Vice-Chancellor of the University of the West Indies Sir Hilary Beckles has disclosed that a 15-member royal delegation from Africa will visit Jamaica this week to hold discussions about how the trans-Atlantic slave trade affected the continent.  

He made that disclosure when he spoke at yesterday’s Reparations Forum in Grenada where the descendants of Sir John Trevelyan and his wife Louisa Simond apologized for their ancestor’s role in the slave trade.

Beckles revealed that the arrival of the seven kings and eight queens would continue discussions that started with the Trevelyans’ apology, recalling that the slave trade ravaged many of the African monarchies that “prospered for centuries before colonialism

How African monarchs played a role in selling their fellow Africans to colonizers to work as slaves on plantations across the Americans and the Caribbean are among the topics to be discussed.

Beckles noted the slave trade “ravaged” many of the African monarchies that prospered for centuries before colonialism.