Professor Adekeye Adebajo and Dr. Tafadzwa Mushonga from the Centre for the Advancement of Scholarship joined Professor Maano Ramutsindela, UP-UCT Future Africa Research Chair in Sustainability Transformations; Professor Frank Matose from the Department of Sociology and the Environmental Humanities South Centre, University of Cape Town; and Dr. Justice Alfred Mavedzenge, Senior Legal Advisor and Programs Director at the Africa Judges & Jurists Forum, for a panel discussion titled “Socio-Ecological Debt: Options for Reparation.

The event took place on 28 May 2025 at Future Africa as part of Africa Week 2025: Global Security, Global Africa, held from 25–30 May 2025.

Professor Adekeye Adebajo (left) and Dr Tafadzwa Mushonga (centre) alogside Professor Frank Matose, Dr Justice Mavedzenge and Professor Maano Ramutsindela at Africa Week 2025.

This session was premised on the African Union’s designation of 2025 as the Year of Reparations, an initiative that underscores the importance of reparatory justice. It built on a long history of pan-African struggles for restitution and the restoration of the dignity of Africans on the continent and in the diaspora. The panel expanded the conception of reparation beyond human-centered debt to include environmental damage and its impact on African societies. Framing this as a “socio-ecological debt” owed to Africa, the discussion explored reparative options for both historical and ongoing socio-environmental injustices.

Professor Adebajo’s presentation drew from his recently launched book, The Black Atlantic’s Triple Burden: Slavery, Colonialism and Reparation. He outlined the evolution of the reparation movement across pan-African contexts, tracing the enduring legacies of five centuries of European-led slavery and colonialism in Africa, the Caribbean, and the Americas. He discussed multiple dimensions of reparation—including moral and symbolic reparation, restitution, and compensation—for what are widely recognized as crimes against humanity.

Dr. Tafadzwa Mushonga focused on the violence inflicted on people in the name of conservation, framing it as part of the ecological debt owed to African communities. She proposed a range of reparative options, including narrative justice, ideological justice, the introduction of care and mediation into ranger training and responsibilities, repairing the relationships between people, land, and institutions, and embedding principles of reparation into conservation law.