Ghana’s Special Envoy for Reparations, Dr. Ekwow Spio-Garbrah, has offered a first detailed account of how his office is being built, describing the slow but deliberate work of laying institutional foundations for the country’s reparations agenda and explaining why the office has been placed inside Osu Castle.
Speaking in an interview with Umaru Sanda on Channel One TV, Spio-Garbrah said that since his appointment in October 2025, his primary task has been establishing the structures needed to make the mandate operational. “The first thing is institutional development. You have to establish an office, you have to have a few people to help you, staff, to begin developing the documentation,” he said. He acknowledged that the pace of progress has been affected by delays in funding, which has slowed recruitment and operations.
The office’s location was a deliberate choice. “My offices are based in the Osu Castle, the old castle, which is also part of the Office of the President,” he said, describing the site as carrying layered significance. “It is very institutional, it is very representational, it is very symbolic. This office used to be occupied by the colonial masters, and now it is being used in work linked to addressing the legacy of slavery and injustice.”
Spio-Garbrah also addressed the continental context, noting that the reparations movement was already well advanced before his appointment. He said he had previously been named the African Union (AU) Champion on Reparations before being appointed Special Envoy by President Mahama. “Fortunately, there was already a pent-up interest in reparations within Africa based on all the things that W.E.B. Du Bois and George Padmore and others have spoken and written about all over the years,” he said.
He noted that the AU had designated Ghana as the centre of this work, with conferences in 2023 and 2024 already having built awareness and momentum across the continent.
The AU has designated the period from 2026 to 2036 as the AU Decade of Reparations, marking a shift from symbolic advocacy to structured implementation, with President Mahama serving as the AU Champion for Reparations.
