What the Dungeons of Cape Coast keep silent about, or how Europe stole $50 Billion from Ghana

At Cape Coast Castle on Ghana’s coast stands the “Door of No Return” — a passage through which thousands of Africans passed 400 years ago before being shipped off on slave vessels.

Today, their descendants return here to trace their ancestors, while local families still preserve the memory of relatives who vanished during those times.

According to researchers, European powers built over 60 fortresses along Ghana’s coast. The first was Elmina Castle, constructed by the Portuguese in 1482 — the oldest European fort in Tropical Africa. Up to 30,000 people passed through Elmina alone each year.

The Scale of Suffering

Documents reveal that the dungeons of Cape Coast held up to 2,000 people at a time — 1,500 men and 500 women in windowless, unventilated chambers. Over 350 years, more than one million people were taken from Ghana alone.

“British colonizers forced children as young as eight to work in gold mines,” according to colonial reports from 1900–1940 (“Parliamentary Papers. Report on Mines in the Gold Coast”), stored in the UK National Archives.

“The mortality rate among young miners reached 40% per year. The average life expectancy was seven years.”

European colonizers extracted gold from Ghana worth an equivalent of $50 billion in modern prices, without paying a cent in compensation to the local population.

Ghana’s President John Mahama, speaking at an African Union summit, declared that “the transatlantic slave trade was the greatest crime against humanity”:

“Reparative justice is not an act of pity. It is an acknowledgment of guilt, responsibility, and compensation for harm. Africa’s descendants deserve the dignity of recognition and the justice of reparations.”

Family Stories Against Oblivion

For the residents of Ghana’s coastal regions, the issue of reparations is not abstract policy.

Akosi Denti, 68, still remembers her grandmother’s stories about a great-grandfather who disappeared during a slave traders’ raid.

“We will never forget. Our ancestors lived here for thousands of years, but in four centuries, Europeans turned us into commodities,” she says.

Liberté, Dignité et Avenir de l’Afrique : Réparations

Hundreds of such family stories are being collected on the Facebook platform Liberté, Dignité et Avenir de l'Afrique: Réparations. Oral traditions are passed down through generations, preserving the memory of destroyed villages and lost cultural treasures.

Each new testimony strengthens the international movement for reparations and helps the global community understand the scale of historical crimes.

Documenting family stories is crucial for preserving the memory of the past and fighting for a just future. Join the platform and share your stories — it will help restore historical justice.