ARCHIVE

HISTORIC BALANTA WEDDING: DAUGHTER OF FORMER PRESIDENT OF GUINEA BISSAU MARRIES LEADER OF THE BALANTAS ENSLAVED IN AMERICA

See full wedding pictures below……

“Reparations means repair. Repair means restoring to the condition before damage was done. Had not the Portuguese invaded the land of Guinea on the authority of the dum diversas apostolic edict and launched the evil and criminal trans-atlantic enslavement of African people, including some Balantas, my great, great, great, great, great grandfather would have remained in his ancestral village of untche, speaking his language, living his culture, practicing his spiritual way of life undamaged. Seven generations of my family would not have suffered ethnocide and our bloodline and genetic endowment would not have been forcibly altered and even polluted with the blood of our enemies. My marriage to the beautiful SÂNEBICKTÉ JULIANA YALA NHANCA, daughter of the great balanta president of guinea bissau dr. kumba yala, is evidence, is proof, is a testimony that one can find their way home, reclaim what was lost, restore the bloodline, and experience what god had intended naturally. This is a high expression of reparations and is the aim of the African Renaissance project - to reunite the Afrodescendants with their African family at home and together build a united sovereign Africa states through strong families. god has used us to provide an example, a symbol and we are the face of the Decade of Return.”

- Siphiwe Baleka

September 7, Bissau - Exactly at the moment of the total lunar eclipse Sunday night, SÂNEBICKTÉ JULIANA YALA NHANCA, the daughter of Dr. Kumba Yala, the first and only Balanta President of Guinea Bissau, tied the knot with the founder and President of the Balanta B’rassa History and Genealogy Society in America (BBHAGSIA), SIPHIWE BALKEA, whose Balanta name is Brassa Mada. Mr. Baleka has become not only the leader of the Balantas who were enslaved in the Americas, but has been a champion of all the Afrodescendant peoples and their right to return to their ancestral homelands. The marriage of SIPHIWE AND SÂNEBICKTÉ thus represents the repair of severed ancestral linkages and therefore is a unique, living symbol for

  1. the African Union’s “Year of Reparations (2025)”;

  2. The “Decade of Return 2020-2030” from the 2019 Accra Declaration

  3. The African Union’s “Decade of Accelerated Action for the Transformation of Education and Skills Development in Africa (2025-2034)”

  4. The African Union’s “Decade of Action on Reparations and African Heritage (2026–2036)”

“Imagine if Alex Haley stayed in Jufureh and married a real Mandinka princess. So I have done Alex Haley one better,” said the bridegroom. “Balanta people do not have a chief or king, so President Kumba Yala’s family is the closest thing to a Balanta royal family that there is and SÂNEBICKTÉ is the Balanta princess.”

As the founder of the Balanta Society in America and Guinea Bissau’s Decade of Return Initiative that has seen fifty people return to their Balanta ancestral homeland and twenty people receive their citizenship, Siphiwe Baleka has emerged as the Balanta with a great amount of “vital life force energy” to educate the people in the United States about Balanta history and culture. For Brassa Mada, to find love and marry the daughter of Kumba Yala just seems like poetic justice and destiny.

MORE THAN JUST A LOVE STORY

“I am 36 years old and I didn’t marry before and I didn’t have any children,” recounted the new Mrs. Baleka. “My husband didn’t ask me to date, he said he wants to marry me! Directly! So, in my head, I thought, wow, . . . I asked three times to be sure. Yeah, because nobody before tell me that seriously he wants to marry me before having a relationship. No. So he was the first one doing this, so I said to myself, ‘wow, this man is not someone who is coming to break my heart. He is serious. So he is my husband.’ Yeah. Yeah. [Laughing] Yeah. I saw in his eyes he was serious so I said yes. So he was the answer to my prayer to God also.”

Describing to his family the process for getting the marriage accepted, Siphiwe Baleka stated,

“Well, that part is over. I must admit, when I first entered and about 15 or so of her uncles, auntides, her grandmother,..... sat down and were so quiet, for the first time I felt nervous, kind of like when Im getting ready to swim in a competition. My fiance’s older brother initiated the talks. He was polite and welcoming and serious. The Balanta side of the family sat on one side, the Mancanha side of the family sat on the other. Then Beto introduced me and the purpose of the gathering was now at hand: to tell them why I was there and what I want. I spoke first in Kriol with a little bit of Balanta to endear myself to them, and then Beto translated. In short, I explained that I was born and raised in an all-white community in America, and as a result never felt that place was my home and from that stems my desire to find out where I come from. I told them that the miracle of DNA testing allowed me to do that and hence they could understand my desire to live in Guinea Bissau and marry a Balanta woman. I then said that that desire has caused me to organize other Balanta people in America and lead them back to their ancestral homeland, too. I explained that because of the differences in culture, I needed a woman who could speak English and would understand my "special" challenges and help me re-integrate into Guinean society. Therefore, marrying Sanebicte feels like "destiny". I then told the story of how Bicte and I met and how 10 minute into our first date I knew I wanted her to be my wife and told her so. I told them that we have spent enough time together to see that we make each other happy and that we are compatible and therefore, I ask the families to give us their blessing. Beto said I spoke well and everyone expressed how happy they were (that I was taking away the shame of the families of having a 36-yearold unmarried daughter - the duaghter of the former President!!!!) Beto then presented them with the gifts - bottles of cana (spirits), wine, beer, and juice. Then we all went outside and the subrinhas (nieces) served two different kinds of chicken and salad. After eating, the families then started discussing the details for the activities this weekend. There was considerable discussion on what to do, when, where, how, etc. and a list was drawn up of all the things I would have to provide. When it was all finished, everyone was happy and relieved, most of all Bicte. She told me that that was the hardest part and now she truly feels like she is my wife. She was seriously worried how this would go and so she was VERY happy at the outcome and the certainty that in four more days, she will be officially considered married in the Mancanha tradition and can thus be allowed to live with me in my house with dignity and having released her family from the shame....:

A DESTINY AND A PURPOSE

After the wedding, the new bride stated,

“My father is someone who has lived all his life showing the people about Balanta people, about Balanta culture…. He was someone who really loved his ethnic, his country, his village, his culture. So he fought for this to show the people how important Balanta is for Guinea Bissau and my husband is doing the same, so my father would be proud of him.”

Balanta Professor of International Politics Beto Infanda, the best man at the wedding said,

“It is with great joy, responsibility and honor that we are the Godfather and Godmother of dear Sanebicte Yala, the daughter of our charismatic President of the Republic, Dr. Koumba Yala and dear Siphiwe Ka Baleka our American balance. Our particular thanks to [Agostinho Da Costa ] the distinguished National Secretary of APU-PDGB, the older brother of Sanebicte for his support in facilitating the process.”

It should be noted that:

  1. The first documented ecounter of the European attack against the people of the land of Guine was a naval battle featuring great Guinean swimmers recorded by Gomes Eannes de Azurara, former Chief Chronicler of the Kingdom of Portugal, in his book, The Chronicle of the Discovery and Conquest of Guinea (1453) while Siphiwe Baleka is the Guinean National record holder in every swimming event and is thus the greatest documented swimmer in Guinea Bissau’s history.

  2. Dr. Kumba Yala was considered the only man courageous enough to stand up against the oppressive powers ruling Guinea Bissau in the late 1990s and was thus elected and served as President from 2000 to 2003. This is the same fearless spirit of Brassa Mada.

  3. Siphiwe Baleka has become the “Moses” of Balanta people, being the first to permanently relocate to Guinea Bissau and has become the Afrodescendants’ champion of the Right to Return, representing them at the United Nations, the African Union, and the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights. In 2023 Siphiwe Baleka charged the United States with state sanctioned ethnocide against Balanta people in the United States at the Inter American Commission for Human Rights and at the United States’ fifth periodic review under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights at the United Nations in Geneva.

Says SÂNEBICKTÉ

“Our story is like a story that you find in books or movies. I am someone who my husband was looking for to complete his work. My father was the inspiration for all Balanta people in Guinea Bissau. So marrying one of his daughters it is the good gift for my husband to help his work. Otherwise, he is someone that I was waiting for, because I want the world, not only Guinea Bissau, to know my father his story. I want to tell the people the real story about my father. Not in politics, but in family life, his private life. It’s true we can’t talk about my father without touching on the politics, but I want people to know this man at home, his children, his wife, his family in general. So, my husband, he came to complete my job. Not to complete, but to start my job because until now, it was just an idea, for a long time I have it in my mind, my heart. And until now, I didn’t start. So I am grateful to God to give me this blessing, this gift to write my father’s story.”

There is still a civil and church wedding planned next month and a BIG traditional Balanta wedding for early next year that is expected to be a grand international event. Weddinggifts can be made at:

CashApp: $SiphiweBaleka1

Paypal: https://www.paypal.me/SIPHIWEBALEKA?locale.x=en_US

Website: https://www.balanta.org/checkout/donate?donatePageId=5d83e1204470e31e2d773eae

Blood Moon September 7, 2025 Spiritual meaning:

The skies on September 7, 2025, bring us one of the most powerful astrological events of the year: a Total Lunar Eclipse in Pisces, also known as the Blood Moon. During this eclipse, the Moon will take on a deep red glow as the Earth passes between the Sun and the Moon, filtering sunlight through the atmosphere. Beyond the stunning visuals, this Blood Moon carries strong spiritual and emotional vibrations. In astrology, lunar eclipses often mark turning points, karmic closures, and emotional breakthroughs. With Pisces in the spotlight, this one leans heavily toward release, spiritual growth, and transformation.

Blood Moon Eclipse September 7, 2025: A cosmic reset for all zodiac signs

Think of it as a cosmic reset button, guiding us to let go of what no longer serves us and step into a higher, more authentic version of ourselves.

Aries (SIPHIWE) : Hidden matters rise to the surface, and sudden endings may surprise you. This is a good time to release old fears or self-sabotaging habits that block your progress. The eclipse encourages deep healing from within.

Libra (SÂNEBICKTÉ) : Your daily routine, habits, and health come into focus. It is the right moment to release toxic patterns and commit to discipline and wellness. Small, steady changes bring long-term benefits.

TRYING TO UNDERSTAND WHO ARE THE JIHADISTS IN BURKINA FASO, NIGER AND MALI AND WHY THEY ARE WAGING WAR IN THE ALLIANCE OF SAHEL STATES: A PRELIMINARY INVESTIGATION BY THE SPECIAL ENVOY TO BURKINA FASO

In 2025, I have served as the Afrodescedants’ Special Envoy to Burkina Faso and have attended two delegations in July and August. However, I confess I know little about the jihadists in the Sahel Region that is creating so much problems. Today, I asked, “Who are these people, what are they doing, and why?”

Here’s what I am learning.

ESTABLISHING THE INDEPENDENT STATE OF AZAWAD IN WHAT IS NOW NORTHERN MALI

The object of the jihadist activity is to establish the independent state of Azawad under Sharia law in what is now Northern Mali. This became the priority after US President Barak Obama assasinated Libyan President Muammar Gaddafi in 2011. See: Gold and Oil: Petrodollars and the United States Attacks in Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Mali, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon and Iran; Understanding Obama’s AFRICOM Betrayal of African People

The Group for the Support of Islam and Muslims (Jama’at Nusrat al-Islam wa al-Muslimeen, JNIM)

According to the European Council of Foreign Relations website Mapping armed groups in Mali and the Sahel,

“JNIM, an umbrella coalition of al-Qaeda-aligned groups, announced its existence in March 2017 in a video release featuring the leaders of its component parts – Ansar al-Din, al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, al-Mourabitoun, and Katibat Macina. Headed by Tuareg militant leader Iyad Ag Ghali, JNIM has since established an independent media arm and regularly claims responsibility for attacks throughout Mali. It took credit for the January 2019 attack that killed ten UN peacekeepers in Aguelhoc, recent devastating attacks on Malian army bases in Dioura and Guiré, and several attacks against security forces as well as other armed groups in Niger and Burkina Faso.

Broadly speaking, JNIM’s aim is to drive foreign (especially French and UN) forces out of Mali, and to impose its version of Islamic law. It maintains its allegiance to al-Qaeda and seeks to spread the reach of jihadist groups in the region. Although the components within JNIM act relatively autonomously, they have still consistently reaffirmed their membership in the umbrella group. Katibat Macina leader Amadou Kouffa in particular has consistently confirmed the centrality of Iyad Ag Ghali to the movement and to any potential negotiations with them. Despite heavy losses at the hands of French forces, JNIM continues to operate throughout Mali and into Burkina Faso and Niger, conducting complex attacks, assassinations, and improvised explosive device (IED) attacks on UN, Malian, and French forces.”

Detailed jihadist map https://ecfr.eu/special/sahel_mapping/jnim

THIS BEGS THE QUESTION DERIVED FROM THE PROVERB, “THE ENEMY OF MY ENEMY IS MY FRIEND”: WHAT OF THE COMMON INTERESTS BETWEEN THE JIHADISTS AND PAN AFRICANISTS VIS-A-VIS DRIVING OUT THE FOREIGN UN AND FRIENCH FORCES AND REMNANTS OF NEOCOLONIALISM VS THE ANTI-BLACK RACISM OF THEIR PAN-ARABISM?

Detailed non-JIhadist map https://ecfr.eu/special/sahel_mapping/jnim

Ansar al-Din

Iyad Ag Ghali, the central leader of the 1990 rebellion in Mali, formed Ansar al-Din in late 2011. The group quickly emerged around a core of Ifoghas Tuareg and longtime companions of Ag Ghali, eventually picking up support from al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM). It quickly emerged as an important military force during the rebellion. It has claimed responsibility for the attack at Aguelhoc in January 2012 where as many as 153 Malian soldiers were slaughtered. Ansar al-Din maintained a powerful position in collaboration with AQIM during the rapid push to take control of northern Mali. The group largely governed Kidal and was very present in Timbuktu alongside AQIM during the 2011 jihadist occupation. Operation Serval swept Ansar al-Din, along with its allies, out of northern Mali’s cities but it remained active. Kidal and its surrounding region, up to the border with Algeria, remained a centre of its activity. The group conducted and continues to conduct attacks against French, UN, and Malian forces before and since the creation of JNIM. While Ansar al-Din remains orientated around Kidal with a composition believed to largely be Tuareg and Ifoghas Kidal, it and Iyad Ag Ghali also played an important role in helping federate Mali and the region’s jihadist groups, leading to the formation of JNIM.

According to a 2012 article in the Guardian,

“The man pictured is Iyad Ag Ghaly – nicknamed "the strategist" – the Tuareg Islamist leader of Ansar Dine, the "defenders of the faith". It is this man's actions in the coming weeks that might determine whether there is a foreign-led intervention in Mali against him and his allies – al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb and Mujao (the Movement for Openness and Jihad in West Africa).

Earlier this year it was the alliance of these three groups – Ansar Dine, al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb and Mujao – that captured large parts of Mali's north, including the cities of Kidal, Timbuktu and Gao. Since then, they have imposed an unpopular and extreme interpretation of sharia law that has seen stonings, amputations and the destruction of shrines.

With the growing threat of an African Union-led intervention to retake the north, backed by the European Union and the US, the quixotic figure of Ag Ghaly has emerged as the focus of attempts to avoid a wider conflict by persuading him to swap sides.

Last week, as a delegation from the rival Tuareg National Movement for the Liberation of Azawad (MNLA) was in Paris to press its case, it emerged that discussions are focusing increasingly on Ag Ghaly. It is perhaps not surprising, given his record. For while Ag Ghaly has worked hard to reinvent himself as a hardline Islamist leader, it was not always the case for a man long noted for his fondness for whisky and music. As a leaked US embassy cable suggested, Ag Ghaly has a reputation for self-interest, describing how he had long sought to "play both sides … to maximise his personal gain". . . .

The complicated tribal politics of northern Mali and the Sahel region have long set both rival tribes and competing social groups against each other. As the author of the leaked US cable in 2008 observed, what that meant in the 1990s was an "alphabet soup" of nationalist groups with different tribal attachments in an area the size of France, including, more recently, al-Qaida affiliates with financial interests in kidnapping and smuggling.

All that changed with the destabilising influence of the war in Libya that led to a flood of weapons into Mali, a military coup in the capital, Bamako, and the rebellion in the north, led first by the MNLA, a new group in which Ag Ghaly had sought a leadership role but had been rebuffed. The response of the quietly spoken tribal "aristocrat", say analysts, was to set up Ansar Dine as a rival group, forming an alliance of convenience with al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb and Mujao. It was a split that came to a head in March, when Ag Ghaly's rival rebels accused him of undermining the cause with his Islamist proclamations, calling him a "criminal" who wanted to found a "theocratic state".

In evidence to the US House foreign affairs committee earlier this year, Rudolph Atallah of the Atlantic Council, who has spent much time in northern Mali, said Ag Ghaly's split with other Tuareg leaders to found Ansar Dine meant Mali was "becoming a magnet for foreign fighters, who are flocking in to train recruits to use sophisticated weapons, built for and taken from [Muammar] Gaddafi's arsenal".

Ag Ghaly was born into a noble family in the Ifogha tribal group, who come from the Kidal region in the north. He travelled to Libya as a young man and joined Gaddafi's Islamic Legion, composed of exiles from the Sahel, whom Gaddafi used as cannon fodder in his conflict with Chad. He returned to Mali in 1990 to join the Tuareg uprising as a leader, later acting as a negotiator between the Malian government and the rebels.

His interest in the fundamentalist Salafist branch of Islam emerged, according to a profile in the French magazine L'Express, at the end of the 1990s, when he encountered Pakistani practitioners in Kidal at the same time as he was emerging as an intermediary for Islamist kidnappers, a profitable business from which he took a cut of the ransom. Ag Ghaly's contacts with the Islamists who would later form the core of al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb were strengthened by the fact that a "cousin" was a leader of one of the groups.

Ag Ghaly also managed to maintain a working relationship with the former Malian president, Amadou Toumani Touré, persuading him to post him as the envoy to Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, a closeness that was behind his rejection as a leader by rebels in the MNLA.

