This week, a 15-member African royal delegation will visit Jamaica to discuss how the trans-Atlantic slave trade affected the continent.
Sir Hilary Beckles, Vice-Chancellor of the University of the West Indies (UWI), made the announcement while speaking at yesterday’s Reparations Forum in Grenada, where descendants of Sir John Trevelyan and his wife Louisa Simond apologized for their ancestor’s role in the slave trade.
Beckles stated that the arrival of the seven kings and eight queens would continue the discussions begun by the Trevelyans’ apology.
Among the topics to be covered will be how African monarchs played a role in selling their fellow Africans to colonizers to work as slaves on plantations in the United States and the Caribbean.
Beckles observed that the slave trade “ravaged” many of the African monarchies that had flourished for centuries prior to colonialism.
