The bill is due: Africa demands colonial justice now |
For decades, the demand for colonial reparations in Africa was treated by Western capitals as a rhetorical exercise—a radical plea from the fringes that could be safely ignored or pacified with vague “expressions of regret.” By the end of 2025 the era of Western comfort officially ended in Algiers.
With the adoption of the Algiers Declaration, the African Union (AU) has moved from moral grievance to a structured legal offensive. The declaration, born from the International Conference on the Crimes of Colonialism (Nov 30 – Dec 1), provides the first concrete roadmap for the AU’s 2025 theme: Justice through reparations. It demands the codification of colonialism as a crime against humanity in international law, the restitution of plundered wealth, and an audit of the “ecological debt”.
The ink on the declaration was barely dry before Algeria, the conference host and the historic “Mecca of Revolutionaries,” took the first sovereign step. On December 24, the Algerian National Assembly voted overwhelmingly to criminalize French colonial rule (1830–1962).
In a session described by Parliamentary Speaker Brahim Boughali as a “day written in letters of gold,” the Algerian People’s National Assembly unanimously passed a landmark law formally criminalizing 132 years of French colonial rule. This rigid legal statute categorizes 27 specific types of crimes—ranging from mass summary executions to the “ecological genocide” of Saharan nuclear testing.
By turning the spirit of the Algiers Declaration into domestic law, Algiers is signalling to Brussels and Paris that the “Decade of Reparations” is not a suggestion—it is an ultimatum. As Africa increasingly leverages its role in a shifting global order, the question........