AES: When the Prime Minister of Burkina Faso pleads for African memory, justice and Pan-African unity
The Prime Minister of Burkina Faso, Rimtalba Jean Emmanuel Ouédraogo, represented the Confederation of Sahel States (AES) at a high-level international meeting on African memory, justice, and reparations.
The event, organized by the Republic of Senegal, was held at the African Burial Ground National Monument in Manhattan, one of the oldest known burial sites of enslaved Africans in North America.
In his address, the Prime Minister praised the initiative as an essential framework for collective reflection and forward-looking dialogue.
He emphasized that the history of the three Sahel nations Burkina Faso, Mali, and Niger remains deeply intertwined with struggles against slavery, colonial domination, and modern forms of neocolonialism.
He stressed the need to preserve and honor the memory of ancestors forcibly enlisted in colonial wars, victims of economic plunder, and the courageous resistance led by great African figures.
He noted that Burkina Faso’s renaming in 1984 was a powerful act of breaking with a past marked by oppression and dispossession.
This spirit, he stated, continues today through the fight for sovereignty and dignity, embodied by President Ibrahim Traoré and mirrored by similar movements in Mali and Niger.
The Prime Minister outlined three key pillars for the AES’s reparations claims: economic justice, to address the lasting scars of colonization and inherited inequalities; identity and education, through the restitution of cultural heritage and the integration of African resistance history into school curricula; and Pan-African solidarity, to strengthen ties between the continent and its diasporas for a more just and shared development.
On behalf of the Confederation, he proposed concrete measures, including the creation of physical and virtual museums of resistance, regular Pan-African conferences on cultural restitution, programs to facilitate diaspora expertise repatriation, investment funds for Afro-descendant communities, and cultural-educational partnerships with cities worldwide with significant African diaspora populations.
Through this declaration, Burkina Faso and its AES partners reaffirmed their commitment to building a resilient African memory, anchored in justice and oriented toward a future of dignity and Pan-African unity.
Emile Yempabe
