
- To ensure that reparatory justice outcomes fundamentally dismantle rather than inadvertently reinforce gender hierarchies.
- To honour March 16th as Global African Women's Day, celebrating the rich diversity of women of African heritage, forging a shared vision of unity beyond ethnic, linguistic, and cultural barriers, and acknowledging mothers and elders as first caretakers who have sustained our collective strength through historical separations of African chattel enslavement, colonialism and contemporary neocolonialism.
4. Confronting the Maangamizi and Restoring Indigenous Systems:
- To formally recognise the Maangamizi (African Holocaust) as a continuing crime against humanity and genocidal process requiring comprehensive reparations.
- To confront and dismantle the impact of arbitrary colonial borders that fragment African peoples and obstruct continental unity.
- To reclaim and implement autonomous legal frameworks from Indigenous African jurisprudence and customary law traditions.
- To recognise and elevate Indigenous African knowledge systems, leadership structures, and governance models as primary sources of wisdom, strategy, and resolution in addressing historical injustices.
- To establish the Ubuntukgotla People's International Tribunal for Global Justice as a Pan-African mechanism for adjudicating reparations claims outside the constraints of Eurocentric international law.
- To forge direct connections between diaspora organisations and continental African Indigenous governance systems.
- To implement the Akan Sankofa principle through programmes reconnecting the diaspora with their ancestral heritage.
- To support African heritage communities in developing autonomous institutions that meet their cultural needs and aspirations.
- To recognise and support Non-Territorial Autonomy as a practical implementation of Pan-African principles, acknowledging the unique challenges faced by people of African ancestry displaced from ancestral homelands and enabling diaspora and continental African Indigenous communities to exercise collective rights without geographic constraints.
5. Unifying the Global African Family:
- To ensure full and substantive integration of the African Diaspora in the Protocol to the Treaty establishing the African Economic Community relating to Free Movement of Persons, Right of Residence and Right of Establishment, and in the implementation of Agenda 2063, ensuring the diaspora’s legal recognition and meaningful pathways for return, residence, social, political and economic participation across the African continent.
- To implement a comprehensive Global Rematriation Framework that establishes concrete pathways for the African diaspora to return to ancestral communities and lands addressing legal, cultural, spiritual, and material dimensions of belonging.
- To develop and implement the Global Afrikan Peoples Parliament's Maatubuntumitawo-GAFRIC proposed Pan-Afrikan Reparatory Justice Law of Holistic Rematriation/Repatriation (PARJLOHRR) as the legal foundation for this framework.
- To secure formal international recognition of the 'Right to Africa' as an inalienable birthright for Africans at home and abroad regardless of current citizenship, embodying the foundational principles of Pan-Africanism.
- To develop supportive structures for the meaningful integration of returning Africans into Indigenous African communities on the continent.
- To require all African nations to establish Diaspora Desks and appoint Diaspora Attachés in diplomatic missions.
- To affirm the African Union African Diaspora Sixth Region High Council as a vital mechanism to facilitate the inclusion of the African Diaspora in accordance with Article 3(Q) of the African Union Constitutive Act and the AU 2012 Diaspora Declaration.
- To conduct a comprehensive Skills Audit of the African diaspora to strategically engage diaspora expertise.
6. Healing, Restoration and Planet Repairs:
- To prioritise African Womanist, Motherist, and Indigenous healing approaches as foundational to reparatory justice, recognising the intersectional oppressions and traumas experienced by African heritage women and girls, while also addressing the distinct experiences of African heritage men and boys.
- To establish Pan-African centers of holistic healing throughout the continent and diaspora that integrate spiritual, cultural, and psychological restoration.
- To recognise that comprehensive reparations must include the restoration of cultural, psychological and spiritual wellbeing alongside material redress.
- To revitalise Indigenous African healing practices as valid components of rehabilitation as a component of holistic reparations.
- To recognise ‘Planet Repairs’ as a transformative paradigm that synthesises cognitive justice, reparatory justice, and environmental justice through a Pan-African lens of holistic repairs.
- To create institutions that preserve and apply Indigenous African knowledges in environmental regeneration, challenging colonial paradigms that separate humans from their environments.