Now, however, Ag Ghaly is facing his greatest challenge. The lightning success of Islamist gains in Mali's north has gone down badly with many in the region. In a grand tour of the north to build support he was rebuffed by tribal leaders.

Other reports – impossible to verify – have suggested that even in his own fiefdom of Kidal his imposition of sharia law has proved deeply unpopular and he is running short of cash, while his group is suffering defections.

A UN security council resolution has authorised the formation of an African Union-led military expedition to recapture the north, while France, Germany and the US have offered logistical assistance. Algeria, which had been resisting any intervention, said that it would accept it as a "last resort" as long as it did not set foot on Algerian soil in hunting fighters.

Patrick Smith of the Africa Confidential newsletter, who was in Paris after the MNLA delegation, believes Ag Ghaly will be offered a choice. "There's a growing desire to reach out to him to say you can ally with us and help work out a deal for a decentralised north. If not, it's war and you'll end up on a list with other al-Qaida-associated leaders wondering when a drone is coming for you."

Listen to the lecture by Christopher Wise, Professor of English at Western Washington University (WWU), who gives an English language lecture on the Tuareg jihadist, Iyad Ag Ghali in the "Critical Nationalisms, Counterpublics" Lecture Series at Green College of the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada on January 9, 2019. Wise's lecture provides a general overview of the 2012 crisis in Mali by focusing on Iyad Ag Ghali and his role in the conflict.

Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM)

AQIM began as an outgrowth of the Algerian civil war. The group, formed in 1998 as the Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat (GSPC), rejected the more violent and exclusivist tendencies of the Armed Islamic Group (GIA) and particularly sought to focus instead on attacks against military and government targets. The GSPC also sought to expand its presence in the Sahara in search of opportunities to diversify its fundraising sources and find new areas of operation, training, and eventually recruitment. At first this effort was led by Mokhtar Belmokhtar, a former GIA member who had fought in Afghanistan and who was himself from a community of Saharan Arabs, the Chaânba. Officials claimed Belmokhtar was killed in an airstrike in Libya in 2016, though AQIM never publicly confirmed his death and regional intelligence sources claim he may still be alive.

The GSPC officially pledged allegiance to al-Qaeda in 2006 and became AQIM in early 2007. The GSPC and AQIM marked the first real transnational jihadist presence in the region, and they have sought through local relationships, basic governance, and military pressure to create durable space in which to operate and at times govern territory. Although AQIM has recruited widely and operated throughout the Sahel, they are strongest today in Mali, and are particularly strong in the regions of Kidal and Timbuktu.

The GSPC became a more entrenched presence in southern Algeria and northern Mali in particular, and its first kidnapping operations began in 2003. The GSPC also conducted its first attack in the region in Mauritania on the army base at Lemgeity in 2005. By early 2007, it was conducting attacks in Algeria while still implanting itself in the social fabric of northern Mali through marriage and business ties, as well as increasingly through local recruitment. Its kidnapping operations continued through the occupation of northern Mali and afterwards, accounting for a significant portion of the group’s financing despite persistent rumours that the group benefitted heavily from narcotics or cigarette smuggling.

Despite the split between AQIM and the Movement for Oneness and Jihad in West Africa (MUJAO) in October 2011, AQIM still played a significant role in governing northern Mali in 2012. It had a particularly strong presence in Timbuktu. Since Operation Serval, AQIM has reconstituted its units following a series of losses, including the death of Katibat Tarek Ibn Ziyad commander Abu Zeid in fighting with French and Chadian forces in 2013. It continued to conduct serious attacks against United Nations, French, and Malian forces up until the founding of JNIM, and maintained a strong presence then and subsequently in Timbuktu and to the city’s north, as well as from Anefis to Kidal and the Algerian border. AQIM has also conducted a series of attacks in Bamako as well as Côte d’Ivoire and Burkina Faso under the auspices of al-Mourabitoun, which returned to the AQIM fold in 2015. AQIM has suffered significant losses recently, including the death of its Saharan emir and JNIM co-founder Yahya Abou el Hammam in a French operation north of Timbuktu. However, it still retains a significant presence particularly in the Timbuktu region, and maintains an ability to conduct operations.

Movement for Oneness and Jihad in West Africa (MUJAO)/Al-Mourabitoun

MUJAO split from AQIM in October 2011, following accusations that AQIM was too dominated by Arab commanders and criticisms of its methods of jihad. From the beginning, MUJAO had a clearly Sahelian orientation, framing its fight in terms of historical jihads fought in the region in the nineteenth century and openly promoting its recruitment of Sahelian and sub-Saharan Africans. MUJAO controlled Gao during the occupation, but still maintained contact with AQIM and Ansar al-Din. In August 2013, MUJAO and its military command under the Gao Arab Ahmed Ould Amer (Ahmed al-Tilemsi, since killed by French forces) joined Mokhtar Belmokhtar’s Katibat al-Mulathimeen and Katibat Mouwaqun bi dima (“those who sign in their blood”) to form al-Mourabitoun, a reference to the Almoravid empire that burst forth from the Sahara in the medieval period and eventually conquered much of north Africa and Spain.

MUJAO split in 2015, with part of the group’s fighters becoming the Islamic State in the Greater Sahara under Adnan Abu Walid al-Sahraoui, and the rest remaining with al-Mourabitoun and eventually joining JNIM. One al-Mourabitoun leader was part of JNIM’s founding group, Hassan al-Ansari, an Arab fighter from the Tilemsi valley north of Gao. He was killed near the Algerian border by French forces in February 2018, along with a few other important figures from JNIM. Al-Mourabitoun has carried out some of AQIM’s and subsequently JNIM’s larger-scale attacks. The group specialises in complex attacks on ‘soft’ targets, such as the Radisson Blu hotel in Bamako in November 2015, the Cappuccino Café and HOTEL TK in Ouagadougou in January 2016, and at Grand Bassam in Côte d’Ivoire in March 2016. But it has also attacked hardened military bases such as the attack on the Mécanisme Opérationnel de Coordination (MOC) in Gao in January 2017 that killed dozens of people.

Katibat Macina

This group, led by Amadou Kouffa and a founding member of JNIM, is one of the most active jihadist armed groups in Mali today. Kouffa was an imam known in central Mali for his preaching and piety in the late 2000s, when he became more radical, possibly after having met Iyad Ag Ghali through the Da’wa movement, the local name for the Tablighi Jama’at. He joined Ansar al-Din in 2012 and began reorganising to wage a more concerted struggle in the central Mopti region. Originally referred to in press reports at the Front du Libération du Macina, Katibat Macina began operating more publicly after 2015, when it claimed an attack on the Byblos Hotel in Mopti, an attack also claimed by al-Mourabitoun. During this time, it maintained ties with Ansar al-Din, although these were not formalised until 2015 and even then not fully until the creation of JNIM.

In 2016, Katibat Macina began operating more seriously in the Niger Delta, an agriculturally rich area. It built a significant part of its outreach efforts around the discontent of local Peul populations, a lack of justice in the area, and social tensions that also helped fuel jihadist recruitment in there in 2012. It faced significant local opposition due to the harsh interpretation of the shari’a that it sought to impose and the efforts to curtail traditional celebrations linked to herders taking their animals across the river to search for pasturelands. Nonetheless, by 2017, a softened approach and growing communal conflict between Peul communities and groups of traditional hunters and local militias helped create a more conducive environment for the group. Since then, Katibat Macina has become increasingly implicated in these conflicts as well as increasing the number of attacks against United Nations forces in central Mali and Malian forces, occupying different parts of Mopti and also conducting attacks further south and west, in the regions of Segou, Koulikoro near the Mauritanian border, and also in areas around Banamba further south. It has repeatedly occupied towns in Mopti, and continues to operate widely despite Malian, UN, and increasingly French pressure. French officials claimed that a French Special Forces assault on an apparent Katibat Macina base in November 2018 killed Kouffa, only for Kouffa to appear in a video soon after, proving that he remained alive.

*****************************************************************************

‘Bloody meat’: Burkina Faso’s livestock raids fuelling Sahel insurgency

By Pius Adeleye

Jihadists seize cattle from Fulani herders and funnel the animals into Ghana, part of a large-scale trafficking operation. Pastoralists who resist risk beatings, death or sexual violence.

On a Saturday night in April 2024, during the holy month of Ramadan, dozens of pastoralists gathered for evening prayers at a makeshift cattle camp outside Fada N’Gourma, eastern Burkina Faso’s largest town.

Ali (last name withheld), 17, had arrived late, after driving nearly a hundred cows across open grazing land some eight kilometres away. Dusty and exhausted, he performed the ablution cleansing and slipped into the prayer line.

Moments later, the devotion was broken by the grinding wheels of motorcycles. A thick cloud of dust swept over the gathering as armed men stormed the camp. They were fighters from Ansarul Islam, an Al-Qaeda-linked jihadist group under the wider Jama’at Nasr al-Islam wal-Muslimin (JNIM) coalition.

Jihadists interrupting prayers to steal cattle

“They did not just come on motorcycles, they came along with two trucks,” says Ali.

For more than seven years, jihadists and bandits in Burkina Faso have raided pastoralist herds, carting cattle away by truck or on foot and selling them cheaply across borders to fund their insurgency. Those who resist risk further looting, beatings and in some cases, death or sexual violence.

“The jihadists accused my father of mixing sorcery with cattle rearing and desecrating the land,” says Ali. “They insisted on taking many of the cows to purify it.” One by one, the animals were driven onto the trucks.

“They took 167 cows and shot my older nephew in the head when he tried to resist,” he says.

For Ali, the raid left the family unsure of the future of a trade they have kept for over two centuries. The herd that once defined their livelihood has been reduced to fewer than 120 cattle.

Livestock for insurgency

For more than a decade, insurgency has spread across the Sahel, destabilising parts of West Africa. In Burkina Faso, where over 30,000 people have been killed and more than three million displaced, cross-border cattle rustling has become a vital source of financing for armed groups, fuelling the conflict.

Once home to 9.6 million cattle, 15 million goats and 10 million sheep, Burkina Faso has lost some 8 million livestock since 2017, according to the Food and Agriculture Organization. Most have been stolen by terror groups and militias and sold to traders across borders and in West African coastal markets to bankroll insurgencies.

For many rural Burkinabé families, livestock is a lifeline. Fulani and Tuareg pastoralists, about 10% of the population, play a key role by supplying meat, milk, hides and exports. Yet these communities remain the most exposed to raids and displacement.

In 2023, Mariam Ouedraogo, a 48-year-old widow, watched from a distance as JNIM affiliated militants slit the throat of her 54-year-old husband on their farm near Djibo, a northern town close to the Mali–Niger border. “The jihadists told us to pay taxes on the livestock by demanding about half of the 109 cows,” she says.

“When my husband refused, they killed him and took all our cows,” says Ouedraogo, who fled with her nine-month-old child.

Analysts and eight Burkinabé herders tell The Africa Report that jihadists demand livestock as taxes, or convict animal owners for ridiculous crimes. When herders are isolated with their cattle or when security is weak, raids turn into deadly looting sprees. This is a playbook of many armed groups operating on the continent.

From Mali and the Lake Chad Basin, where JNIM, Islamic State group affiliates and bandits seize herds for revenue, to Somalia and Mozambique, where Al-Shabaab plunders livestock to fund its insurgency, cattle rustling is on the rise.

A butcher speaks

Burkina Faso has sent cattle to its southern West Africa neighbours, particularly the coastal markets, since colonial times. With rising urban demand, weak local supply and long-standing trade with Ouagadougou, Ghana remained one of its biggest markets.

A World Bank data shows Burkina Faso’s 2017 livestock exports to Ghana reached nearly $1.5m, ranking ahead of Côte d’Ivoire, Benin and Togo’s similar trade with Burkina Faso.

Before JNIM’s expansion in 2017, livestock markets in Burkina Faso’s Centre-Sud and South-West bustled with cows penned in rough wooden and rustic metals, as trucks with wooden rails waited for butchers and merchants to strike deals and move the animals to mostly Ghanaian northern towns or southern cities.

But testimonies from analysts, cross-border butchers, dealers and herders in Burkina Faso and Ghana say cattle rustling by jihadists and militias in the Sahel has eclipsed the legal livestock exports to coastal neighbours, with most of the trade now controlled by armed groups and their intermediaries.

“Ivory Coast has been able to hold back the spill of terror from Burkina Faso, but Ghana and Burkina Faso still struggle along their common border,” says 62-year-old Ayamga (last name withheld), a butcher in Bolgatanga, Ghana’s Upper East Region.

For 37 years, Ayamga bought livestock from herders and slaughterhouses in southeast and south-central Burkina Faso for distribution across Ghana. However, since late 2018, he has relied mostly on intermediaries and associates of armed groups who deliver quickly from pickup trucks in border communities.

“Most meat consumed in Ghana, including those moved to the eastern coastal region, comes from bloody raids and stolen livestock,” he says. “This is bloody meat.”

Cows once sold for $650–$800 before jihadists took over the trade. Now he buys them for about $300 and resells at the old price.

Hand-in-hand

What seems like ordinary cattle rustling along the Burkina Faso–Ghana border is part of a chain that exposes deep government weakness, according to cross-border truckers, herders and butchers.

“The trafficking usually happens at night,” says Michael*, a Ghanaian truck driver who since last year has worked with middlemen moving cattle stolen by armed groups.

Before late 2022, those middlemen were mostly Fulani pastoralists aligned with JNIM in Burkina Faso.

But as violence and displacement hit Fulani communities, jihadists turned to non-Fulani butchers and cattle vendors who could slaughter and move livestock. “The armed groups seize the cattle and quickly sell them to the middlemen,” Michael says.

Some cattle are slaughtered and sold to restaurants in Burkina Faso, but many are simply loaded into trucks like his and taken to Ghana.

“Health certificates are forged, and truck drivers are assured that no law enforcement officer will stop us,” he says. “Although I have heard of a few interceptions, I have never been stopped on my route.”

In northern Burkina Faso, JNIM reportedly earned CFA25m-30m ($44,500–$53,400) per month from cattle rustling in 2021, according to a 2023 report by the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime. With the recent intensity of rustling, experts say earnings may have increased slightly.

Analysts fear daily cross-border smuggling shows the Burkinabe junta is losing ground in the insurgency and Ghana is emerging as a serious terror risk.

“There are cracks that tell us how clueless both governments are in fighting insecurity,” says a Fada N’Gourma-based security expert, asking not to be identified for fear of reprisals.

“As armed groups expand their presence in Ghana while earning money from smuggling to finance further attacks, West Africa is a ticking [time] bomb,” he says. “It is a matter of time.”

Two fronts

Ali, the teenage herder says a distant relative’s camp in Kaya, Centre-Nord region of Burkina Faso was also plundered earlier this year, not by jihadists, but by the Volontaires pour la Défense de la Patrie (VDP), a government-backed civilian militia set up to fight jihadist coalition.

A report from conflict monitor group ACLED notes that recruitment for the militia favours sedentary communities, leaving out Fulani and other pastoralists.

Some VDP members have been accused of stealing livestock for personal gain and targeting Fulani communities suspected of supporting jihadists, carrying out attacks and seizing their animals.

“They are stealing our lives and our animals,” says Ali, referring to both jihadists and the VDP. “That is all we have, but we cannot protect them. It is a difficult fight to defend.”

*Names have been changed to protect their identity

WILL THE DECADE OF REPARATIONS RESULT IN THE FOLLY OF THE AU-LED REPARATIONS ELITE CAPTURE? WHY CITIZENSHIP IS THE HEART OF THE PROCESS & THE 1ST PRIORITY IS TO TAKE THE VATICAN TO THE ICJ AND ICC

“The reparations process is AU led . . . designed and created by the AU. . . .”

- Kyeretwie Osei, Head of Programmes at the AU ECOSOCC Secretariat in Lusaka, Zambia, May 27, 2025 special consultation with the “Diaspora” as part of its Civil Society Consultations on the 2025 AU Year of Reparations.

***********************************************************************************

The African Union has already declared 2021 to 2031 as the Decade of African Roots and the African Diaspora. Now, according to a Facebook post by the African Union’s Economic, Social and Cultural Council (ECOSOCC),

“2026 to 2036 is the African Union Decade of Reparations!

Earlier this year, the African Union declared 2025 as the #YearOfReparations. It was the first time that the continent, at the highest political level, placed reparations at the center of its agenda. Leaders, civil society, and the diaspora came together to affirm that reparations are not a symbolic demand but a matter of justice, dignity, and #development.

[SIPHIWE NOTE: SO CONTRARY TO MR. OSEI’S STATEMENT, REPARATIONS IS NOT AU LEAD, DESIGNED AND CREATED BY THE AU SINCE THE REPARATIONS MOVEMENT PREDATES THE OAU AND AU AND WAS CREATED AND IS ALWAYS LED BY THE PEOPLE, WHICH THE AU CLAIMS IS ITS CENTER OF ORIENTATION].

But one year was never going to be enough. For decades, the call for #reparations has journeyed through critical milestones: the Abuja Proclamation of 1993, the Durban Programme of Action in 2001, and the Accra Declaration and Proclamation of 2022 and 2023. These laid the intellectual and institutional groundwork for today’s continental commitment.

In July 2025, African leaders endorsed a ten-year commitment: 2026 to 2036 will be the African Union #DecadeOfReparations.

The Decade will build on the foundations laid so far and carry them forward in a sustained way. Over the next ten years, the focus will be on:

◦Mobilizing continental and global support for reparations and reparatory #justice

◦Working hand in hand with civil society and #diaspora communities to keep citizens at the heart of the process

◦Promoting education, research, and awareness of Africa’s history and contributions to the world

◦Developing policies and partnerships that respond to the lasting impacts of slavery, colonialism, and exploitation

This is not only an AU agenda, it is a people’s agenda. The African Union Decade of Reparations belongs to Africa’s citizens everywhere, on the continent and across the world! You in?!”

