President John Mahama has stated that the transatlantic slave trade was engineered to strip Africans of their humanity, stressing that the system was built on false notions of racial superiority.

Delivering remarks at a United Nations event on slavery at the United Nations Headquarters on Tuesday, March 24, he argued that the historical framing of slavery must be reconsidered, beginning with the language used to describe it.

“The entire transatlantic slave trade was designed to deny African people their humanity,” he said, explaining that the system was rooted in a racial hierarchy “with no basis in fact or science” that placed whiteness above blackness.

President Mahama maintained that the use of the term “slave” itself risks erasing the identity and dignity of those who were subjected to the system.

“There is no such thing as a slave. There were human beings who were trafficked and then enslaved,” he said.

“Not if you acknowledge an individual’s humanity and respect their basic rights to dignity.”

He noted that the atrocities committed during the period and the inequalities that followed were made possible because enslaved Africans were viewed as property rather than people.

“The injustices that were born of slavery and carried forward into successive social systems took place because those persons were considered objects, not human beings,” he added.

The president called for a shift in global discourse, urging that conversations about slavery must begin with a deliberate effort to restore the dignity of Africans and recognise the humanity of those who endured it.

“When discussing slavery and its consequences, we must always start by reclaiming the dignity of Africans, the humanity of our ancestors who were enslaved, and, as a matter of course, our own humanity,” he said.