- To support intergenerational Pan-African initiatives, particularly youth-led organising that connects reparations with climate, racial, economic, and social justice.
- To establish methodologies for recognising and quantifying ethnocide and cultural losses as substantive grounds for reparations claims-making and redress.
- To implement programmes for recovering and renewing endangered African languages, spiritual practices, and knowledge systems.
- To create institutions dedicated to the rematriation/repatriation of stolen cultural artifacts and the remains of human beings from Western museums and collections.
7. Comprehensive Reparatory Justice Mechanisms:
- To establish a coordinated network of grassroots institutions through a unified framework of All-African Peoples Community Consultative Assemblies, Maatzoezaduara Grassroots Truth-Telling Initiatives, and Pempamsiempango community-led Glocal Pan-African Reparations Plans for Planet Repairs Alternative Progression.
- To establish All-Party Parliamentary Commissions of Inquiry for Truth and Reparatory Justice creating official forums for reparations dialogue between African peoples and state institutions.
- To negotiate a Pan-African Reparations Treaty establishing binding frameworks for collective reparations claims.
- To develop comprehensive 'Harm-Injury-Damage' assessment methodologies for standardising documentation of historical atrocities and their contemporary impacts.
- To collectively recognise the illegitimacy of predatory debts imposed on African nations and establish mechanisms for the audit, assessment, and repudiation of odious and colonial financial obligations that undermine African self-determination.
- To mobilise the Global African Reparations Movement as a profound embodiment of Pan-African revolutionary consciousness, actively challenging systemic oppression, advancing epistemic, cultural, political, and economic liberation, and strategically reimagining African sovereignty across the continent and diaspora.
- To declare 2026 as a Year of Remembrance and Renewal, commemorating the 25th anniversary of the 2001 United Nations World Conference Against Racism (Durban Declaration and Programme of Action), situating racial justice as a fundamental component of reparatory justice, and amplifying the ongoing struggle against systemic racism, discrimination, and colonial legacies as integral to the Global African Reparations Movement.
- To develop robust political education initiatives that articulate the connections between diverse justice struggles and African reparations movements; to forge strategic alliances between Pan-African reparations advocates and other social justice movements globally; and to build coalitions that strengthen each movement's capacity for transformative change, while respecting their unique contexts and objectives.
- To document the intellectual and activist lineages of Pan-African reparationists from foundational figures to contemporary movements.
- To harness the transformative power of the arts in cultivating Pan-African consciousness and advancing reparatory justice actions.
8. Fulfilling the Birmingham Declaration:
- To demand formal apologies from former colonial powers for African chattel enslavement and colonisation as an essential first step toward acknowledgment.
- To advocate for comprehensive reparatory justice for peoples of African origin worldwide, including:
▪ Material compensation for economic exploitation and resource extraction
▪ Restitution of stolen cultural heritage and artifacts
▪ Return of land holdings acquired through colonial dispossession
▪ Repatriation of financial assets illicitly held in foreign institutions
▪ Recognition and protection of intellectual property and traditional knowledge
▪ Rehabilitation through ecological restoration of damaged ecosystems
▪ Psychological and social healing for intergenerational trauma
▪ Guarantees of non-repetition through reformed global governance
▪ Satisfaction through educational reform and public memorialisation
▪ To affirm that pursuing reparations does not diminish African people’s right to live wherever they choose globally.
Coordinated Implementation and Global Connections:
• To develop a coordinated Pan-African approach to local reparations policy and programmes implementation, replicating successful models like the 'Atonement and Reparations' motions in municipal governments worldwide.
• To strengthen connections between UK-based reparations organising and the Global African Reparations Movement.
United by Pan-African principles and a shared vision for transformative reparatory justice, we commit our collective strength and resources to these vital actions. Moving forward together, we strive for Africa's total liberation in our lifetime, the elevation of African civilisation, and an end to exploitation, atrocities, crimes against humanity, and genocide perpetrated against Africa and African people. The pursuit of African reparations will catalyse the transformation of the world, reshaping global institutions and consciousness and restructuring power structures that have perpetuated global apartheid.