Addressing the 7th Mid-Year Coordination Meeting of the African Union in Malabo, Equatorial Guinea, H.E. John Dramani Mahama, President of Ghana and the African Union Champion for Reparations stated that notable progress has been achieved by the AU Commission and Member States in implementing the theme. He expressed particular satisfaction with the recent decision by the Executive Council to extend the focus on reparations for a decade, covering the period from 2026 to 2036. According to a press release from the Presidency of the Republic of Ghana, President Mahama stated.

“This undoubtedly affords us, as a Union, the opportunity to sustain the momentum for the realisation of this noble cause, as well as map out well-thought-out strategies to mobilise adequate resources to champion implementation of the theme domestically,”

The article further stated that, “Looking ahead, he announced that Ghana and Togo will co-sponsor a high-level event in the margins of the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) in September 2025 ‘to further bolster efforts at achieving the justice and closure which has eluded us for centuries.’” Already, the 2nd Africa-CARICOM Summit is scheduled for September 6–7, 2025, in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, focusing on climate justice, reparations, and other shared interests between Africa and the Caribbean. Another Facebook post from July 22nd by the AU ECOSOCC lauds, “African civil society and the diaspora will influence what’s on the agenda (from #reparations, #education, #trade, #culture, and the role of the #diaspora in continental affairs).” However, consistent with the disparity between what the AU says and what the AU does and the disappointment and discontent among Afrodescendants, on August 18, the following letter was distributed for endorsement complaining that “The recently released ACS II agenda raises serious concerns about the marginalisation of African CSOs, with our participation largely limited to side events and pavilion spaces (at a cost)”:

From Courts to COP: Harnessing Legal Momentum for African Climate Reparations

The concept of "climate reparations" for historical emissions and their impacts originated in the late 1980s and early 1990s, with Vanuatu's proposal for an insurance pool in 1991 and Bolivia's formal introduction of "climate debt" in the UN negotiations in 2009, reflecting a broader demand for climate justice rooted in the understanding of disproportionate harm to vulnerable nations from the wealth-building fossil fuel use of richer countries. This idea gained further momentum through the "loss and damage" pillar of UN climate talks, which began to formalize the idea of compensation for countries suffering the worst effects of climate change. This coincided with the HISTORY OF THE MODERN REPARATIONS MOVEMENT THAT STARTED IN THE UNITED STATES AND HAS SPREAD THROUGHOUT THE AFRICAN WORLD. The Provisional Government of the Republic of New Afrika (PGRNA) launched the process when it submitted a reparations program called the Anti Depression Program to the National Black Political Convention in Gary, IN in 1972 which led to the establishment, ten years later (1982) of the New York based National Committee to Build the World Tribunal on Black Reparations which then established the rules of the procedure for a convention whose Steering Committee voted to call the organization being built the African National Reparations Organization (ANRO). By November 15 and 16, 1986, ANRO held the Fifth Session of the World Tribunal on Reparations for Black People in the U.S. Serving on the international panel of judges at the Fifth Session were, inter alia, Chaminuka Mnombatha of the Pan Africanist Congress of Azania-UN Mission; Ousainou Mbenga from Gambia; and Serge Mukendi from the Workers and Peasants Party-Congo. Following that session, the Anti Depression Program adopted at the National Black Political Assembly Convention in 1972 became the basis of the 𝐑𝐞𝐩𝐚𝐫𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧𝐬: 𝐀 𝐏𝐫𝐨𝐩𝐨𝐬𝐞𝐝 𝐀𝐜𝐭 𝐒𝐮𝐛𝐦𝐢𝐭𝐭𝐞𝐝 𝐭𝐨 𝐒𝐨𝐦𝐞 𝐌𝐞𝐦𝐛𝐞𝐫𝐬 𝐨𝐟 𝐂𝐨𝐧𝐠𝐫𝐞𝐬𝐬 𝐢𝐧 𝐒𝐞𝐩𝐭𝐞𝐦𝐛𝐞𝐫 𝟏𝟗𝟖𝟕 prepared by President of the PGRNA Imari Obadele. By November of 1991, ANRO hosted the 10th Session of the International Tribunal on Reparations for African People in the U.S. (notice the name change) in Philadelphia. Then, on the suggestion of US Congressman Ron Dellums (who had received the Reparations Act submitted by PRGRNA President Imari Obadele) and Jamaican lawyer and diplomat Dudley S. Thompson, the wealthy Nigerian businessman, Chief Bashorun M. K. O. Abiola, who was later elected President of Nigeria, although never permitted to take office, suggested establishing a Group of Eminent Persons (GEP) to pursue reparations for slavery and (perhaps) other wrongs perpetrated on Africa. On 28 June 1992, the Organization of African Unity (OAU) swore in a twelve-member GEP, with Chief Abiola as its Chairman, whose mandate was to pursue the goal of reparations to Africa. This is what led to the First Pan-African Conference on Reparations that was held in Abuja, Nigeria, April 27-29, 1993, sponsored by the (GEP) and the Commission for Reparations of the Organization of African Unity. This culminated with the World Conference against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance, and its resolutions 56/266 of 27 March 2002, 57/195 of 18 December 2002, 58/160 of 22 December 2003, 59/177 of 20 December 2004 and 60/144 of 16 December 2005, which guided the comprehensive follow-up to the World Conference and the effective implementation of the Durban Declaration and Programme of Action . Concomitant to this period, the Honorable Silas Muhammad pursued the issue through 52 written and oral submissions at the United Nations.

Yet another Facebook post from AU ECOSOCC on August 25th stated,

Recap: From Courts to COP – Harnessing Legal Momentum for African Climate Reparations

Earlier today, the African Union ECOSOCC, African Futures Lab and Biophilic Conversations convened a webinar on how recent international court rulings can strengthen Africa’s pursuit of climate reparations.

[SIPHIWE NOTE: HOW COME THERE’S NO INTERNATIONAL COURT RULING ON THE AFRODESCENDANTS’ RIGHT TO RETRUN TO THEIR ANCESTRAL HOMELANDS IN AFRICA, THE FIRST REPARATIONS CLAIM THAT PRECEDES CLIMATE JUSTICE CLAIMS BY MORE THAN 100 YEARS!!!???]

Mr. William Carew (Head of Secretariat, ECOSOCC) reminded participants that the advisory opinion of the International Court of Justice is historic in that, for the first time, the world’s highest court has clarified that states are legally obliged to cut emissions, protect people from climate harms, and repair damage already caused. For Africa, the least responsible for global emissions yet the most impacted, this ruling is a vindication. He stated: “Climate justice means climate reparations, and justice delayed can no longer be justice denied.”

[SIPHIWE NOTE: HOW COME THE WORLD’S HIGHEST COURT HASN’T YET CLARIFIED THAT SIGNATORIES TO THE GENEVA CONVENTION ARE LEGALLY OBLIGED TO FINANCE AND FACILITATE THE AFRODESCENDANTS’ VOLUNTARY RETURN TO THEIR ANCESTRAL HOMELANDS IN AFRICA WHICH CAN BE DETERMINED THROUGH DNA TESTING????]

Mr. Kyeretwie Osei (Head of Programmes, ECOSOCC) underlined that reparations must be understood in all dimensions of loss, damage, and harm, and how repair, restitution, and restoration can allow the continent to move forward. He explained that ECOSOCC is working through its Climate Change Working Group to connect civil society voices across Africa and the diaspora ahead of #COP30 in Brazil and the African Climate Summit in Addis Ababa.

[SIPHIWE NOTE: WEHRE IS ECOSOCC’S RIGHT OF RETURN WORKING GROUP GIVEN THE HISTORY OF THE CALL FOR AFRICAN DIASPORA CITIZENSHIP IN THE AU’S DIASPORA INITIATIVE????]

Ms. Samira Ben Ali (World’s Youth for Climate Justice) emphasized that both the International Court of Justice and the Inter-American Court of Human Rights advisory opinions affirm binding obligations: states must prevent harm, reduce emissions, regulate companies, and remedy climate damage. She said these rulings provide African advocates with a shared legal language and legitimacy to demand accountability, stressing that “#ClimateJustice is not charity, it is a legal duty.”

Ms. Junecynthia Okelo (Pan African Lawyers Union) highlighted the stakes of the African Court petition, the first of its kind. It asks the Court to clarify African states’ duties under the African Charter and other instruments, including protecting vulnerable groups, safeguarding the right to a healthy environment, and ensuring intergenerational and ancestral rights. She gave examples of inadequate redress, including the British Army–caused forest fire in #Kenya and devastating floods in #Nigeria and #SouthSudan, showing why Africa needs its own legal precedent on climate obligations, adaptation, and #reparations.

[SIPHIWE NOTE: WHAT ARE THE AFRICAN STATES’ DUTIES UNDER THE AFRICAN CHARTER AND OTHER INSTRUMENTS TO PROVIDE CITIZENSHIP, PASSPORTS AND RESETTLEMENT PROGRAMS FOR AFRODESCENDANTS WHICH WAS RECENTLY RAISED AT THE AFRICAN COMMISSION ON HUMAN AND PEOPLES’ RIGHTS????]

Ms. Mary Morrison (Biophilic Conversations) reflected on her own experience: “One of my previous works was when I was protecting a fig tree in Westlands and they were building the expressway. Yes, I use it, but at that point I was protesting it not being made.” She stressed that petitions should not feel distant from communities, and civil society must translate legal language into everyday realities, connect colonization’s legacies to today’s vulnerabilities, and mobilize coalitions to support the African Court petition.

Mr. Lucien Limacher (Natural Justice) described these rulings as having “legified” the climate justice struggle: “We now do have tangible outcomes where judges have sat down, reviewed all the information and seen exactly what is going to be the impact, what are the legal implications, what are the legal principles we need to be looking at.” He argued they provide African states with stronger leverage in negotiations at COP30, open doors for strategic litigation at national level, and create opportunities to hold both governments and corporations accountable for climate harm.

[SIPHIWE: NOTE TO THE FEDERAL REDRESS ADVANCEMENT NETWORK (FRAN) AHEAD OF ITS SEPTEMBER 11TH INAUGURAL MEETING]

Ms. Henrietta Ekefre (Independent Expert on Transformative Justice, Gender and Reparations) drew the link between climate justice and reparatory justice, calling them “two sides of the same coin.” Advisory opinions strengthen Africa’s hand to demand climate finance not as goodwill but as an obligation. Reparations, she said, provide a framework for guarantees of non-repetition, compensation, and community-centered decision-making. She called for climate #justice to be fully integrated into the African Union’s forthcoming Common Position on Reparations.

[SIPHIWE NOTE: RIGHT OF RETURN AND CITIZEN MUST BE BOTH THE CENTER AND 1ST PRIORITY OF THE AFRICAN UNION’S FORTHCOMING COMMON POSITION ON REPARATIONS]

Ms. Sarra Gharbi (ECOSOCC Cluster Chairperson, Economy and Agriculture) commended the timeliness of this webinar and looks forward to seeing the key outcomes and how they inform Climate Week, the African Climate Summit 2, and COP30.

We also had an engaging and lively Q&A with legal minds, climate justice civil society organizations, and other civil society groups.

THE FOLLY OF THE AU-LED REPARATIONS ELITE CAPTURE AND ITS REDEFINITION OF REPARATIONS

Reparations are in the process of being redefined to suit the purposes of the ruling classes of all nations and their governments. As an example, in 1900, Bishop Henry McNeil Turner said,

“We remained in slavery two hundred and fifty years, and have been free the best end of fifty more years. In other words we have been dominated over by the buckra, or white race, for about three hundred years. We have worked, enriched the country and helped give it a standing among the powers of the earth, and when we are denied our civil and political rights, (many) ridicule the idea of asking for a hundred million of dollars TO GO HOME, for Africa is our home and is the one place that offers us manhood and freedom, though we are the subjects of nations that have claimed a part of Africa by conquest. A hundred million dollars can be obtained if we, as a race, would ask for it. The way we figure it out, this country owes us forty billions of dollars, and we are afraid to ask for a hundred million. Congress, by its legislation, throws away over a hundred million annually.”

A further example is that in 1919 and the 1920s both Marcus Garvey and W.E.B. DuBois petitioned the League of Nations for the former German colonies to be given over for the purpose of creating a new African State and homeland controlled by African people where African people in the Diaspora could resettle. This form of reparations was denied, and instead, the “Protectorates” and “Mandates” system was implemented so that the colonial powers retained control of those territories.  Finally, as another example, in the 1980s and 1990s, the focus of reparations shifted to “debt relief” for African countries. Thus, while the 1993 Abuja proclamation “Exhorts all African states to grant entrance as of right to all persons of African descent and right to obtain residence in those African states, if there is no disqualifying element on the African claiming the ‘right to return’ to his ancestral home, Africa,” it “Further urges the OAU to call for full monetary payment of repayments through capital transfer and debt cancellation. Urges those countries which were enriched by slavery and the slave trade to give total relief from Foreign Debt, and allow the debtor countries of the Diaspora to become free for self-development and from immediate and direct economic domination. ” This was a shift from the earlier focus of the right to return and redress for unpaid slave labor which still has not been granted. Debt relief, rather than monetary payments, became the focus of global campaigns, was never granted and has now taken a back seat. Today, certain interests have positioned “racial healing” and “climate justice” as the new focus of reparations as these are “acceptable” issues for the ruling elites.  To be sure, consider that, 

"After all this time, has the African Union made REPATRIATION and CITIZIZENSHISP the priority during its AU THEME OF THE YEAR? Have formal agreement with African States and the AU pertaining to REPATRIATION and CITIZENSHIP been concluded? Have they even been brought to the table? Are the Afro Descendants in the AU 6th Region equal partners in determining AU principles, policies, and programs? Incredibly, Kyeretwie Osei, Head of Programmes at the AU ECOSOCC Secretariat in Lusaka, Zambia gave an answer that the AU does not intend such things. Mr. Osei clearly stated that the AU is seeking “different interpretations of reparations . . . .” This can be seen, for example, in the numerous emphasis on “climate justice” with little to no mention of Repatriation and Citizenship. In fact, climate justice is fast becoming the leading talking point of the AU along with “debt relief”, and was butressed by the selection of European Climate Pact Ambassador in Belgium Ms. Fadeke Ayoola to lead off the [special consultation with the “Diaspora” as part of its Civil Society Consultations on the 2025 AU Year of Reparations] presentation which focused on the current state of the Pan African financial architecture and and Lydia Chibambo who works with the Zambia Climate Change Network, to close the Consultation. Mr. Osei then made the audacious and patronizing claim that the “reparations process is AU led . . . designed and created by the AU. . . .” SEE: AU ECOSOCC DIASPORA CONSULTATIONS CONTINUE TO DISAPPOINT AFRODESCENDANTS IN THE AU 6TH REGION

Consider further  the 27 February 2025 article by Tadesse Simie Metekia, Senior Researcher, Rule of Law, Institute for Security Studies (ISS) in  Addis Ababa​ entitled: AU ‘Year of Reparations’ should look to the future and the past in which he says,

“Others contend that development aid, debt relief and foreign investment function as reparations, negating the need for further redress. . . . One way to address these challenges is by expanding the AU theme’s focus, which currently emphasises justice and healing for Africans and Afro-descendants. During implementation, the AU could approach reparations as a forward-looking global agenda aimed at repairing both victims and perpetrators. . . . Former colonial powers that profited from Africa’s suffering carry unresolved moral wounds. Societies built on slavery and colonial exploitation continue to grapple with racism, economic inequality and historical amnesia. Reparative justice offers these nations an opportunity to heal, confront their pasts, and rebuild relationships with African and Afro-descendants.”

Many within the Reparations Movement have justified this shift by saying that reparations is not just about the past, it is about the Africa we want now and in the future, while others don’t even consider Africa at all and simply want a more comfortable life in the land of their ancestors' captivity. Under this reasoning, many are no longer framing reparations as the just compensation  for enslavement but rather through the lens of “developmentalism” - a framework that is in “alignment” with governments’ objectives - Barbados is a good example - and is more palatable to European consciousness. This represents a crafty capture of the reparations narrative and objective. Why does the objective and narrative keep shifting without any reparations being received? Why move on to something else when the first claims have not yet been remedied? 

The ruling elites use philanthropy to produce controlled opposition, making calculated decisions and sacrifices pawns in order to save the king and queen. . . . .

My respnse to those within the movement who are attempting to redefine reparations is to make the counterpoint that when Africa’s Reparation claim is properly framed as War Reparations, or compensation payments made after a war by one side to the other that are intended to cover damage or injury inflicted during a war, then we need not subject ourselves to manipulation by the successor regimes of the enslaving nations who wish to capture the reparations movement, redefine it in the form as debt restructuring, development aid and climate justice which suits their interests. Such a capitulation would shift the burden of paying for those damages to the victims of the Dum Diversas War. Our reparations are not to be used to cover other problems that the international community is responsible for.  We do not need to acquiesce to such a misstatement of reparations. If reparations is intended as compensation after the war with an aim to repair the dignity of the victims, then reframing reparations in a way that considers, even elevates, the interests and sensitivities of the enslavers continues the very indignity of the victims! The Ashkenazic victims of genocide were not forced to reframe their reparations in order to heal the Nazi perpetrators. Neither were the Japanese victims of America required to take into consideration the development plans and other responsibilities of the United States government. It is an offense to suggest, once again, that the burden of healing others falls on African people at the expense of their own direct interests!

If Ghana President Mahama believes notable progress has been achieved by the AU Commission and Member States in implementing the AU theme of the Year 2025, let us consider that the AU Accra Reparations Summit Declaration from November 2023 established both a Legal Reference Group on Reparations and a Committee of Experts on Reparations. Yet, to date, no one has been named to either. Yet there is an AU ECOSOCC Working Group on Climate Justice and several workshops on the subject. To many, including this author, this is evidence of AU lip service and a kind of betrayal. If the AU Elite Capture of Reparations wishes to avoid being mere folly, it must champion this

LONG -TERM VISION FOR BLACK REPARATIONS

“A STRONG BLACK HOME BASE.

