A15-member royal delegation from Africa will visit Jamaica this week to hold discussions about how the trans-Atlantic slave trade affected the continent.
Sir Hilary Beckles, Vice-Chancellor of the University of the West Indies (UWI), revealed this as he gave remarks at yesterday’s Reparations Forum in Grenada where the descendants of Sir John Trevelyan and his wife Louisa Simond apologised for their ancestor’s role in the slave trade.
Beckles said the arrival of the seven kings and eight queens would continue discussions that started with the Trevelyans’ apology.
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.
Beckles noted the slave trade “ravaged” many of the African monarchies that prospered for centuries before colonialism.