This Friday, 1 August , the global African community gathers virtually and in person to mark a powerful milestone—the 30th commemoration of African Remembrance Day (ARD). From 1:00 PM to 4:00 PM, participants from across the country will convene for a solemn and profound ceremony hosted by the London Museum, Docklands, a site historically situated in one of Britain’s former centres of transatlantic slavery, finance and logistics.
This year’s theme, “Unforgotten: Black History, Resistance & the War on Memory,” serves as a call to remembrance, resistance, and the re-anchoring of truth in the face of systemic historical erasure, threatened by President Trump’s 2025 Project and other global initiatives cutting funds for Black History Month and Black Studies programmes..
Honouring the Forgotten: Remembering the Dead and the Dispossessed
African Remembrance Day was established three decades ago to confront the silences surrounding one of humanity’s greatest atrocities—the enslavement, commodification, and brutal exploitation of African peoples. This day does not merely remember the transatlantic Middle Passage, but equally lifts up the stories of those victims of slavery and colonial conquest within the African continent and to the Eastern world, across Arabia and the Indian Ocean, whose narratives are often obscured in Western-centric historiography.
The centrepiece of this year’s ceremony remains the three minutes of silence observed at 3:00 PM—a minute each to honour the victims of enslavement in the Americas, Africa, and Asia. This shared moment of stillness transcends geography and time zones, uniting dispersed descendants of the African world in a solemn pact of memory. It is a reminder that despite the dismembering violence of slavery, colonialism, and racial capitalism, there remains an enduring spiritual and cultural bond among African-descended peoples across the globe.
A Year of Reflection, Resistance, and Reconnection
The 30th anniversary of ARD in 2025 concludes a year of thought-provoking conversations, educational programs, and transnational engagements that have reanimated public understanding of the legacy of African enslavement. These events have included landmark dialogues such as “How Many Gone? Counting the Victims,” an attempt to reckon with the full scale of the human loss and cultural devastation wrought by slavery; “African Remembrance Day and the Story of Remembrance in the UK”, exploring why it took until 1994 and ARD for the victims to be remembered in the UK; “New Doors of Return,” which invited diasporic Africans to revisit and reimagine ancestral connections severed by the slave trade; and “Crimes Without Criminals,” which interrogated the persistent impunity that shields the architects and profiteers of slavery from accountability.
Equally powerful was “Surviving Slavery,” a program that explored not only the structural legacies of the horror of survival but also the resilience, and cultural productivity of African peoples in the face of dehumanisation. These activities have underscored a critical truth: African Remembrance Day is not just a day of mourning—it is a day of resistance, a declaration that the lives of the enslaved were not expendable, and their stories are not lost to time.
‘Unforgotten’: The Struggle Against Historical Erasure
The 2025 theme, “Unforgotten: Black History, Resistance & the War on Memory,” evokes a sober warning: the forgetting of Black history is not accidental—it is strategic. The suppression of slavery’s realities, the marginalisation of Black contributions, and the rebranding of colonial conquest as civilization are tools in a broader struggle over historical narrative. African Remembrance Day stands as a bulwark against this erasure, reminding us that the fight for reparative justice begins with truth-telling.
In an era where debates over curriculum, museum representation, and public monuments continue to rage—especially in Europe and the Americas—ARD 2025 issues a firm reminder: memory is political. To remember is to reclaim. To forget is to repeat. The war on memory is not only about what is excluded from textbooks but about whose pain is legible, whose freedom struggles are honoured, and whose humanity is validated.
This makes the hosting of ARD 2025 at the London Museum Docklands particularly poignant. Once a hub of imperial wealth accumulation—built directly on the backs of enslaved African labour—the space now transforms into a sanctuary of truth, remembrance, and radical education. It is an invitation to confront the ghosts of empire and to reimagine the future with accountability and justice at the core.
A Global Family, A Shared Commitment
African Remembrance Day 2025 reaffirms the existence of a global African family, interconnected not only by a shared history of suffering but also by common aspirations for healing, justice, and renaissance. Whether one’s ancestors were trafficked through the Middle Passage, enslaved and colonised on the African continent, or subjected to racial subjugation in the Eastern world, ARD affirms a collective destiny. It urges renewed commitment to reparations, to structural redress, and to narrative sovereignty—the right of African peoples to define and tell their histories.
It also recognises the profound intergenerational toll of enslavement and racial violence: psychological trauma, spiritual dislocation, and economic exclusion. Yet alongside this toll is the unbroken chain of resistance: maroon societies, abolitionist revolts, anti-colonial movements, civil rights struggles, and today’s global demands for reparatory justice and decolonisation.
In this light, ARD 2025 is not merely commemorative—it is strategic. It is part of an ongoing movement to institutionalise remembrance, to embed the memory of slavery into national consciousness, and to ensure that the journey from trauma to transformation continues with urgency and purpose.
The Work Ahead: From Remembrance to Reparations
While 30 years of African Remembrance Day is a powerful achievement, the journey is far from over. Commemoration must now feed into policy, public accountability, and transnational justice mechanisms. The stories we tell must shape the laws we make, the reparations we demand, and the futures we build.
As such, ARD 2025 calls on governments, institutions, educators, and civil society to move beyond symbolism. It calls for action—on memorialization, on education reform, on cultural restitution, and on concrete economic and social redress. Only then can remembrance be meaningful.
Call to Action
Participants and supporters of ARD 2025 are encouraged to register, attend, and promote the event, sharing its message widely across their networks. The ceremony will be recorded for later online hosting on You Tube, to be accessed by all who seek to honour African ancestors and deepen their engagement with the legacy of slavery. Whether you are an educator, artist, activist, student, policymaker, or member of the African diaspora, your presence adds to the chorus affirming that African lives, past and present, matter—and that justice deferred is justice denied.
In remembering the dead, we honour the living. In fighting the war on memory, we reclaim our past, our truth, and our future.