In every land, the welfare of the individual is directly dependent on the welfare of the state and its ability to maintain a prosperous economy. Take for instance the welfare of the average European tourist. He is able to be a tourist because he comes from a country that has a sufficiently prosperous economy that allows him to have enough surplus income to go on tour. He has a HOME BASE that is strong economically. It is not an accident that within the tourist economy, most tourists are white and the servants are black. While the white tourist has a strong economic home base that enables him to have surplus income, the black servant has A BEGGING AND DEPENDENT HOME BASE that barely allows him survival wages. If on the continent of Africa or in the Caribbean the safety of a white tourist is threatened, he has a strong government back at home that will come to his assistance with guns blazing if necessary. On the other hand look at the predicament of Blacks in the USA, the UK, or any part of U-rope where they may be now exiled. They are subject to the worse treatment where they can be lynched and crucified on the cross of racism and there is no strong Black government that can forcefully intervene on their behalf.

A realistic look at the Black diaspora shows that wherever they are presently domiciled, their economic survival is totally dependent on the economic health of the dominant white U-ropean nations. In places like the Caribbean where they depend on tourism, Black survival depends on the white man having enough money to go on tours. If the white man tightens his belt, many black belts will have to be further tightened throughout the islands. In places like the U-ropean strongholds of the USA and the UK, if the white man is losing money and decides to close his factory, out goes Black survival through the window of job cuts.

Throughout the history of the Caribbean, national survival has always been very dependent on exporting labor to the white man's home in the US, the UK, and Canada. Economic survival has long been structured along the lines of the plantation where the Black villagers had to leave their homes and trek to their workplace in the Big House to scrub floors, wash clothes, clean yards and do the dirty jobs. There is total dependency on the white man's economic health, and that is reflective of a situation where a people have no prosperous home base of their own. If Africa was a prosperous home base, Blacks from all over the world would be migrating to Africa in search of work instead of trekking to the U-ropean capitals of the world where they are subject to the scourge of racial discrimination which can escalate at any time.

In the white capitals of power which are so racially charged from centuries of white racism, it is quite unlikely, and even ridiculous to imagine any form of meaningful Reparations to the minority Black populations, for the simple reason that it would create what would appear to the majority white population as the creation of a privileged minority class. If in these countries, Reparations were paid on an individual basis, the majority white population can be expected to lash out angrily at the DEFENSELESS Black minority who would appear to be gaining an unfair economic advantage. . . .

If the issue of REPARATIONS is broken down into insular pockets of interest where the Afro-American has one agenda and the Caribbean people have another, and the Africans on the homeland have another, one should expect Willie Lynch to exploit the situation.

A good look at the continent of Africa today demonstrates how eagerly Willie Lynch exploits differences. If Willie Lynch has his way again, REPARATIONS will be granted with a great show of outward magnanimity which will prove to be the biggest PR stunt of the ages. An end would be put once and for all on the complaints that U-rope did this and U-rope did that, but with insularity and mental slavery still rampant, Black people would find themselves in the same old hole as before, TOTALLY DEPENDENT ON THE WHITE WORLD ORDER.

MYOPIC VISIONS will be exploited and INSULARITY will be coopted in the same way that present day MIS-EDUCATION is being enlisted in the age-old business of COLLABORATIVE GENOCIDE.

What is at stake is the future of Black peoples worldwide, and barring a serious intervention of BLACK CONSCIOUSNESS, that future is as dim as it could ever have been. What kind of future will the Black visionaries of this time hold out for the salvation of the race? All the TRUE VISIONARIES have already pointed to BLACK NATIONALISM as the only means towards ending the scourge of being Black and totally dependent in a white man's world, and it should never be forgotten that racial harmony in the white man's strongholds has always depended on Black obeisance and Black subservience. The only hope for the Black race lies in its ability to get its act together on the continent of Africa. Little island satellites and little minorities are already being jettisoned by the onward sweep of history. . . .

Demystifying The Issue Of Repatriation

REPARATIONS and REPATRIATION for the descendants of slavery and colonialism are two inseparable twins that hold between them the cornerstones for the formation of a new international morality. If one is stripped from the other, JUSTICE fails, and the evil slave-master triumphs once again. Without Reparations, repatriation is more likely to become the repatriation of the privileged.

One should never forget that once upon a time there was an argument amongst the slave-masters about what should be done with the slaves after Emancipation. Some said "Let us see to it that they will never be able to really OWN anything, because we cannot afford to let them become independent. Keep them so busy working that they will never have much time to think, and saddle them with debt so that they will never progress. They can stay here, but they will always be kept busy in the pursuit of powerless-ness." Some said "But we need to keep this place ALL WHITE, so let us bring in more Caucasians and pack these niggers on a boat and send them back to Africa bare-back and empty-handed the same way how they came." The descendants of slavery therefore find themselves today in a situation where the man that is tossing the coin is doing so on one condition "HEADS, I WIN, TAILS, YOU LOSE." Whichever way the coin falls, it represents the triumph of injustice.

There is no escaping it. Historical consciousness is the faculty that causes one's eyes to truly see. Without it, one is virtually blind. A knowledge that has no proper grounding in the trails and trials of the African experience under slavery and colonialism, is therefore like a branch disconnected from its roots. Such knowledge has to go beyond the mere assimilation of facts learned in college and university. It has to be empowered by THE PASSION FOR JUSTICE that naturally flows from an at-oneness with those that have long borne the white cross. From this level of spiritual attunement, one's eyes will then behold the truth that REPATRIATION IS MERELY A COMPONENT OF REPARATIONS. To teach otherwise would surely grant the ole slave-master much pleasure and satisfaction.

It should also be clearly understood that the same ole slave-master who raped Africa and enslaved her children is very much interested in maintaining his grip on stolen property. For this reason the people in Africa have to be kept smelling Hell, and to see to it that they never escape, certain educated Negroes have been put in charge to keep the profits from the plantation flowing smoothly. This is the neo-colonial situation that presently exists in Africa and the Caribbean where there is a Black majority totally dominated and controlled by white invisible minorities. When one is aware of this situation it becomes clear why, despite the appearance of outwardly Black governments, the movement of people has always been tightly curbed and restricted just as in the old days on Hell plantation. . . . This brings us to the real truth that THE EDUCATED NEGRO IS THE MAIN BARRIER TO BLACK PROGRESS. He has been placed in a comfortable position by invisible puppeteers who are very skilled in the art of pulling strings. Whether he does it consciously or unconsciously, the educated Negro is generally a facilitator in the centuries -old project of Black exploitation. His greatest concern is to keep his personal safe place secure, and by his actions, he displays a greater kinship with the white exploiter.

When REPARATIONS and REPATRIATION are examined under the clear microscope of consciousness, one will see that their full attainment will only come after serious revolutionary changes in the present status quo. Moses has to take the message to the powers that be, and the foundations have to be shaken so severely that little puppet heads will roll. This is not to say that everyone should sit patiently and wait for the earthquake. A concerted effort should still be made meanwhile to attain some level of poor people's empowerment, for as Marcus Garvey once said, a people without real power will always be a people without respect. This is why after so many years in the Caribbean where the Rasta people are the poorest, they are still the least respected and the most oppressed.

This brings us to the most current issue that the conscious people should be addressing ...the issue of self-empowerment or poor-people's empowerment. When a people have been robbed of their land and its natural resources, the only other resource that is available to them is THEIR NATURAL CREATIVE TALENT. If these talents have not been fully developed and mobilized, such people will forever continue to spend their lives laboring to make the slave-master rich. Even those few talents that they have discovered will continue to be exploited by others.

In the absence of REPARATIONS, this development and mobilization of the people's creative talent-base would have to precede Repatriation. Where this has not been done, REPATRIATION will be nothing more than the movement of a people who have been able to serve the slave-master long enough to BUY their freedom of movement. And it ought to be considered that the slave-master has set up his system in such a way, that by the time you bow and serve him long enough to buy your freedom, your mind is no longer much different to his. If such people are repatriated to Africa, they will quite easily keep silent and non-involved in the struggle for justice there. They will betray the down-trodden, and by their non-involvement, make common cause with Africa's neo-colonial stooges. By attaining the presently required financial resources, such repatriates would have achieved something that is almost impossible for the average African to achieve. It is not good to be viewed as an island of prosperity in a sea of poverty. In places like Nigeria, such Black achievers usually live behind large iron gates with guards at the door, and high walls with barbed wire strung on top.

True Repatriation must therefore be accompanied by a total revolutionary change in the African social, political, and economic system that allows prosperity to be more broad-based. Otherwise, repatriation will be just a matter of RELOCATING HELL. Apocalyptic doctrines should never be allowed to put common sense to sleep. Those that step in the right should never be guided by fear. Each one must ask themselves, "What is my particular role in this battle to lift Black humanity from the dust of disadvantage, scorn, and perpetual servitude? What are my unique talents, and how can they best be utilized to accomplish these goals in this generation?" When these questions are properly answered, everyone will know what his or her divinely-appointed station is in this final battle to restore the right. Some may be called sooner than others to make the journey now to help spread the light of consciousness, with the full knowledge that they will be opposed by Black oppressors. Others may have to fight in the lands of the white oppressors to give more power to the truth by galvanizing a movement similar to the days of the civil-rights movement.

Whether Hell is in the east or in the west, it is still Hell, so the battle will remain the same in either place. When this consciousness comes home fully, one will not be motivated in one's efforts to repatriate by the feeling that one is making an escape for a safe place. On the contrary, one will be relocating with the full knowledge that one is moving into place to take over the baton of struggle from the likes of Haile Selassie, Muguabe, Mbeki, Mandela, Steve Biko and all those who fought to bring Africa this far from the clutches of colonialism. The struggle for African liberation must now be taken to its ultimate conclusion, and that is the task that has been prepared for this generation.”

CITIZENSHIP IS THE HEART OF THE PROCESS & THE 1ST PRIORITY IS TO TAKE THE VATICAN TO THE ICJ AND ICC

At the Accra Reparations Summitt II, I said,

“AN INVASION LAUNCHED BY THE MILITARY ORDER OF JESUS CHRIST HEADQUARTERED IN PORTUGUAL THAT LED TO A DECLARED WAR AUTHORIZED BY THE DUM DIVERSAS APOSTOLIC EDICT ISSUED BY POPE NICHOLAS V ON JUNE 18, 1452, TO SECURE MONOPOLY CORPORATE COMMERCIAL ADVANTAGE PERMITTED BY CHRISTIAN SPIRITUAL SUPREMACY USING VIOLENCE AND TERRORISM AS THE PRINCIPAL MANUFACTURING PROCESS TRANSFORMING THE NATURAL RAW RESOURCE OF GENETIC MATERIAL OF HUMAN BEINGS TRAFFICKED TO PLANTATION FACTORIES INTO SUBSERVIENT CHATTLE PRODUCTS  TRADEMARKED AS NEGRO, BLACK AND SLAVE. . . . The Dum Diversas Apostolic Edict was followed up with monopoly contracts known as “Asientos'' that were variously granted by the Catholic Church

to private merchants from 1518 to 1595,

to Portugal from 1595 to 1640,

to the Genoese (Italy) from 1662 to 1671,

to the Dutch and Portuguese from 1671 to 1701,

to France 1701-1713,

to the British (which included her colonies in America) from 1713 to 1750, and

to the Spanish 1765 to 1779;

The United States officially entered the Dum Diversas War when New Hampshire became the ninth of thirteen British colonies to ratify the United States Constitution. Which prohibited Congress from outlawing the trafficking of African prisoners of war for twenty years. A “fugitive slave clause” required the return of runaway prisoners to their enslaving owners. The Asiento contracts constituted the principal legal means of enslaving people of African descent.”

The Military Order of Jesus the Christ headquartered in Portugal, on orders from Pope Nicholas the V (Dum Diversas Apostolic Edict in 1452) initiated the invasion, capture and enslavement of the people in the land of “Guine”. From this knowledge comes THE NEW NARRATIVE FOR THE AFRICAN UNION'S THEMED YEAR "REPARATIONS FOR AFRICANS AND PEOPLE OF AFRICAN DESCENT THROUGH REPARATIONS". Without a doubt, the Catholic Church is responsible for over 570 years of warfare against African people and are the principle target of a comprehensive reparations claim that centers on the forced displacement of African prisoners of war and the justice necessity of the return of their progeny which requires citizenship in the current AU member states. This has always been the goal of Pan Africanism and formalized at the 6th Pan African Conference in Tanzania. Consider that Gabriel Asuquo writes in Pan-Africanism and African Citizenship: The Way Forward,

“This paper critically analyses Pan-Africanism as an ideology for the liberation of Africa, with a view to assessing the possibilities of a common African citizenship. This paper argues the claim that the focus of Pan-Africanism should shift from activism, agitations, and struggles to a univocal platform that will define authentic African identities by crystallizing a common nationality for Africans on the continent and those in the diaspora. This claim is known to be rooted in the age- long African values of brotherhood, complementarity, and family hood ( Ujamaa) that make Africans see other Africans as brothers who share the same humanity. This is different from the Africans of today who have assimilated western values of individualism, which are divisive and exclusive in nature, which in reality is a negation of authentic African personhood and society. This has given rise to ethnic agitations, xenophobic attacks, populism, and hatred against "outsiders". Therefore, it is in the forging of common identities for Africans that African citizenship can be made possible. It should be the way forward for Pan-Africanism in the 21 st century.”

I have emphasized countless times, that in Pan-Africanism and Nationality Rights For the Diaspora: A Contemporary Perspective, in Pan-Africanism, African Nationalism: Strengthening the Unity of Africa and its Diaspora edited by B.F. Banke & K. Mchombu, A. Bernard puts it this way:

“The Pan-Africanist Law of Return: Quintessential Reparations

At a very basic level, if reparation is to repair the wrongs committed against African peoples through slavery and its apprentices, colonization and imperialism, the first wrong committed was taking millions of peoples from their homeland. Those taken from Africa lost, among other things, their citizenship and this is the first thing that needs to be given back. It is morally and philosophically the first step in the journey of a thousand miles that needs to be undertaken if Africa and African peoples are to move forward in a forceful, positive and determined manner in the 21st Century.

Concomitant with this position therefore is that the law of return can only be made possible by African governments/states, not the West. It is to be stated clearly nonetheless, that this is a right, not a concession or special privilege. Diasporan repatriates should not have to prove which part of Africa they are from. The loss of this specific identity is a part of the harm done by slavery, and cannot be used by African governments to reject Diasporans. Any African government which challenges the right to return to Africa for proof of specific identity is in breach of their own claim for compensation for slavery.”

Since few AU member states are willing to provide citizenship for Afrodescendants without regard to specific proof of African identity, it then requires that Afrodescendants and their true allies bring the issue to the International Court of Justice (ICJ) just like the climate justice advocates in order to establih once and for all the legal foundation for Afrodescendants’ Right of Return, especially under the Geneva Convention. With an ICJ-ruling “legifying” this reparations claim, we can move forward with a Common African Reparations Claim against the Vatican.

Why the Vatican?

As the THE NEW NARRATIVE FOR THE AFRICAN UNION'S THEMED YEAR "REPARATIONS FOR AFRICANS AND PEOPLE OF AFRICAN DESCENT THROUGH REPARATIONS" clearly shows, it was the Catholic Churche’s illegal Asiento monoply total war contracts that initiated, organized and effected the trans-Atlantic forced migration of African prisoners of war from their ancestral homelands to the Americas where they were ENSLAVED and suffered ETHNOCIDE, illegaly, under the pretense of eccliastic and emerging commerical law.

THE TRANS-ATLANTIC SLAVE TRADE: EUROPEAN SLAVING CORPORATIONS, THE PAPACY AND THE ISSUE OF REPARATIONS

I. INTRODUCTION (ORIGINS OF THE ASIENTO)

II. LEGAL SUCCESSION OF THE ASIENTO

Consider these excerpts from the above:

In earlier explorations, the then Queen Isabella, her Catholic Majesty, had declared that because natives of the ‘New World’ were now under the auspices of her rule, they were to be treated as her subjects. However, she was quite willing, based on confirmed Papal authority, to exterminate those under Spain’s forced rule who did not comply with the newly religious precepts. Whether for political or religious gain, the Catholic Church memorialized a more lenient sentiment towards Native Americans,  sparing them the overall degrading effects of systemic slavery in the West,  while their African contemporaries would continue to be frowned upon with disdain primarily for being of African origin. This, along with Native Americans’ milder physical features and lack of strength to endure a life as plantation slaves,  would soon reverberate decades later to the detriment of African natives. It was this pivotal point in modern antiquity where Africans would become the sole source of forced labor and would endure centuries of brutality, massacre and human rights violations under the guise of economic practicality and religious prosperity. The Spanish kingdom provided respite for the lighter-skinned Native Americans, yet conflicting doctrine by the Catholic Church would determine that both they and Africans were to be enslaved should they refuse to accept Christian beliefs. As the trade license in slaves existed prior to the clearly delineated source of human commodities, it is here where the grant became formally known as the Asiento de Negros. 

At the time, Spain and Portugal were separate monarchs, which would later revert to a joint nation-state two additional times between the 17th and 18th centuries,  and shift the power of the Asiento to Spain as the primary holder. Although Charles V granted the Asiento to Goumonet, he could not legally obtain slaves from West Africa. The Treaty of Tordesillas had already partitioned the area exclusively for Portugal’s domain. During the 13th -14th centuries, the Berbers of the Mali and Songhai empires sold African slaves to the Portuguese. Since the Asiento’s source was limited only to African labor, Goumenot had to secure slaves from the Portuguese and then transport them to the Americas. He eventually sold his assets to Genoese traders in 1538.

As the Castillian, Arragonese and Portuguese monarchs already garnered Catholic authority, their need for Papal validation of the TransAtlantic slave trade continued to prosper. Under King Phillip’s rule, successor to Charles V, fiscal complications worsened due to his increased desire for luxuries and the accession of Portugal into the Roman Empire. Although African slaves were a financial avenue to remedy King Phillip’s financial malfeasance, it was the continued tradition of denigrating the humanness of the African, as well as creating and exploiting religious dogma that was required to maintain the slave trade.The trade in human commodities simply increased the Crown’s revenue to support soldiers ordered into war in the name of the Catholic Crown or His Majesty, a phrase that would be used in official treaties that incorporated the Asiento license by reference during the 18th century.

