Each year on May 25th, Africa Day marks a powerful moment of reflection and celebration across the continent and the diaspora. It commemorates the founding of the Organization of African Unity (OAU) in 1963, now known as the African Union (AU), and honors the vision of a united, independent, and self-determined Africa.
This year, Africa Day arrives at a time when the continent is brimming with both challenges and potential. From Nairobi to Dakar, from Addis Ababa to Johannesburg, a new generation of Africans is reshaping the narrative by fighting for justice, innovating in tech and art, reclaiming ancestral knowledge, and championing Pan-African ideals.
This year’s theme, “Justice for Africans and People of African Descent Through Reparations”, calls us to confront centuries of exploitation, enslavement, land theft, and systemic violence. It calls us to speak of justice not as an abstract hope, but as a tangible right. A right long denied, and one we must now boldly demand.
At Zeda, we believe in storytelling as resistance, and today, we tell the truth about the debt the world owes to Africa, and about the rising generations who are done asking politely.
Reparations Are About More Than Money
When we talk about reparations, we’re talking about stolen futures. We’re talking about the wealth built from African bodies and land. The knowledge extracted and never credited. The borders drawn to divide us. The traditions erased. The families broken. The languages lost.
Reparations mean restitution, but they also mean healing, rebuilding, and returning power to African communities globally. That includes land back. That includes education rooted in our own histories. That includes restoring dignity to those whose stories have been silenced.
Telling Our Stories, On Our Terms
From Nairobi to Accra, Johannesburg to the diaspora, African women and youth are pushing for radical truth-telling. We’re challenging museums to return looted artifacts. We’re calling out global financial systems built on colonial theft. We’re reimagining justice, not just as punishment, but as repair.
This Africa Day, we center those voices. The descendants of enslaved Africans. The Indigenous communities displaced for profit. The women whose labour built nations, but whose names were never recorded. Their stories are the foundation of any reparation that can claim to be just.
The Power of Collective Memory
Africa Day is not only a commemoration. It is a reclamation. A time to remember our revolutions, our ancestors, and our collective strength. It is a moment to reconnect across the continent and the diaspora, to remind the world that African people are not relics of history. We are architects of the future.
Justice looks like access. Like truth in textbooks. Like economic systems that don’t bleed us dry. Like global institutions held accountable. Like creative platforms, like Zeda, that amplify our stories, our struggles, and our joy.
Where We Go From Here
We celebrate Africa Day not as a symbolic nod to unity, but as a strategic step toward freedom. Reparations are not charity. They are a right. And they are non-negotiable.Today, we remember. We resist. We reclaim.
Happy Africa Day 2025, from all of us at Zeda. Here’s to justice, to memory, and to a future where Africa can own what is ours and get back what was taken from us.
