Barbadian Prime Minister Mia Mottley has just done what she’s really good at: thrown a cat among the pigeons.
On her way home from the COP28 climate summit in Dubai, she stopped off to tell the Brits that her country was owed $4.9-trillion by slave-owning nations.
As always, the delightful Mottley was reasonable. “We’re not expecting that the reparatory damages will be paid in a year, or two, or five because the extraction of wealth and the damages took place over centuries,” reported the Guardian on her address to her alma mater, the London School of Economics. “But we are demanding that we be seen and that we are heard.”
The $4.9-trillion wasn’t a curiously unrounded, random figure. It was based on in-depth calculations by the Brattle Group, which has interrogated the wealth and GDP amassed by countries that enslaved African people. Mottley reckons the UK owes $24-trillion in reparations to 14 countries affected by transatlantic slavery. Spain owes $17.1-trillion, France $9.2-trillion and the Netherlands $4.86-trillion.
Having got everyone’s attention, she hastened to provide some comfort. “These numbers, if taken out of context, can appear to be staggering. But in relation to the total wealth accumulated over a period of time, the numbers are actually minuscule,” said Mottley. She then referred to King Charles’s speech in Rwanda last year, during which he indicated a willingness to talk about the appalling legacy of slavery.
Charles isn’t the only European king to publicly acknowledge slavery’s enduring impact. In July, King Willem-Alexander of the Netherlands asked for forgiveness for his country’s role in slavery. Belgium’s King Philippe has expressed “deep regret” for that country’s vile colonisation of the Democratic Republic of Congo.
While Mottley hasn’t included the US on her slavery tab, it needs to be placed firmly there. In Born in Blackness, his deeply moving and utterly disturbing account of the interactions between the US, Atlantic Europe and Africa in the almost 500 years from 1471 to 1945, US journalist Howard French estimates that the US could owe African Americans payment for 5-billion hours of work.
We’re not expecting that the reparatory damages will be paid in a year, or two, or five because the extraction of wealth and the damages took place over centuries
— Mia Mottley
The figures are impossible to contemplate, almost as much as the horrific stories that lie behind them. Europe-US interaction with Africa crippled the continent’s development for hundreds of years. After slavery came colonisation and finally independence, which has often proved just how devastated local governance systems were.
Of course, if history is anything to go by, it’s unlikely any of the countries will ever get a whiff of the reparatory payments Mottley refers to.
As things stand, Britain is the only country on Mottley’s list that manages to meet the internationally targeted 0.7% of gross national income to be spent on foreign aid. Money is only part of the calculated aid. Development economists reckon that much of this is in the form of materials and manpower sourced from the donor country.
But even if all the implicated countries met the 0.7% target every year, Africa would still be losing out hugely on its interactions with the US and Atlantic Europe given the $50bn-$60bn of illicit financial flows washing out of the continent every year. Adding insult to injury is that it is invariably African and other former colonies that end up on grey- and blacklists, rather than the US or European powerhouses from where much of the illicit flows are controlled.
Even the much-trumpeted $8.5bn (recently upped to $9.3bn) finance package for South Africa’s just energy transition proves to be a little less impressive on closer inspection. Only 4% of that figure — $330m — is in the form of grants; the remainder is a mix of sovereign and multilateral loans and credit guarantees. The loans may enjoy a slightly preferential interest charge, but they do have to be repaid.
Competing to be seen to shower generosity on the developing world, earlier this year French President Emmanuel Macron hosted the New Global Financing Pact summit in Paris. No country should have to choose between tackling poverty and dealing with climate change, Macron told the 50 or so global leaders — predominantly from the developing world — attending the summit. Reasonable enough, given that most of the countries having to make that choice had little to do with creating the climate crisis.
Assistance in the hundreds of billions of dollars was talked about. It’s early days, but what do you think are the chances of anything materialising?
Meanwhile, as the citizens of Mottley’s victim states search the horizon for signs of any money trickling in, one thing certain to come steamrolling over that horizon is the EU’s carbon tax.
That kicks in in 2026 and the African Development Bank reckons it will cost the continent $25bn a year. So much for being seen and heard.
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