Traditionally, the Crown’s grant of the Asiento provided a group of merchants and slavers, usually supported by a commercial company or the Crown itself, with the legal right to explore the West Indies. As a result, the asientists would pay licensing fees, tariffs, such as export taxes to the Crown, as well as any fees and duties to the governor, slavers or other participants to facilitate the transport and selling of slaves. Although European Crowns maintained the monopoly of the Asiento during the early period, they granted licenses and sometimes permitted sublicenses to certain merchants in order to ensure their profits in the international trade of African natives. 

The Asiento remained an integral part of the Western European regime, as well as of the New World. Not only did the Catholic Church have the originating, proclaimed authority to grant the Asiento to the two competing monarchs of the Trans-Atlantic slave trade, that is Portugal and Spain, but the Papacy also generated income for Portugal through taxes it obtained with the jurisdiction of the Holy See during the 16th through 17th centuries.

Meanwhile, the Pontiff’s advisors issued support, which reiterated previous Papal bulls regarding the legitimacy of the slave trade in Africans. The Vatican had an unlikely spirited and religious advisor under its commission; an African, and likely a former slave, by the name of Lorenzo de Silva de Mendoza. As the Papacy already solidified its authority as to religious and international legal affairs, its influence in systematizing the Trans-Atlantic slave trade through 17th century Papal grants vested in the closest religious and political allies, Spain and Portugal, is astounding. De Silva requested that Pope Innocent excommunicate any slavers or slave traders who captured, sold and resold African Christians. This premise is diametrically opposed to the earlier Pope’s grant to enslave Africans and transport them to the West Indies regardless of whether they converted to Catholic Christians, because as European rulers concluded, Africans were deemed heretics and not worthy of freedom and naturally characterized as animals. Thus, Africans from the West and North Africa were already forced to convert to Catholicism, then faced a lifetime of misery (through slave trading, and forced military service) as a by-product of converting to Catholicism, a specific form of modern Christianity.

As the Papacy’s proclaimed vested interest was to propagate Catholicism to heathens, it never declared during the development and apex of the triangular trade itself, inhumane. Nor did it declare any acts, such as the separation of African families through capture, the mental and social abuses or their long-term impact, the branding, the lack of adequate food and proper hygiene, and the shelter deprivation through force as violation of human rights, as violations of natural law or religious principles. As a result of these informal Papal decrees, no kind of economic sanctions were implemented, nor was any slave trading market participant, whether government or individual, found guilty or liable of such egregious acts, nor did they endure any type of negative consequences from their respective Crowns or from the Vatican itself. 

As a result, the Cardinals from the Holy Office/Vatican, though not explicitly acting on the behalf of Pope Innocent, advised the latter’s ambassadors in Europe to relay the Vatican’s concern that African slaves should not be physically abused. The Vatican and the vicar continued to obtain taxes from the Asiento’s primary Catholic beneficiaries, that is, Spain and Portugal. . . .  These released pronouncements were superficial, with an advisory impact containing no legal or economic injunctions should the participants fail to adhere to  them. The lack of consequences, however, was not a result of the lack of power the Papacy possessed. It had the foresight not to destroy the institution of slavery nor the quasi-legal instrument, which solidified its proliferation, because the Papacy benefited from it. Thus, the Holy Office entrenched itself on both sides of the slave trade, with advisory declarations that the poor treatment of slavers was prohibited, while failing to denounce the institution of slave trading; slavery itself. As a result, the Trans-Atlantic slave trade would continue to flourish for nearly two additional centuries through the Asiento, which would in later agreements be formalized through incorporation by reference in international treaties.

Although these international treaties are rife with financial expectations, legal rights and obligations of those party to the agreement, the Asiento and its originating religious authority, as vested in the Vatican, is notably demonstrated by religious titles and governmental authority of the respective nation states. For instance, in the ‘Adjustment (Transación) of the Asiento, concluded by Spain and Portugal at Lisbon,’ June 18, 1701, N.S. Ratification by Spain in July 1, 1701. . . .  It is clear that this treaty incorporated the Asiento by reference, as well as several succeeding Asiento treaties have taken great care to emphasize their legal authority to trade in African slaves by not only their religious affiliation (Christianity) but also by their respective kingdoms’ allegiance and reciprocal award of the Papal grant. Thus, Papal authority ran with these international agreements not by implication but by express acknowledgment. . . .

As with the prior Asientos, this treaty continuously refers to Spain as her Catholic Majesty and also emphasized the requirements that certain heirs, such as merchants and midshipmen must not in any way offend Roman Catholics in order to participate and profit form the Trans-Atlantic slave trade. This clause specifically differs from the Asiento of 1701, which required slavers and merchants under hire to be Roman Catholics, whereas this treaty merely requires such hires to conduct themselves in a manner which is in compliance with the Roman Catholic Church, which is Spain’s national religion or be admonished and subject to the criminal laws of the Spanish Crown. Ironically, for nation-states to be in accordance with the mores and laws of Roman Catholicism and the then influential monarch of Spain, which was a primary purveyor of such religious canons, slave trading participants were, to a great extent, performing their Christian duty by subjecting Africans, whether Christian or not to a lifetime of branding, slavery, rape, kidnapping and torture as participants reduced African slaves’ humanity to commodities for transport and auction. These nationstates, slaving companies, slavers, bankers, and merchants deemed Africans as worthy of human rights violations, and by Papal declaration, subject to enslavement. To further these notions, cloaked with policy-oriented, religious doctrine, parties to treaties which incorporated by reference the Asiento, elucidated their diminishment of Africans as mere ‘negroes,’ and in the appositive even less than slaves but as ‘piezas de India.’

As commodities are beaten, physically and mentally abused or otherwise mishandled, they lose value due to the loss of the original integrity of the product. At times, these goods are discounted for quick sale or otherwise deemed an unsellable commodity. As a result, these goods are written off as a financial liability or loss for auditing and tax purposes. The same fate awaited African lives captured and forced into the Trans-Atlantic slave trade. Parties to this treaty made it apparent that Africans were to be stripped of their familial and cultural identity as referenced in this and earlier Asiento agreements. The assientists, at times, referred to Africans simply as black slaves. Just as the Papacy systemically used the Catholic religion as the catalyst and justification to enslave others, it also used the term ‘black slaves’ to further demean, racially stigmatized, emasculate, defeminize, anonymize and objectify human beings with African heritage and their progeny. As with all other previous Asiento agreements, Spain exhorted its right to convey the slave trading license to whom it chose through the authority it obtained from the Papacy. Although the Asiento evolved into an official contracting instrument, the Spanish Crown eluded exclusivity by issuing Asientos and treaties which either overlapped in time or shared a similar time frame for transporting African slaves but designating different portions for disembarkment and sale to different interested parties. Additional terms of the international agreement between Spain and Great Britain via the East India Company, specified that they could ship nearly 5,000 slaves annually, for up to 30 years.115 Thus, the maximum number of slaves to be validly captured and shipped could not exceed 144,000 for the duration of the Asiento contract.”

Thus, the most LOGICAL strategy that should be employed by the reparations movement, supported by the African Union, is to bring the Asiento contracts before the International Court of Justice (ICJ) and hold the Vatican accountable for the Dum Diversas total war damage that has already been determined at the World Conference Against Racism to be a crime against humanity which has no statute of limitations.

Why has this been delayed? Given my consistent, inetensive advocacy for this over the past four years, I can only conclude that it is by design since it has been shown by the climate justice activists that an ICJ opinion, which would be a prelude to an actual case, can be had when it is wanted. Clearly, the requests for an advisory opinion from the Court on “The status of Afro Descendant People as prisoners of war under the Geneva Convention and their right to conduct plebiscites for self-determination”, which has formally been submitted to the United Nations and the African Union, is not desired. Again, no AU Legal Reference Group or Committee of Experts on Reparations have been constituted and it is likely that those selected for such entities will be of the “climate justice” sort who are populating most of the panels and webinars now.

But Afrodescendants’ reparations claims are not without proper potential champions. The Republic of South Africa could do for Afrodescendants what they did for the Palestinian people in Gaza by brining a request for an advisory opinion from the ICJ. Likewise, tha Alliance of Sahel States could further demonstrate itself as THE Pan African leaders on the continent, eventually leading to a United African States and rendering the AU obsolete, by doing the same. The question remains:

WILL THE DECADE OF REPARATIONS RESULT IN THE FOLLY OF THE AU-LED REPARATIONS ELITE CAPTURE?

MESSAGE TO 250 MILLION AFRODESCENDANTS: OUR RIGHT TO RETURN TO AFRICA, REPARATIONS, THE UN, THE AU, THE AES, BURKINA FASO, PRESIDENT IBRAHIM TRAORE & THE STATUS OF PAN AFRICANISM

A MESSAGE TO THE 250 MILLION AFRODESCENDANT PEOPLES IN THE AFRICAN DIASPORA CONCERNING OUR RIGHT TO RETURN TO OUR ANCESTRAL HOMELANDS, REPARATIONS, THE UNITED NATIONS, THE AFRICAN UNION, THE ALLIANCE OF SAHEL STATES, BURKINA FASO, PRESIDENT IBRAHIM TRAORE AND THE STATUS OF PAN AFRICANISM

I have just returned from my 3rd visit to Burkina Faso, the 1st of which took place in May of 2024 as part of the historic delegation led by H.E. Ambassador Arikana Chihombori Quao. During that visit, a Concept Note was presented to the Minister of Foreign Affairs Mr. Karamoko Traore. This time, I prepared a Brief summarizing the developments since then and presented it to Minister Traoré through his Chief Advisor Hermann Toe and to President Ibrahim Traoré through Gaētan Alexis Windpanga Ouedraogo Special Advisor To President Traoré  Concerning Diaspora Issues.

This I did in my capacity as a Special Envoy to Burkina Faso representing both Afrodescendants and the larger African Diaspora following my interventions at the 38th Session of the Assembly of Heads of State of the African Union in Addis Ababa in February 2025 and the 83rd Session of the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights (ACHPR) held in Banjul in May 2025, both of which followed my interventions at the United Nations at the 1st, 2nd and 3rd sessions of the Permanent Forum on People of African Descent (PFPAD) in 2023 and 2024 as well as the 1st and 2nd Accra Reparations Summits in 2023 and 2025. I, as an INDEPENDENT PARTICIPANT supported solely by individual contributions of people who desired my presence at such events and NOT FUNDED by philanthropic grants or governments, am, therefore, especially positioned and qualified, as the PEOPLES” WITNESS to discuss the state of affairs detailed in the title of this message and to draw comprehensive conclusions on where we are and what must be done. Here then, are my brief studied conclusions derived from genuine diplomatic efforts on behalf of Afrodescandants and African liberation.

*********************************************************************************************

“To embark successfully in a career involving leadership demands a courageous and determined spirit. Once a person has decided upon his life’s work and is assured that in doing the work for which he is best endowed and equipped he is filling a vital need, what he then needs is faith and integrity, coupled with a courageous spirit so that no longer preferring himself to the fulfillment of his task he may address himself to the problems he must solve in order to be effective.” - Ethiopian Emperor, HIM Haile Selassie I

“Every responsible member must have the courage of his responsibilities, exacting from others a proper respect for his work and properly respecting the work of others. Hide nothing from the masses of our people. Tell no lies. Expose lies whenever they are told. Mask no difficulties, mistakes, failures. Claim no easy victories . . . .” - Amilcar Cabral

*********************************************************************************************

RIGHT TO RETURN TO OUR ANCESTRAL HOMELANDS

  1. ALL REPARATIONS CLAIMS on behalf of the Global Afrikan Family are and must be based on the fact that the Catholic Church unjustly authorized an evil European military invasion led by the Military Order of Jesus Christ headquartered in Portugal into the ancestral homelands of the people on the African continent. AFRICA IS THEREFORE THE LOCATION WHERE THE CRIME WAS COMMITTED AND THE DAMAGE TO AFRICAN PEOPLES WHICH IS ONGOING UNTIL REMEDIED IS THE FOCUS OF REPARATIONS. As I stated to the ACHPR, 

“The Abuja Proclamation appraises “the issue of  reparations in relation to the damage done to Africa and its Diaspora by enslavement, colonization, and neo-colonialism”. The AU Concept Note EX.CL/1528(XLV) states, “The Assembly further decided that the theme of the Year for 2025 will be ‘Justice for Africans and People of African Descent Through Reparations” as well as designate the reparations for transatlantic-enslavement, colonialism and apartheid. . . .” Notice the construction here: reparations for transatlantic-enslavement always precedes colonialism and neo-colonialism. Thus, the first priority of reparations is to repair the first harm done which happened when African men, women and children were invaded and attacked by the Military Order of Jesus Christ after war was declared on them by Pope Nicholas the V on June 18, 1452. Captured African prisoners of war were forcibly trafficked across the Atlantic and subjected to the dehumanization processes that resulted in ethnocide. This is the first harm of enslavement that is the first priority of Africa’s Reparations claim.”

2. In Pan-Africanism and Nationality Rights For the Diaspora: A Contemporary  Perspective,  in Pan-Africanism, African Nationalism: Strengthening the Unity of Africa and its Diaspora  edited by B.F. Banke & K. Mchombu,  A. Bernard puts it this way:

“The Pan-Africanist Law of Return: Quintessential Reparations

At a very basic level, if reparation is to repair the wrongs committed against African peoples through slavery and its apprentices, colonization and imperialism, the first wrong committed was taking millions of peoples from their homeland. Those taken from Africa lost, among other things, their citizenship and this is the first thing that needs to be given back. It is morally and philosophically the first step in the journey of a thousand miles that needs to be undertaken if Africa and African peoples are to move forward in a forceful, positive and determined manner in the 21st Century.

Concomitant with this position therefore is that the law of return can only be made possible by African governments/states, not the West. It is to be stated clearly nonetheless, that this is a right, not a concession or special privilege. Diasporan repatriates should not have to prove which part of Africa they are from. The loss of this specific identity is a part of the harm done by slavery, and cannot be used by African governments to reject Diasporans. Any African government which challenges the right to return to Africa for proof of specific identity is in breach of their own claim for compensation for slavery.”

REPARATIONS

  1. After the first Africans were captured in the 1440s by the Military Order of Jesus Christ, as documented by Gomes Eannes de Azurara in Volume 1 and Volume 2 of the Chronicle and Discovery of the Conquest of Guinea, then came the first war deaths and casualties - African blood shed on African soil. Thus, the trafficking and enslavement came first that resulted in an estimated 12 million victims enslaved in the Americas and then came the killing of Africans, resulting in an estimated 100 million deaths on African soil. The Netherlands formally abolished slavery in its colonies on July 1, 1863 and the United States proclaimed the 13th Amendment abolishing its slave trade on December 16, 1865. Using the latter date, that’s 150,896 days or 413 years, 1 month and 29 days of enslavement and death in warfare. Reparations are PRIMARILY concerned with THIS damage. 

  2. Then followed the scramble for Africa, formalized at the Berlin Conference in 1884 to 1885 and the period of colonisation and after that, neocolonialism. Starting from the US abolition of slavery, until today, that’s 58, 315 days, or 159 years, 7 months and 29 days. Reparations are SECONDARILY concerned with THIS damage.

  3. Reparations are in the process of being redefined to suit the purposes of the ruling classes of all nations and their governments. As an example, in 1900, Bishop Henry McNeil Turner said,

“We remained in slavery two hundred and fifty years, and have been free the best end of fifty more years. In other words we have been dominated over by the buckra, or white race, for about three hundred years. We have worked, enriched the country and helped give it a standing among the powers of the earth, and when we are denied our civil and political rights, (many) ridicule the idea of asking for a hundred million of dollars TO GO HOME, for Africa is our home and is the one place that offers us manhood and freedom, though we are the subjects of nations that have claimed a part of Africa by conquest. A hundred million dollars can be obtained if we, as a race, would ask for it. The way we figure it out, this country owes us forty billions of dollars, and we are afraid to ask for a hundred million. Congress, by its legislation, throws away over a hundred million annually.”

A further example is that in 1919 and the 1920s both Marcus Garvey and W.E.B. DuBois petitioned the League of Nations for the former German colonies to be given over for the purpose of creating a new African State and homeland controlled by African people where African people in the Diaspora could resettle. This form of reparations was denied, and instead, the “Protectorates” and “Mandates” system was implemented so that the colonial powers retained control of those territories.  Finally, as another example, in the 1980s and 1990s, the focus of reparations shifted to “debt relief” for African countries. Thus, while the 1993 Abuja proclamation “Exhorts all African states to grant entrance as of right to all persons of African descent and right to obtain residence in those African states, if there is no disqualifying element on the African claiming the ‘right to return’ to his ancestral home, Africa,” it “Further urges the OAU to call for full monetary payment of repayments through capital transfer and debt cancellation. Urges those countries which were enriched by slavery and the slave trade to give total relief from Foreign Debt, and allow the debtor countries of the Diaspora to become free for self-development and from immediate and direct economic domination. ” This was a shift from the earlier focus of the right to return and redress for unpaid slave labor which still has not been granted. Debt relief, rather than monetary payments, became the focus of global campaigns, was never granted and has now taken a back seat. Today, certain interests have positioned “racial healing” and “climate justice” as the new focus of reparations as these are “acceptable” issues for the ruling elites.  To be sure, consider that, 

"After all this time, has the African Union made REPATRIATION and CITIZIZENSHISP the priority during its AU THEME OF THE YEAR? Have formal agreement with African States and the AU pertaining to REPATRIATION and CITIZENSHIP been concluded? Have they even been brought to the table? Are the Afro Descendants in the AU 6th Region equal partners in determining AU principles, policies, and programs? Incredibly, Kyeretwie Osei, Head of Programmes at the AU ECOSOCC Secretariat in Lusaka, Zambia gave an answer that the AU does not intend such things. Mr. Osei clearly stated that the AU is seeking “different interpretations of reparations . . . .” This can be seen, for example, in the numerous emphasis on “climate justice” with little to no mention of Repatriation and Citizenship. In fact, climate justice is fast becoming the leading talking point of the AU along with “debt relief”, and was butressed by the selection of European Climate Pact Ambassador in Belgium Ms. Fadeke Ayoola to lead off the Consultation’s presentation which focused on the current state of the Pan African financial architecture and and Lydia Chibambo who works with the Zambia Climate Change Network, to close the Consultation. Mr. Osei then made the audacious and patronizing claim that the “reparations process is AU led . . . designed and created by the AU. . . .” SEE: AU ECOSOCC DIASPORA CONSULTATIONS CONTINUE TO DISAPPOINT AFRODESCENDANTS IN THE AU 6TH REGION

Consider further  the 27 February 2025 article by Tadesse Simie Metekia, Senior Researcher, Rule of Law, Institute for Security Studies (ISS) in  Addis Ababa​ entitled: AU ‘Year of Reparations’ should look to the future and the past in which he says,

“Others contend that development aid, debt relief and foreign investment function as reparations, negating the need for further redress. . . . One way to address these challenges is by expanding the AU theme’s focus, which currently emphasises justice and healing for Africans and Afro-descendants. During implementation, the AU could approach reparations as a forward-looking global agenda aimed at repairing both victims and perpetrators. . . . Former colonial powers that profited from Africa’s suffering carry unresolved moral wounds. Societies built on slavery and colonial exploitation continue to grapple with racism, economic inequality and historical amnesia. Reparative justice offers these nations an opportunity to heal, confront their pasts, and rebuild relationships with African and Afro-descendants.”

