African Pan-African activists and speakers have called on the continent’s youth to intensify the campaign for debt cancellation, reparations, resource sovereignty and economic independence, arguing that Africa must use the current shifts in the global geopolitical order to break from systems of economic and political dependency.The call was made at the Youth Forum on Debt and Reparations, held at the ISSER Conference Hall, University of Ghana, Legon, Accra, on Saturday, September 5, under the theme “Reclaiming Africa’s Wealth, Resisting Neocolonial Bondage.”The forum brought together prominent voices including Dr Abu Sakara Foster, who chaired the event, veteran journalist Kwesi Pratt Jnr, and Pan-African Progressive Front Head of Headquarters, Humfrey Quaye.In his opening remarks, Dr Abu Sakara said the current disruption to the global economic and geopolitical order presented a rare opportunity for Africa to challenge structures that had historically restricted its development.He said although Africans were no longer bound by the physical chains of slavery and colonialism, economic and political systems continued to limit their trade opportunities and ability to fully exploit their own resources.Dr Abu Sakara urged young Africans to act before the current global instability gives way to another international arrangement that could once again constrain the continent.He also called for stronger and more meaningful integration between Africa and its diaspora, advocating the creation of communities in Africa that would allow people of African descent returning from abroad to become fully integrated into African societies over generations.Kwesi Pratt Jnr argued that the reparations agenda must not be reduced to financial compensation or symbolic gestures such as the return of artefacts and human remains.He said the ultimate objective should be to “reset” the global system and create an international order in which all people are treated equally regardless of race or geographical location.“What we demand is not compensation. What we demand is equal rights,” Mr Pratt said.He urged African countries to take greater control of their natural resources, warning that the continent’s gold, bauxite, diamonds, lithium and other minerals were finite and could not be recovered once extracted.He also criticised the colonial orientation of some African infrastructure, particularly railway networks designed to move minerals from resource-rich areas to ports, and called for infrastructure to instead support domestic processing, industrialisation and economic development.Mr Pratt further rejected attempts to frame social struggles primarily as conflicts between generations, arguing that disadvantaged youth have common interests with exploited workers and older people facing poverty and inadequate public services.“The struggle is not about age. The struggle is about ending exploitation and oppression,” he said.Humfrey Quaye said Africa’s debt crisis should be understood within the wider history of slavery, colonialism and the extraction of African labour, knowledge, land and resources.“The so-called debt crisis of Africa is not an accident, neither is it an African creation,” he said.He said the Pan-African Progressive Front had been building structures to advance the reparations agenda, including its international headquarters in Accra and networks linking progressive organisations across Africa, the Caribbean and the Black Diaspora.Mr Quaye highlighted the Accra Declaration, which focuses on resource sovereignty, industrialisation, agricultural transformation and financial independence, as well as a Special Accra Declaration on Reparations.He said proposed mechanisms included a Joint Institute for the Assessment of Damage and Documentation of the Colonial Legacy, a Pan-African Reparations Justice Fund, and continued demands for the return of African cultural artefacts held abroad.Mr Quaye said the next stage of the Pan-African struggle must be driven by young people, drawing parallels with the young activists who participated in the Fifth Pan-African Congress in Manchester in 1945.He linked the reparations debate to contemporary challenges facing African youth, including unemployment, student debt and the influence of international financial institutions over national economic policies.He called for the cancellation of what he described as “odious debt” and payment of Africa’s “reparatory debt”, while urging young people to organise across campuses, communities and digital platforms.He also tasked them with developing a Youth Chapter of the Accra Declaration and supporting campaigns for national and regional reparations bodies.The speakers broadly agreed that Africa must move beyond dependency and pursue a development model based on self-reliance, resource ownership, industrialisation, stronger Pan-African cooperation and reparative justice.Dr Abu Sakara said the present global power shifts offered an opening that Africa’s youth must seize.Mr Pratt maintained that reparations should produce structural changes in the international system, while Mr Quaye called for organised continental action to secure debt justice and institutionalise the reparations process.The forum ended with a strong call for African youth to turn the growing international discussion on slavery, colonialism, debt and reparations into practical action aimed at securing economic sovereignty and a more equitable global order.