Africa’s demand for justice: Understanding the Algiers Declaration

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”.

- MUSTAFA FETOURI

A MAN walks past a mural depicting French President Emmanuel Macron with a hand around his neck and the words “Western countries need to pay reparations to Africans” and “The West needs to reimburse €50 billion to Africa” written, in Dakar, in March last year. | AFP

(AFP)

By the end of 2025, the era of Western comfort officially ended in Algiers. With the adoption of the Algiers Declaration, the AU has moved from moral grievance to a structured legal offensive.

The declaration, born from the International Conference on the Crimes of Colonialism (November 30 to December 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 criminalise 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 criminalising 132 years of French colonial rule.

This rigid legal statute categorises 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.