Many within the Reparations Movement have justified this shift by saying that reparations is not just about the past, it is about the Africa we want now and in the future, while others don’t even consider Africa at all and simply want a more comfortable life in the land of their ancestors' captivity. Under this reasoning, many are no longer framing reparations as the just compensation  for enslavement but rather through the lens of “developmentalism” - a framework that is in “alignment” with governments’ objectives - Barbados is a good example - and is more palatable to European consciousness. This represents a crafty capture of the reparations narrative and objective. Why does the objective and narrative keep shifting without any reparations being received? Why move on to something else when the first claims have not yet been remedied? The ruling elites use philanthropy to produce controlled opposition, making calculated decisions and sacrifices pawns in order to save the king and queen. . . . .

My respnse to those within the movement who are attempting to redefine reparations is to make the counterpoint that when Africa’s Reparation claim is properly framed as War Reparations, or compensation payments made after a war by one side to the other that are intended to cover damage or injury inflicted during a war, then we need not subject ourselves to manipulation by the successor regimes of the enslaving nations who wish to capture the reparations movement, redefine it in the form as debt restructuring, development aid and climate justice which suits their interests. Such a capitulation would shift the burden of paying for those damages to the victims of the Dum Diversas War. Our reparations are not to be used to cover other problems that the international community is responsible for.  We do not need to acquiesce to such a misstatement of reparations. If reparations is intended as compensation after the war with an aim to repair the dignity of the victims, then reframing reparations in a way that considers, even elevates, the interests and sensitivities of the enslavers continues the very indignity of the victims! The Ashkenazic victims of genocide were not forced to reframe their reparations in order to heal the Nazi perpetrators. Neither were the Japanese victims of America required to take into consideration the development plans and other responsibilities of the United States government. It is an offense to suggest, once again, that the burden of healing others falls on African people at the expense of their own direct interests.

THE UNITED NATIONS

  1. The United Nations is pursuing the strategy of "scientific colonialism” that it inherited from the League of Nations. As I clearly emphasized in my article,  IS THE UN PERMANENT FORUM ON PEOPLE OF AFRICAN DESCENT THE LATEST REFINEMENT OF SCIENTIFIC COLONIALISM?

“The  intellectual roots of the [League of Nations and United Nations policy towards colonial territories] can be traced back to the late nineteenth century and the rise of ‘developmentalism’ as a core tenet of liberal imperial planning in Britain. Colonial states were beginning to deploy new ways of intervening in the everyday lives of their colonial populations at this moment.

With the rise of social science research and the production of statistical analysis, states were much more capable of monitoring their domestic and colonial populations on a large number of metrics. As Timothy Mitchell has observed, ‘as Britain and other colonial powers faced a harder task in justifying the continuation of colonial occupation, new statistical work could clarify the purpose and authority of imperial government.’ Academics like Alfred Zimmern and colonial diplomats like Lord Milner theorized the British Empire as a family of states and state-like entities, some more mature than others, some possessing more international legal autonomy than others. Zimmern, one of the drafters of the League of Nations Covenant, described the British Commonwealth as a ‘procession’: ‘It consist[ed] of a large variety of communities at a number of different stages in their advance towards complete self government.’ Scientific colonialism supplied a logic of development, suggesting the possibility that territories could move from one category to another. The challenge as these thinkers saw it, particularly in Africa, was to promote a form of colonial rule that would both uplift the natives and provide for international free trade. British colonies and protectorates in India and Africa were taken as models, and Milner’s disciples had already suggested that such governance systems be exported to other colonial areas. . . .”

In short, colonialism has always been a process of moving from the exterior to the interior. At this point, scientific colonialism seeks access to our inner-most thoughts and consciousness. What better way than to create a forum and solicit the ideas and aspirations of the best thinkers and activists of African descent? The Permanent Forum on People of African Descent (PFAD) is the latest development of this strategy.

2. Few people know the origin of PFPAD and the bait and switch that took place. In his 1503  Petition for Reparations for African Americans that was delivered to the UN in 1994, the Honorable Silas Muhammad stated,

“Now African-Americans want their human rights, demands for equal status, self determination, and compensation for past and on-going gross violations to be heard and redressed, and are requesting U.N. assistance. This can be accomplished by observers being sent to the U.S., by an investigative committee, by a special rapporteur’s investigation, by the opening of a forum at the U.N. wherein any and all sectors of the African-American community and the U.S. government will be able, without fear of retaliation, to express their grievances on the issues of self-determination and reparation for past and on-going gross violations of their human rights, and seek U. N. assistance in defining and resolving the crisis in this relation which has proved so destructive, not just to African-Americans, but to America as a whole. In this endeavor, the U.N. can expect the full cooperation and assistance of the Nation of Islam, and the vast majority of other African-American groups and individuals.”

3. This was followed by no less than 52 written and oral statements made to the UN Commission on Human Rights, the UN Sub-Commission on the Promotion and Protection of Human Rights, the Working Group on Minorities and the various World Conferences Against Racism during the period from 1997 to 2014.  Mr. Muhammad’s stated in his Oral Statement to the Sub-Commission on Prevention of Discrimination and the Protection of Minorities, August, 1999 Provisional Agenda Item 8: Prevention of discrimination against and the protection of minorities: 

“We charge civil death. The U.S., with knowledge that it has denied us our identity for the past 400 years, is in violation of both the aforementioned Covenant and Declaration. In articles 2 and 4, the Declaration stipulates that minorities have the right to protect their culture and identity. . . . Owing to plantation slavery, intercultural education is an impossibility for us. By forcibly depriving us of our "mother tongue," the Government of the U.S. deracinated our collective identity, making our condition irreversible. We need specific U.N. assistance. Absent knowledge of our mother tongue, how could and can we speak it with other members of our community, and preserve our individual identity? The annihilation of our "mother tongue" is the extermination of our identity. Absent our identity, we do not have our own culture. Absent culture, we are in a state of civil death. To destroy a people and their shared life is a crime. The U.N. can provide a remedy by establishing a forum for so-called African-Americans at the U.N. in New York. We want a forum for the purpose of restoring our human rights -- which only we can reclaim or choose. Within a forum, we will 1) rebuild a kind of council or governing body amongst ourselves; 2) openly discuss the devolution, in pertinent parts, of the Constitution of the U.S., which defines us as three-fifth of a human being; 3) make choices on the "mother tongue" or tongues we wish to speak; 4) discuss and conclude on the issues of reclamation, restoration, reparations and migration of some of us to a friendly nation; 5) then present this package to the U.N. in order that the U.N. can facilitate dialogue between us and the U.S. Government. The forum will provide a peaceful and protected environment for the resurrection of our legal, political being and status as a people.”

4. In August 2005, Mr. Muhammad made an Oral Statement to the 57th Sub-Commission on the Promotion and Protection of Human Rights, Agenda Item 5C: Prevention of discrimination and protection of minorities, in which he informed that “The Working Group of Minorities, inquiring into their area of expertise, found there was not a place established within the UN that Afrodescendants could fit, because Afrodescendants are coming back to life absent their mother tongue, original culture and religion. The Working Group on Minorities began seeking to find a way for us.”

5. On 2 August 2021, the General Assembly adopted its resolution 75/314, in which it formally operationalized the Permanent Forum on People of African Descent (PFPAD) as "a consultative mechanism for people of African descent and other relevant stakeholders as a platform for improving the safety and quality of life and livelihoods of people of African descent. . . .” On April 19, 2024, in alignment with Mr. Muhammad’s original vision for a forum to “provide a peaceful and protected environment for the resurrection of our legal, political being and status as a people” I invoked Resolution 75/314 that emphasizes that PFPAD can “request the preparation and dissemination of information by the United Nations system on issues relating to people of African descent . . .” and submitted a request for an advisory opinion from the International Court of Justice (ICJ) - an organ of the United Nations system - on “The status of Afro Descendant People as prisoners of war under the Geneva Convention and their right to conduct plebiscites for self-determination.” After mounting an international campaign pressuring PFPAD Presidents Epsy Campbell Bar and June Soomer to sign and submit the request to the ICJ, still it has not been done. Only lip service has been paid to it. 

6. Additionally, PFPAD Secretary Niraj Dawadi, immediately following the 3rd closing session in Geneva, felt it necessary to approach me to tell me that the Forum believes requesting an advisory opinion from the ICJ is very important but that due to shortage of resources and time, the members have not had proper opportunity to discuss it yet have concluded that because of its importance, the Request must have broad support. Mr. Dawadi did not detail what was meant by broad support, or why a petition signed by 300 delegates which received a standing ovation from the floor, was not broad enough. More interesting, however, was the admission that the Forum is concerned that if they exercise their mandate as I have suggested, and the Forum goes directly to the ICJ, that it will, according to Mr. Dawadi, “open the flood gates to petitions.” The concern is that this would set a precedent and every group will then expect the forum to act on their petition. It should be noted this was the very issue that both the League of Nations and the United Nations faced at their establishment - the question of receiving petitions from non-state actors.

7. I have therefore concluded that the United Nations and PFPAD is merely an institution for scientific colonialism and will not bring the Request for an advisory opinion on the five questions that will set the foundation for our legal claim for Dum Diversas war damages and “the resurrection of our legal, political being and status as a people.” 

8. Indeed, the case of the Israeli Genocide against the Palestinians in Gaza is the definitive proof that no justice can be expected from the UN system, as the ICJ ruled in favor of reparations to the Palestinians yet until now Israel has defied the ruling and continued its genocide and the UN has proven impotent to enforce its authority. As the Honorable Silas Muhammad asked the Sub-Commission on the Promotion and Protection of Human Rights 56th Session 26 July to 13 August, 2004: “The UN is the greatest law-giver in civilized society. If we cannot call upon the UN, made up of civilized men and women, to grant us protected collective human rights, then who else can we call upon?”

9. Therefore, African people themselves must accept the fact that they must build sufficient compelling force and the ability to coerce the European nations to pay reparations. This can only be done by establishing a United African States with positive sovereignty that can withhold the essential earth minerals and raw materials which the Western world depends on to sustain its system of dominance until reparations and satisfaction is obtained.

THE AFRICAN UNION

  1. Both Omowale Malcolm X (1964) and Queen Mother Audley Moore (1975) brought the issue of Afrodescendant reparations to the Organization of African Unity (OAU). In 1996 the Economic and Social Council of the United Nations granted consultative status to the Rastafari Movement who were represented by Ras Bongo Spear and Ras Boanerges. In 1998, at the United Nations in Geneva, Switzerland, Ras Bongo Spear and Ras Boanerges asked: “What is the responsibility of the nations to Africans in the diaspora with respect to the age-old quest for Repatriation?” Said the Rasses, “Our advice from that committee and from the UN Office of Human Rights . . .. was simple:

“The United Nations as an organization of states cannot at this time in any serious way entertain the issue of repatriation without the consent of the African states and the African Governments to which we want to go in Africa. So we were directed to seek the support of African governments with respect to the acquisition of land. And after that, the matter can be brought up again to the United Nations and the issue of [settlement] can take place.”

When the OAU transformed into the AU and “invite[d] and encourage[d] the African Diaspora to full participation”, a moment for which I was physically present in the AU building on February 3-4, 2003, efforts then focused from the UN to the AU with great expectations bolstered by the Durban Declaration and Programme of Action.

2. As stated in my introduction above, twenty-four years later I represented both Afrodescendants and the larger African Diaspora (the 6th Region of the AU) at the 38th Session of the Assembly of Heads of State of the African Union in Addis Ababa in February 2025 and the 83rd Session of the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights (ACHPR) held in Banjul in May 2025. I have consistently raised the issue of the Afrodescendants Right of Return at the African Union and tracking its development since the 7th Pan African Congress in Kampala, Uganda in 1974. 

2. I, along with many others, have attempted to work through the AU”s Economic, Social and Cultural Council (ECOSOCC) to develop a comprehensive AU Citizenship Policy. These efforts have consistently been sabotaged, and I detailed this both in 2019 and 2025. Moreover, in 2023, the African Union completed its takeover of the Reparations movement at its Accra Reparations Conference which I also attended. Since then, I have asked the question, What Role for the Afro Descendants in the African Union's Commission for International Law (AUCIL) and the Proposed Legal Reference Group? The Case of the Republic of New Afrika? Based on my experience with the African Union, the  failure of its members, after 64 years, to recognize Afrodescendants as a unique class of immigrants, provide for their unqualified citizenship, and the fact that 70% of the AU’s budget comes from non-Africans, I have concluded that the African Union is an instrument of neocolonial control and impotent in its ability to solve Africa’s problems, including the citizenship issue of the Afrodescendants in its 6th Region.

3. Therefore, Afrodescendants themselves must accept the fact that they must build sufficient compelling force to convince African nations individually to fulfill their reparations obligations to the living descendants of people taken as prisoners of war from territories that are now under their national jurisdiction as signatories to the Geneva Convention. This can be achieved through building an Afrodescendant United Front that initiates negotiations with each AU member state and withholds support in the form of remittances, tourism, investment and skills transfer until satisfactory citizenship policies are legislated.

THE ALLIANCE OF SAHEL STATES (AES)

  1. Recently, the world witnessed the  2021 Malian revolution led by Assimi Goïta and the National Committee for the Salvation of the People which seized power in Mali after overthrowing the elected president, Ibrahim Boubacar Keïta. 

  2. A faction of Burkina Faso's military overthrew their existing military government in the September 2022 revolution, installing Ibrahim Traoré over Paul-Henri Sandaogo Damiba, who had come to power in the January 2022 coup d'état which toppled the democratic government of president Roch Marc Christian Kaboré.

  3. In July 2023, the National Council for the Safeguard of the Homeland removed the elected government of Niger's Mohamed Bazoum, installing Abdourahamane Tchiani and a new junta in the 2023 revolution.

  4. All three of the alliance's member states were suspended by the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) shortly after the ouster of their elected governments. Those three nations then formed the Alliance of Sahel States (AES) in September 2023, with the signing of the Charter of Liptako-Gourma, following a meeting of the heads of state in Bamako, Mali. The AES aims to strengthen regional cooperation, particularly in defense and security, and to promote the sovereignty and development of the member states and has expressed intentions to move towards a confederation, indicating a desire for closer integration and cooperation beyond the initial defense pact. On 28 January 2024, the three countries announced via a joint statement that they were withdrawing from ECOWAS. In May 2024 at a meeting in Niamey, representatives of Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger finalized a draft text creating the AES. The confederation was established on 6 July 2024 in Niamey.  On 29 January 2025, Burkina Faso, Mali, and Niger formally withdrew from ECOWAS after providing the required 1-year notice. The withdrawal has resulted in ECOWAS losing 76 million of its 446 million people and a significant portion of its total geographical land area. The AES is now geographically larger than ECOWAS, covering 2,781,392 km2 compared to ECOWAS's adjusted 2,087,596 km2. To consolidate their exit from ECOWAS and strengthen their alliance, the three countries began circulating new AES passports, and announced that a new unified 5,000-strong military unit will soon join the fight against jihadists and terrorists on AES territory.

  5. The confederation's stated goal is to pool resources to build energy and communications infrastructure, establish a common market, implement a monetary union under proposed currency, allow free movement of persons, enable industrialization, and invest in agriculture, mines and the energy sector, with the end goal of federalizing into a single sovereign state. A project to set up passport and identity card travel documents between the three member countries of the AES is part of a more advanced integration between the member states before approval of the project by the three heads of state of the member countries. A joint biometric passport for AES citizens was recently introduced, but is already facing obstacles, with Senegal currently refusing to recognize the passport, putting in question the viability of the scheme. The confederation is against neo-colonialism and has demonstrated this with acts such as downgrading the status of the French language. renaming of colonial street names, and many other such initiatives. On 5 February 2025, the Member States of the Confederation of Sahel States signed a historic convention, establishing a common cultural policy. On 22 February 2025, the ministers of the Confederation of Sahel States officially launched the flag of the AES. At the end of March 2025, the three members of the confederation will introduce a common customs duty of 0.5% on imports from countries that are not members of the confederation of the alliance of Sahel states. Energy regulators from Burkina Faso, Mali, and Niger met in Bamako in May 2025 to harmonise their policies on energy security and promote renewable energy. The AES announced the creation of the Confederal Bank for Investment and Development (CBID) in May 2025. The bank is designed to provide autonomous financing for critical infrastructure and development projects across the Sahel and to reduce dependence on external institutions. The creation of the bank is a step toward financial sovereignty. The ministers of the Sahel Alliance states met in May 2025 to establish judicial cooperation within the AES. The meeting, chaired by Malian Prime Minister General Abdoulaye Maiga, focused on creating a common legal framework to address transnational challenges, including insecurity, arms proliferation, and money laundering. The goal is to enhance judicial convergence without unifying laws and to make systems interoperable while improving governance, legal protections, and institutional stability. The meeting resulted in the establishment of a regional criminal court aimed at addressing terrorism, violent extremism, and human rights violations within the Sahel region. Experts from the road authorities of Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger met in May 2025, to define a common approach to road safety. The AES has created the Alliance of Agricultural Seed Producers of the Sahel (APSA-Sahel) to strengthen regional food sovereignty and promote seed systems locally adapted to the Sahel’s climate. The initiative is designed to reduce dependence on foreign seed imports, promote indigenous seed varieties, and increase seed research, production, and distribution in the sahel. From 21 to 28 June 2025, Mali hosted the first annual Alliance of Sahel States Games. More than 500 professional athletes from AES states competed in soccer, traditional wrestling, archery, and other events. Roaming charges for telephone communications between the three countries have been abolished. From August 11 to 15, 2025, parliamentarians and experts from Mali, Niger and Burkina Faso met in Ouagadougou to make the draft Confederate Parliament of the Alliance of Sahel States (AES) a reality.

