President John Dramani Mahama has urged Africans in the diaspora to prioritize unity, noting that the continent and its people have long been divided by manufactured conflicts and harmful stereotypes.
He said this in his address at the Diaspora Summit 2025 on Friday, December 19, at the Accra International Conference Centre(AICC).
“We have been divided by the manufacturing of coups, armed conflicts anti-poverty programs that somehow never eradicate poverty by the selective broadcast of stereotypes. A systemic war of images waged against us with fear,” President Mahama said.
According to his Excellency, the black people have long faced stereotypes and colorism with language and culture reflecting a colonial legacy that links blackness to inferiority, misfortune, and hard labor.
“Black people in the Americas as lazy, drug adult and criminally inclined. And there too is the institution of colorism, the belief that anything black is negative or inferior.
“In Spanish la Negra means black woman, Tener la Negra means to have bad luck. A once popular French expression that went out of vogue but has recently been making a comeback is travailler comme un forçat, which means to work like a slave,” he emphasized during his presentation.
He remarked that translating the term by replacing “slave” with an offensive racial slur only amplifies its force, but once that power is stripped away, the language is likely fabricated stories, leading to loss it effect.
“And it’s often also translated with the word slave being replaced by a more offensive racial slain. But anything in this life once stripped of his power will no longer work. And that is true of slurs and it’s true of stories especially ones that are complete fabrications,” his excellency outlined.
President Mahama further called on Africans to reclaim and transform the narratives imposed by their oppressors, urging them to overturn these strategies to be more intentional about unity than that of division.
“In fact let’s take the entire modest operandi, flip it and reverse it . So I urge you my brothers and sisters let be more intentional about our unity than division,” he advised
Source: Ernest Kelvin Okanta
