ROYALS FROM AFRICA TO VISIT THE CARIBBEAN TO DISCUSS IMPACTS OF SLAVERY

Caribbean reparations leader Hilary Beckles (Photo from Cornell Chronicle)

March 6, 2023 | By Colin O. Jarrett |

A royal delegation from Africa is expected to visit Jamaica this week to hold discussions about how the trans-Atlantic slave trade affected the continent.

The 15-member team; consisting of seven kings and eight queens, will continue discussions that started with the Trevelyans’ apology. Sir Hilary Beckles, Vice-Chancellor of the University of the West Indies, UWI, revealed this as he gave remarks at Monday’s Reparations Forum in Grenada where the descendants of Sir John Trevelyan and his wife Louisa Simond apologized for their ancestors’ role in the slave trade.

Among the topics to be discussed will include how African monarchs played a role in selling their fellow Africans to colonisers to work as slaves on plantations across the Americans and the Caribbean. “The slave trade “ravaged” many of the African monarchies that prospered for centuries before colonialism” Beckles noted.