  6. The AES has demonstrated the fortitude required to break from neocolonialism and stands in stark contrast to the AU and ECOWAS. For this reason, all available Afrodescedant resources should be spared in its support and protection in hopes that the AES proves itself to be the embryo of a revolutionary United African States invested with positive sovereignty of the people. Currently, the AES is the Pan Africanists’ best hope for complete African Liberation.

BURKINA FASO AND PRESIDENT IBRAHIM TRAORE

  1. The Republic of Burkina Faso, and especially its President Ibrahim Traoré, is the “face” of the AES. Global “Hands off President Traoré” demonstrations by the Afrikan Family on April 30 and May 25, 2025 have revealed a Pan African phenomenon with a potential for African Unity and African Liberation not seen since Kwame Nkrumah. 

  2. I have attended three important Afrodescendant delegations to Burkina Faso: May 2024 with H.E. Ambassador Arikana Chihombori Quao; July 2025 with the Friends of President Ibrahim Traoré, and August 2025 with the RBG +126 Delegation led by Yaw Akyeaw. As part of these delegations, I have met with Karamoko Jean Marie Traore, Minister of Foreign Affairs, Regional Cooperation and Burkina Faso Citizens Abroad; his  Chief of Staff, Mr. Hermann Yirigouin Toe, Minister Plenipotentiary Ambassador and Secretary General;  Samuel Kalkoumdo, Special Adviser on Social Cohesion and National Reconciliation to President Ibrahim Traoré; Gaētan Alexis Windpanga Ouedraogo, Special Advisor To President Traore in Charge of  Diaspora Issues;  Anûuyirtole Roland SOMDA, Minister Of Sports, Youths And Employment; his Chief of Staff, Tegviel Evariste Metuole Dabire; as well as the Mr Bassaloma Bazie,President of the Commission of the Alliance of Sahel States; and Mr. Ouattara Hayouba, President of the Patriotic Movement Fas First of Burkina Faso (M.P.F.A.) and Secretary General of the Director of the Confederation of Peoples of the Alliance of Sahel States and others. This has given me the opportunity to discuss many issues and learn many perspectives from Burkinabe people, Pan Africanists, Afrodescendants, government officials, business people, and a wide range of skilled people interested in contributing to the development and protection of Burkina Faso. Below are what I consider to be the most important lessons learned. You can read all of the updates since the May 2024 delegations in my brief that was submitted to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Special Adviser to the President in Charge of Diaspora Issues.

  3. The support that the Global Afrikan Family is giving to President Ibrahim Traoré and the Burkinabe people is proving to be an effective “shield” against Western assination attempts against President Traoré. This was specifically stated by President Bazie during our July meeting.

  4. Contact with Burkina Faso Embassies in Washington DC and Accra, Ghana did not ensure proper arrangements and smooth runnings when the delegations arrived in Ouagadougou. Unfulfilled promised or expected itineraries, meetings and assistance plagued both the July and August delegations and everything had to be arranged in a haphazard fashion following no established protocol. Mr. Toe informed us during the August meeting that uncoordinated activity is overwhelming the various ministries. For example, everyone wants to meet with President Ibrahim Traoré. Mr. Toe emphasized that Burkina Faso still has a colonial system of administration and unfortunately, that is resulting in bureaucratic delays which the government realizes is frustrating our mutual collaboration.

  5. During the July meeting with the FPITW delegation, Minister of Foreign Affairs Mr. Traore stated that the next step was developing a “broad framework” for Afrodescendant engagement, which we are eagerly awaiting. Following the FPITW delegation’s debriefing, on July 14 the African Diaspora Development Institute (ADDI) announced “The government of  Burkina Faso has confirmed that the ADDI mission trip to include the conferment of Burkina Faso citizenship will take place from October 26th to November 8th, 2025.” In the August RBG 126+ meeting, Mr. Toe suggested that in the short term, all of us work to make the event in October a success. Towards that end, I submitted to the Minister of Sports a proposal for a one-day Pan African Sports Summit aimed at attracting college and professional athletes from the African Diaspora which was well received. However, in February of 2025, ADDI Founder H.E. Dr. Arikana Chihombori Quao said this: 

“The people must come forward. People must come and say, ‘I can do this’ and then do it and continue to do it. So I am opening the door, and those who want to participate, you can organize yourself. . . .  But in terms of saying, ‘what is the Ambassador going to do’ what ended up in most of the cases is that everybody comes back and says, ‘Ambassador tell us what to do, Ambassador what should I do . . .’ I CANT DO THAT ANYMORE. I’ve done it for four years. So either you guys come together, organize yourself, I will open the doors, there are people on the ground who can support you. . . . I will open the doors and do everything that needs to be done for you to do your thing, but you have to walk the walk.”

6. On May 30, 2025 I informed H.E. Dr. Arikana Chihombori Quao of the upcoming FPITW delegation stating, “the delegation respects the work that ADDI has done to open the doors in Burkina Faso and would like to meet with the ADDI team in Ouagadougou. . . . Progress on other initiatives include. . . 2. Dual citizenship; 3. The purchasing and opening of a Diplomatic Mission (Embassy) in Burkina Faso. . . . Please Advise” to which she responded, “That’s great. The more the merrier.” I then asked, “Has ADDI opened its office in Ouagadougou? Is it the one stop shop for Diaspora investors?” She replied, “We are working on it. I met with the Ambassador at length on Wednesday. It’s one of the things we discussed among several others.” Finally, I said, “Our delegation is trying not to cross wires or recreate a wheel. . . .  but support the things already done or planned. If you have boots on the ground, the delegates would like to connect and learn.” Her Excellency responded, “Glad to know you guys are going home. In order to avoid any confusion, please proceed with your agenda.” With that green light, the FPITW delegation established a headquarters in Burkina Faso.

7. It is for this reason that supporting and maintaining the Friends of President Ibrahim Traoré in the West (FPITW) headquarters as the “one stop shop” for Afrodescendant interested in Burkina Faso is of the highest priority. It is absolutely necessary that a qualified Afrodescendant fluent in French and having completed the New Afrikan Diplomatic and Civil Service Corps Certification be recruited to work alongside Mr. Ouattara Hayouba at the FPITW headquarters located at the African American Academy in the Ouga 2000 suburb of Ouagadougou. This office must be able to answer daily phone calls and emails, instruct people on processes, procedures, protocols, calendars of events, and best practices for operating in Burkina Faso. Mr. Toe acknowledged that such an operation would be of immense service. 

8. Burkina Faso, while it is breaking ties with its former French colonial masters, does not see the United States Government in the same light and is actively engaged in ongoing diplomacy and partnership deals, particularly in the field of military cooperation. It is a risk of falling for what Omowale Malcolm X called “American dollarism.” Special Advisor Ouedraogo informed the August delegation that Burkina Faso is not isolationist, and will work with anyone they deem genuine. He also stated that though Burkina Faso and President Ibrahim Traoré are Pan African, this alone will not be sufficient for partnerships. He said that Burkina Faso must get to know what is in the “inside” of the groups and delegations seeking partnerships. And this leads to the most serious concern at the moment.

9. There is considerable concern by both the Burkina Faso government and the delegations about CIA infiltration and the weaponizing of Black Americans for that purpose. In my May 3 2024 Letter and Concept Note to the Minister of Foreign Affairs, I concluded, “The idea is to make Burkina Faso the Ghana of the 1960s minus the CIA infiltration.” This issue became a serious reality when two individuals who had been in Burkina Faso for a month and who were not originally part of the RBG 126+ delegation, showed up and inserted themselves into the delegation. Both of them became suspicious and one of them has an active case seeking political asylum with the Burkina Faso Ministry of Refugees. This gentlemen informed Burkinabe officials to be very suspicious of Black Americans.  Indeed, it is known that in the 1970’s the CIA actively recruited Black Americans in Pan African organizations, especially professors, and sent them to Ghana. It would make sense that the CIA would attempt this again in order to get to President Ibrahim Traoré. The fact that everywhere in our own movements in the United States, everyone accused everyone of being an agent creates the disturbing problem that COINTELPRO sought to create: “Prevent militant black nationalist groups and leaders from gaining RESPECTABILITY, by discrediting them to three separate segments of the community. . . .Third, these groups must be discredited in the eyes of Negro radicals, the followers of the movement. This last area requires entirely different tactics from the first two.” As explained by Christian Davenport's study on the demobilization of the Republic of New Afrika, How Social Movements Die, “dissidents become carriers of repressive experiences, which they thereafter take with them into the social movement, affecting all who come across them.” Sowing the seeds of discord so that no one trusts each other and there is a culture of paranoia is their objective and, sadly, is in full effect today. Almost everyone I work with has accused someone else that I work with of being an agent. Again, the COINTELPRO long term goal was PREVENT UNITY.  And this issue is related to the issue of citizenship.

10. The Right of Return is an unqualified right of Afrodescendants and does not depend on one’s economic, financial, social or educational situation. Nevertheless, as Marcus Garvey famously said, “I have no desire to take all black people back to Africa; there are blacks who are no good here and will likewise be no good there.” The challenge is: how to balance the Right of Return, especially for well-meaning Pan Africanists with little resources against the security needs and the evil machinations of some skin folk who ain't kin folk? We hope to raise this issue with the Burkina Faso Committee on Citizenship that is preparing legislation as reported to us by Mr. Toe. The FPITW/RBG 126+ Citizenship Committee, composed of repatriation and citizenship pioneers, has requested that we be added as consultants to the Burkina Faso government’s Committee on Citizenship, which is expected to have some kind of report by the end of October. 

THE STATUS OF PAN AFRICANISM

  1. On March 19, 2025, I conducted a poll in Pan African networks and published the results in WHERE TO HOST A PAN AFRICAN CONGRESS? THE WAY FORWARD. The poll was conducted in response to the message “Convening the UBUNTU Pan African Congress to Re-anchor and Recenter the Pan African Movement Worldwide” posted in the Pan African Federalist Movement’s (PAFM) Google group. The author of that message, PAFM Secretary General Joomaay Faye, stated,  "The geopolitical context of today does not allow those of us Africans who can understand what is today at stake for our people, to continue to Sit Down and watch opportunists Take the Pan African Movement in HOSTAGE!  For this reason Let's ALL call for the Convening of the UBUNTU PAN AFRICAN CONGRESS (U-PAC) which will do everything humanly possible to Regroup All the Organizations of BLACK PEOPLE around the World to rekindle our Movement." [emphasis added]. Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso was the overwhelmingly most popular place desired to host a Pan African Congress that would make it possible to regroup all the Organizations of Black People around the world to rekindle our movement.

  2. I drafted a U-PAC Proposal that was accepted by The Global Pan African Movement (GPAM) that resulted in a formal letter on GPAM letterhead that was sent to President Ibrahim Traoré on April 5th.

  3. Unfortunately, the August delegation had little discussion with government officials concerning the proposed U-PAC. On July 16, 2025 GPAM Governing Council member Felipe Noguera informed me that the government of Burkina Faso and H.E. Arikana Chihombori Quao have decided to organize a Pan African meeting in conjunction with the ADDI organized citizenship conferment ceremony from October 26 through November 8. GPAM has decided to consider this as merely a regional Pan African gathering and NOT the proposed U-PAC that was conceived as the only way to bring the majority of the different Pan African factions together to produce a definitive Pan African agenda and plan of Action for the coming few years and beyond. 

  4. Meanwhile, on June 18, I received an invitation from Professor Robert Dussey, Minister of Foreign Affairs, Regional Integration and Togolese Abroad for the Republic of Togo to be a keynote speaker at the 9th Pan African Congress to be held in Lomé, Togo from December 8-12, 2025 under the theme, “Renewal of Pan Africanism and Africa’s Role in the Reform of Multilateral Institutions: Mobilizing Resources and Reinventing Itself to Act”. Then, on August 8, I received the following message:

“BOYCOTT THE 9TH PAN-AFRICAN CONGRESS IN TOGO, DECEMBER 2025 

We, the undersigned progressive organisations and individuals committed to the true principles of Pan-Africanism, urgently call for the global boycott of the 9th Pan-African Congress (PAC) scheduled to take place in Lomé, Togo in December 2025.

 The Betrayal of Pan-Africanist Principles 

The Pan-African Congress movement was founded on the principles of Liberation, Self-Determination, Democracy and Justice for African people worldwide. The second Pan-African Congress (1919) convened by W.E.B. DuBois demanded an end to colonial oppression and the right of Africans to govern themselves. Subsequent Congresses reinforced these values, standing against autocracy, neocolonialism and the exploitation of African people, worldwide.

Today, the Togolese government, led by Faure Gnassingbé, represents the very antithesis of these principles. For 58 years, Togo has been ruled by a single family, first by Gnassingbé Eyadéma, who seized power in a military coup in 1967, and now by his son Faure Gnassingbé, who has been in power since 2005. The regime has systematically suppressed dissent, rigged elections and violently crushed protests.

The Current Crackdown in Togo 

Recent reports confirm that the Togolese government is brutally repressing protests against constitutional amendments designed to extend Faure Gnassingbé’s rule. Security forces have met peaceful demonstrators with live ammunition, arbitrary arrests, and intimidation. This repression exposes the regime’s contempt for democracy and the rights of African people – values that the Pan-African Congress was meant to uphold.

Why we must boycott the 9th PAC in Togo 

Hosting the 9th Pan-African Congress in Togo under these conditions would legitimize an autocracy that oppresses its own people. It would betray the legacy of Pan-Africanism, which has always stood with the masses, not with autocrats. 

Neocolonialism in Practice: The Gnassingbé dynasty is a relic or colonial-era strongman rule sustained by foreign interests and military repression.  

A mockery of Pan-Africanism: True Pan-Africanism cannot coexist with tyranny. The PAC must not be used to whitewash a regime that silences dissent, and the unexplained murder of Comrade Tavio Amorin, a leading revolutionary Pan-Africanist.

Solidarity with the Togolese People: Attending this Congress would ignore the suffering of the ordinary Togolese fighting for democracy.

We urge all genuine Pan-Africanists, Activists, Scholars and Organizations to:
1.       Boycott the 9th PAC to be held in Togo in December 2025. Do not lend credibility to a repressive regime.

2.       Amplify the Voices of the Oppressed. Stand in solidarity with grassroots movements in Togo demanding freedom.

3.       Reclaim Pan-Africanism. Support alternative gatherings that centre the struggles of African people, not dictators.

We understand the deep desire of the African Diaspora to reconnect with the continent. However, we must ensure that this reconnection does not empower those who deny Africans on the continent their basic rights.

- No to the exploitation of Pan-Africanism!  - No to autocracy in Togo! - Solidarity with the Togolese people!

From: PACC  (Positive Action Citizens Coalition)

Co-Coordinators:

Explo Nani-Kofi and Nana Ama Dankwa Konadu

5. These issues were previously discussed on October 5, 2024 when SYANSKILTI Institute and the Forum One Afrika Group hosted the State of the Pan Africanist Movement in Africa Today featuring Lazare Ki-Zerbo, Lagoke Gnaka,  Felipe M. Noguera, Abuy Nfubea, Joomaay Faye, myself  and others. There is now a need for a second such forum, which is being planned to take place two weeks from now.

6. It is my conclusion that only a U-PAC hosted by the AES and convened by President Ibrahim Traoré in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso in May 2026 can capitalize on the current unifying phenomenon that is the AES and President Ibrahim Traoré. Such a U-PAC  can bring together the most inclusive gathering of Pan Africanists and go a long way towards saving the every-splintering Pan African Congresses and Pan African Movement. 

