Russia has expressed readiness to support African countries in calculating the total amount of reparations that Western nations could pay for crimes committed during the colonial period.
The position was outlined on Wednesday, March 25, by the Director of the Institute for African Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Irina Abramova, during a press conference on the theme “The Responsibility of Western Metropolises for the Consequences of Colonisation: History and Modernity,” according to the African Initiative media agency.
Her remarks come in the wake of growing global momentum for reparatory justice, following the backing of 123 nations for a motion at the United Nations to recognise the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade as the gravest crime ever committed against humanity.
The motion was tabled at the UN General Assembly by President John Dramani Mahama. “We aim to unite the efforts of Russian scholars – mathematicians, programmers, historians, and economists – with African researchers in order to jointly substantiate the scale of these reparations and move forward with legal claims on various international platforms,” she said.
Abramova stressed that African countries must accurately quantify the damage caused by colonialism to strengthen their claims for compensation, noting that this would involve modern scientific methods alongside extensive colonial-era archives preserved across the continent. She clarified that Russia is offering support, but African challenges should primarily be addressed by Africans themselves.
She highlighted President Dramani Mahama, who chairs the African Union’s reparations committee, as a leader and scholar advancing the discourse. “In addition to being an outstanding political figure, John Mahama is also a scholar. He actively promotes the reparations agenda, which is increasingly evolving from a historical and political discourse into a concrete, practical agenda,” Abramova added.