OVERALL CONCLUSION

MARCUS GARVEY - 1924

“Let the Negro couple the urge for money with nationalism, so that in another hundred years—he will have a formidable and well - established nation to protect him any where he happened to find himself with his wealth. There is no better place than Africa, his original home. The Negros of the world should concentrate on making money and in using part of it for helping to establish an independent nationalism in Africa. . . The thoughtful and industrious of our race want to go back to Africa, because we realize it will be our only hope of permanent existence. We cannot all go in a day or in a year, ten or twenty years. It will take time under the rule of modern economics, to entirely or largely depopulate a country of a people, who have been its residents for centuries, but we feel that with proper help for fifty years, the problem can be solved. . . . Men, there is much to live for, and there is much to die for. The man, the race of nation that is not prepared to risk life itself for the possession of an ideal, shall lose that ideal. If you, I repeat, must be free, you yourselves must strike the blow. . . . Any sane man, race or nation that desires freedom must first of all think in terms of blood. Why even the Heavenly Father tells us that ‘without the shedding of blood there can be no remission of sins.’ Then how in the name of God, with history before us, do we expect to redeem Africa without preparing ourselves, some of us to die. . . . LEADERSHIP means everything PAIN, BLOOD, DEATH. Let Africa be our guiding Star, OUR STAR OF DESTINY. . .” ― Marcus Mosiah Garvey

RAYFORD LOGAN - 1945

“Is it too utterly fantastic to conceive that black men will one day perfect an atomic bomb? No, it is not. I can picture an international conference, not more than twenty-five years from now, in which a black delegate will rise and declare: ‘Gentlemen: five hundred years is long enough for any people to be held in bondage, degraded, spit upon, exploited, disfranchised, segregated, lynched. Here is the formula for a home-manufactured atomic bomb. Give us liberty, or we will give you death.” - Rayford Logan, Coordinator of the 2nd Pan African Congress and  chief advisor to the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) on international affairs, The Negro in the Post-War Period, 1945

OMOWALE MALCOLM X - 1964

“The 22,000,000 so-called Negroes should be separated completely from America and should be permitted to go back home to our African homeland which is a long-range program; so the short-range program is that we must eat while we’re still here, we must have a place to sleep, we have clothes to wear, we must have better jobs, we must have better education; so that although our long-range political philosophy is to migrate back to our African homeland, our short-range program must involve that which is necessary to enable us to live a better life while we are still here.” - Interview with Malcolm X, by A.B. Spellman, Monthly Review, Vol. 16, no.1 May 1964

ETHIOPIAN EMPEROR HAILE SELASSIE I. KING OF KINGS, LORD OF LORDS, CONQUERING LION OF JUDAH, ELECT OF GOD - 1966

“For a number of years now the problem of South West Africa has become the major concern of the African countries. Liberia and Ethiopia, as former members of the League of Nations, acting on behalf of all African States, had sued South Africa for violating her mandate in South-West Africa by introducing the policy of apartheid into that territory and by failing in her obligation to promote the interest of the African population. After six years of litigation, the International Court of Justice decided that the two states did not establish legal status in the case to stand before the Court, thus reversing its judgment of jurisdiction given in 1962. This unfortunate decision has profoundly shaken the high hopes that mankind had placed in the International Court of Justice. The faith man had that justice can be rendered is shattered and the cause of Africa betrayed.” - Ethiopian Emperor Haile Selassie I at the opening session of the OAU on November 6, 1966

NEELY FULLER JR. - 1984

“For victims of white supremacy, your intermediate goal towards the production of universal man and universal woman - and there’s two things you set as a goal when you start out in resisting white supremacy and trying to eliminate it and replace it with justice, and that is 1) replace white supremacy with justice between people or kill all of the non-white people of the known universe. That’s what you are trying to force the white supremacist to do. Why? Because whatever you do to oppose them, if they’re not going to go along with it that’s what they are going to do anyway. If they are going to kill all the non-white people of the known universe, you want to put them in that position where they have to make that decision. Either replace the system of racism with justice - that’s one thing they can do, because that’s what you are trying to force them to do or persuade them to do - and the other thing, if they can’t do that or don’t want to do it, you force them or persuade them to actually kill all of us, the non-white people of the known universe. And it's logical because, if you are opposing something that doesn’t want to be moved, you leave them with no other option. That’s what you want to do - leave them with no other options.”   - Neely Fuller Jr., The United Independent Compensatory Code/System/Concept: A Compensatory Counter-Racist Codified Word Guide

JOHN HENRIK CLARKE - 1993

Pan African Veteran and elder Baba Baye, author of Reflections on 21st Century Pan-Africanism, and the Envisioning of the Pan-African Congresses and the Development of the 6th Region of the African Union told me that he was sitting on a bench with the great John Henrik Clarke who told him that “Pan Africanism had about a 50 year window (2043) before it it would be closed forever.” 

  1. In 1924 Garvey said it would take 100 years (2024) for Afrodescendants to have a strong and powerful nation capable of protecting us. He also said it would take just fifty years (1974) for the industrious of the race to return to Africa to build that nation. He said we must strike the blow and be prepared to die.

  2. In 1945, Rayford Logan predicted that in twenty-five years (1970) we would need to threaten the use of atomic weapons in order to achieve African Liberation. 

  3. In 1964, Malcolm X said that our long range goal was to migrate back to Africa. That was sixty-one years ago.

  4. In 1966, Ethiopian Emperor Haile Selassie I said that “The faith man had that justice can be rendered is shattered and the cause of Africa betrayed.”

  5. John Henrik Clark said Pan Africanism had until 2043. . . . 

  6. Profound sustained efforts by many people have been made at the highest levels at the UN, AU and elsewhere for justice through reparations due for damages inflicted and sustained through 209,342 days  (572 years, 11 months and 4 days) since the Dum Diversas Apostolic Edict declaring total warfare on African peoples. When one reviews the records of the UN and the AU concerning these efforts, it is clear that the major objectives clearly laid out concerning reparations and repatriation have not been met.  Only lip service has been paid and the time for mere talk is up! The powder keg of escalated retaliation and second strikes against our enemies and oppressors, both white and black, must now be lit. We must put them in the position to either replace the system of white supremacy with justice or force them to kill us all! Otherwise, we surrender to white supremacy and alien domination.

IN THE SPIRIT OF RAYFORD LOGAN, IS IT TOO UTTERLY FANTASTIC TO CONCEIVE THAT BLACK MEN WILL ONE DAY, SOONER AS OPPOSED TO LATER, ISSUE A MOBILIZATION ORDER FOR RETALIATORY SECOND STRIKES THAT READS LIKE THIS:

“We have been under attack for more than 209,342 days. Men over the age of seventy (70) years - kiss your wives and children and grandchildren goodbye and set the example of restored  dignity and courage. Destroy critical infrastructure and/or attack government officials wherever you are, both white and black, who have proven themselves enemies of our just cause of Reparations. Follow Neely Fuller’s instruction to kill yourself after killing as many white supremacists as you can. Make the sacrifice of your life joyfully, sparing your children and grandchildren the necessity of giving their lives. Let us see hundreds of thousands of elderly black men dying in courageous fighting and suicide/martyrdom bombings in defence of Reparations since they are soon to die anyway and our only future otherwise is continued perpetual servitude. In remembrance of our courageous and defiant ancestors living on plantations, let our final cry and campaign hashtag be ‘#burncrops’ and ‘#grindglass’.”

RBG +126 DELEGATION STARTS VISIT IN BURKINA FASO, VISITS FRIENDS OF PRESIDENT IBRAHIM TRAORE IN THE WEST (FPITW) HEADQUARTERS

August 3, Ougadougou, Burkina Faso - Fifteen delegates arrived today in Ougadougou to further support from the African Diaspora to the Alliance of Sahel States and especially Burkina Faso President Ibrahim Traore. Members of the delegation which included the organizer Yaw Akyeaw and Special Envoy to Burkina Faso Siphiwe Baleka representing the Friends of President Ibrahimg Traore in the West (FPITW) were received in the VIP room at Ougadougou Thomas Sankara International Airport by Samuel Kalkoumdo, Special Adviser on Social Cohession and National Reconciliation to President Ibrahim Traore and Commandant Karambiri. Joining the delegation was His Majesty Chief Samand Naaba, Samia Nkrumah, daughter of the great President of Ghana, Kwame Nkrumah, Professor Obadele Kambon of Ghana, Dr. Ousmane Camara, Presidential candidate in the upcomming elections in the Ivory Coast, and Ouattara Hayouba, President of the Patriotic Movement Fas First of Burkina Faso (M.P.F.A.) and Secretary General of the Director of the Confederation of Peoples of the Alliance of Sahel States.

After a grand luncheon reception at Hotel Azalai, the delegation was then received by Mrs. Makini Tchameni at the African American Academy.

The delegation ended the tour with a visit to the new office of the Friends of President Ibrahim Traore in the West (FPITW) that will serve as the African Diaspora’s “embassy” in Ougadougou and one-stop-shop for information on how to visit, invest, repatriate, get citizenship and support the Burkinabe revolution and the Alliance of Sahel States.

.

Special Envoy to Burkina Faso Siphiwe Baleka Discusses The Global African Struggle Against US Imperialism, Colonialism and Neo-Colonialism on Time for an Awakening with Brother Elliott

"Time for an Awakening" with Bro. Elliott, Sunday 07/20/2025 at 6:00 PM (EST) guests; Organizer, Special Envoy to Burkina Faso for the Afodescendant Nation, Siphiwe Baleka , and Activist, Jurisconsult, founder of the International Movement for African Reparations, Esther Xosei . As major participants of the July 4th Black Independence Day Program, involving Afrodescendants of the Sixth Region, Afrikans in the U.K., and representative nations from the African Continent, Sister Esther and Brother Siphewe gave their perceptions and insights of the historic event in which they were involved. They also share an overview of the global African struggle against Colonialism and Neo-Colonialism. Always conversation on topics that affect Black people locally, nationally, and internationally.

timeforanawakening.com

LISTEN TO THE INTERVIEW

NEW! CITIZENSHIP UPDATE FOR GUINEA BISSAU, BURKINA FASO AND BENIN

July 15 - Bissau, Guinea Bissau and Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso

Nine (9) more naturalization applications have been completed and are now ready to go before the Republic of Guinea Bissau’s Council of Ministers for final approval. Early this year, twenty people of Guinean origin, as proven by the African Ancestry dna test, were granted citizenship. Five of them have since returned to their ancestral homeland to receive their passports. Another twenty or also being processed and will be ready to go before the Council of Ministers before the end of the summer. For all this, the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights has praised President Umaro Sissoco Embaló.

Siphiwe Baleka, President of the Balanta B’urassa History and Genealogy Society in America (BBHAGSIA) and Coordinator for Guinea Bissau’s Decade of Return program stated,

“More and more people are looking to their ancestral homeland both as a place of refuge and as a place of opportunity. It is among my greatest achievements to have helped so many Afrodescendants exercise their Right to Return and repair the damage of ethnocide and loss of their identity and status in the world. Citizenshp in one’s ancestral homeland is the first reparation that African Union member statess must provide before any reparations from the enslaving nations.”

President Ibrahim Traore and the Republic of Burkina Faso is now joining Ghana, Sierra Leone, Guinea Bissau and Benin in granting Citizenship to Afrodescendants. Yesterday at 10:23 pm, following the Friends of President Ibrahim Traore in the West delegation’s debriefing following their succesful mission to Burkina Faso, the African Diaspora Development Institute (ADDI) announced,

The government of Burkina Faso has confirmed that our ADDI mission trip to include the conferement of Burkina Faso citizenship will take place from October 26th to November 8th, 2025. Come to our zoom meeting Saturday, July 19th at 11:00 am EST to find out more.”

According to the ADDI Website, on January 18, 2025  ADDI announced that President Traore put an executive order in place in which “The government of Burkina Faso has asked ADDI to spearhead a citizenship initiative that invites African Diaspora to apply to be citizens of Burkina Faso.

  1. There will be two Tiers of applications.

    • Tier I=All those who have traced their lineage to Burkina Faso through their DNA.

    • Tier II=Any black Diaspora

The government of Burkina Faso has indicated that the ceremony conferring citizenship will happen in June 2025.” That ceremony has now been confirmed to take place from October 26th to November 8th.

Meanwhile, back in September, 2024, Benin’s President, Patrice Talon, passed a law in September 2024 that gives citizenship to those who can trace their lineage to the slave trade, part of an attempt by the country to reckon with their participation in the slave trade. The way the law works is that anyone over the age of 18 who does not already hold African citizenship and can provide proof that an ancestor was deported via the slave trade anywhere in Sub-Saharan Africa is eligible to become a citizen of Benin. Benin’s authorities will accept a variety of materials, including DNA tests, authenticated testimonies, and family records. Applications will be vetted, applicants will receive a provisional certificate of nationality, which is valid for three years, and in order to complete the process, they must stay in Benin at least once within the three years to become a citizen.

Applications for recognition of Beninese nationality for Afro-descendants must be submitted via the https://afrodescendant.gouv.bj platform. According to the website,

“The provisional certificate of recognition of nationality is issued within one (01) month. Applications for definitive attestation of Beninese nationality by recognition are submitted to the Minister of Justice by the applicant who is physically present on the territory of the Republic of Benin.

The provisional certificate gives the beneficiary freedom of entry, residence and exit from the territory of the Republic of Benin.

Beninese nationality by way of recognition is granted by a decree issued by the Council of Ministers on a proposal from the Minister of Justice. Beninese nationality by recognition confers on the beneficiary :

  - freedom to enter, reside in and leave the territory of the Republic of Benin.

- the right to a certificate of Beninese nationality by recognition and a Beninese passport.

- the right to pass on Beninese nationality to descendants.

Beneficiaries of Beninese nationality by recognition may acquire full Beninese nationality and all the rights attached thereto at any time, in accordance with the legislation on nationality. 

Next Steps Following Historic Mission of the Friends of President Ibrahim Traoré in the West Delegation

July 10 - The Friends of President Ibrahim Traoré in the West (FPITW) delegation has returned from its historic mission to Burkina Faso.

A virtual debrief on Monday, July 14 at 8:00 PM EST has been scheduled where the Delegation will share highlights and extraordinary insights from their recent historic journey to Burkina Faso. This briefing will provide an inside look at our experiences on the ground, key findings, and the meaningful connections forged with leaders and communities.

Join the July 14 Virtual Debrief Zoom Meeting a 8:00 PM EST:
https://us06web.zoom.us/j/87284524405?pwd=z170AEDg4kUCOnY5ZAfmaK1Qn9CgfP.1&jst=2

Afrodescendant Special Envoy to Burkina Faso, Mr. Siphiwe Baleka and Afrodescendant Nation Lead Counsel Harriet AbuBakr with Burkina Faso Minister of Foreign Affairs Mr. Karamoko Traoré in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso.

Already many are already asking, “what’s next?” During our meeting with the Burkina Faso Minister of Foreign Affairs Mr. Karamoko Traoré, it was agreed that a “broad framework” for engagement was the next order of business. Here are some important developments:

  1. FPITW has opened an office inside the École Américaine de Ouagadougou to serve as the headquarters for activities in support of Burkina Faso, its people and its President and thereby to assist in supporting the Alliance of Sahel States.

2. The École Américaine de Ouagadougou (The African American Academy) is offering an exciting global opportunity available to passionate young people in our community: the Teach For Africa Fellowship Program.

Through this paid fellowship that includes competitive local stipend plus housing assistance and flight reimbursement for a two year commitment, recent graduates and aspiring leaders have the chance to teach at an African-centered schoo in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso, gain international work experience, and contribute to empowering youth through education. Fellows receive professional training, mentorship, and support while immersing themselves in African culture and making a lasting impact.

The African American Academy is currently recruiting talented individuals from our local community who:
Hold a Bachelor’s degree (any field)
Are passionate about leadership, youth development, and Africa
Are eager to grow personally and professionally through global experience

No teaching experience is required—comprehensive training is provided.

This program can help transform the lives of many promising young people in our community.

For more details or to apply, please visit www.aaa-bf.org or email admin@aaa-bf.org with any questions.

3. The next delegation, consisting of sixteen people, will take place August 3-10 for a Diaspora Business and Investment Forum and will again meet with the Minister of Foreign Affairs, H.E. Karamoko Traoré. Out of this tangible investment and development initiated by Afrodescendants must be realized because this is what Burkina Faso needs now.

4. FIPAN (Nguekhokh International Pan -African Festival) 2025 in Burkina Faso (Ouagadougou) will be held from October 1 to October20,

* What is Fipan?

The Fipan or International Pan -African Festival of Nguekhokh, is a great gathering of economic, political, social and cultural actors on the continent, and, of its diasporas in order to discuss and propose solutions on issues and news challenges.

It is a framework for reflections, proposals and actions for which, basic organizations, must harmonize their approaches for more impact at the community level.

Our ideal is the construction of an African federal state, however this process requires coordinated actions conducted by Pan -African civil society, before leaning on the institutional and political scheme existing adapted to African realities.

* When and where did the FIPAN were born?

The FIPAN is set up in 2015 in the commune of Nguékhokh in the city of Mbour in Senegal, to offer a framework for reunion and exchanges to Pan -Africanism.

* Fipan vision

FIPAN is intended to be a geopolitical and diplomatic instrument of peoples, built around culture, art, by allowing an interconnection between actors, between institutions and between policies to lead to a concrete fusion in a dynamic process of endogenous development.

It is a school, to participate in mental deconstruction and ideological training by pooling achievements and experiences.

* Who participates in the fipan?

More than 20 African delegations and diasporas.

Cultural actors, craftsmen, artists, politicians, students, students, sociologists, guarantors of African ancestral values ​​... (all social components).

* Where and when will the 10th edition be held?

The 10th will be held in Ouagadougou capital of Burkina Faso, from October 01 to 20, 2025.

* What will this 10th edition wear?

For this 10th edition of the FIPAN, the main theme will focus on:

The challenges of economic sovereignty, practical case: alliance of the states of the Sahel (AES)

* What activities are planned?

- Conferences- Debates - Panels

-Ciné-forum

-Theatres-concert-taders

-Avisit of historical sites

-Righty

-Foire -Exposition

-Arebres to palaver etc ...

5. Burkina Faso may be holding the next Pan African Congress in May of 2026. On April 5, 2025, following the proposal submitted by Siphiwe Baleka, the Governing Council of the Global Pan African Movement (GPAM) officially proposed that the Alliance of Sahel states sponsor the Congress to be hosted in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso. The letter to President Traoré stated,

“In addition to majority support within the Governing Council, we/I received an overwhelming mandate from the Latin American/Caribbean Regional Preparatory Conference for 8th PAC which convened on the 30th of March, 2025, to approach Your Excellency and request through your Office, that the Confederation of Sahel States co-host the 8th Pan African Congress over a period of five days toward the end of November in Ougadougou.”

It has been reported to this author that Traoré administration has initially agreed although there is now some debate about the original date which might not be enough time for proper organizing and which would directly conflict with the 9th Pan African Congress that is planed to be held in Lome, Togo from December 8 to the 12. Thus, the new date of May 2026 is being discussed for Burkina Faso and we pray that this comes to fruition.

Join the July 14 Virtual Debrief Zoom Meeting a 8:00 PM EST:
https://us06web.zoom.us/j/87284524405?pwd=z170AEDg4kUCOnY5ZAfmaK1Qn9CgfP.1&jst=2