Coming to Terms with the Past? Reparations as a Test for Africa-Europe Relations

The African Union (AU) has declared “Justice for Africans and People of African Descent through Reparations” as its theme for 2025. The AU has a long history of assigning priory themes to specific years and decades to accelerate the achievement of policy priorities. This year’s choice deviates from the relatively general, development-oriented themes of recent years, which have included education, implementation of the African Continental Free Trade Agreement, and food security. Reparations are a more controversial subject in Africa-Europe relations, which is why the selection has surprised many actors on the European side.

The AU will announce specifics on how it intends to work on the theme after its February summit. It is clear, however, that it will focus on transatlantic slavery and the slave trade, in which former colonial powers such as Portugal, the United Kingdom, France, Belgium, the Netherlands, and also Germany played major roles. Although African actors, including state and civil society actors, are broadly supportive of the theme, it is a source of discomfort for many European actors. So far, no official EU position has been agreed on, as the colonial past has been seen as an issue to be dealt with at the member-state level.

During conversations in Addis Ababa, some European actors criticized the “backward-looking” nature of the theme. Others expressed fear that it could be used by other external actors who are not well-disposed to the “West” to stir up further discontent in Africa-Europe relations – a concern that is not unfounded. The political instrumentalization of narratives of decolonisation is growing, with Russia at the forefront. In conjunction with the strong anti-Western rhetoric being put into action by West African governments established through military coups, there is a greater risk that the calls for reparations for colonialism and trans-Atlantic slavery will be used for political gain. Finally, European actors have expressed concerns about the many legal pitfalls associated with negotiations on reparations, which are discussed below – notably the risk of opening the door to a chain of litigation against former colonial powers. Overall, the theme reveals many sensitivities in dealing with the past in Africa-Europe relations.

Although dealing with the past will continue to occupy African and European actors for years to come, this year’s theme can be an opportunity to address historical blind spots that plague actors on both sides. Precisely because the AU theme is rather unlikely to produce a specific and united AU request for European reparations, 2025 is an occasion for both sides to learn to deal with the past more openly and directly. Doing so can reduce opportunities for strategic exploitation by other actors and pave the way for a forward-looking Africa-Europe relationship.

Reparations and the African Union: What to Expect?

Reparations for colonialism are a long-standing demand of civil society organizations, both worldwide and in Africa. Reparations have gained ground in many contexts and organizations, and for injustices beyond colonialism. Widely used in inter-state relations in post–World War Europe, reparations have also been agreed on to address injustices such as the internment of Americans of Japanese ancestry and Canada’s forced assimilation of indigenous children. More recently, the International Criminal Court (ICC) concluded its first reparations pay-out process for victims of rebel violence in the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo.

The AU’s understanding of reparations frames them broadly as addressing “historical crimes and mass atrocities committed against Africans and people of African Descent, including colonization, apartheid, and genocide”. The AU’s predecessor had embraced these calls already in the 1990s. The Organization of African Unity (OAU), African states, citizens, and people of African descent proclaimed in Abuja in 1993 that they were “emphatically convinced that what matters is not the guilt but the responsibility of those states and nations whose economic evolution once depended on slave labor and colonialism, and whose forebears participated either in selling and buying Africans, or in owning them, or in colonizing them”. In recent years, Ghana’s former President Nana Akufo-Addo has taken leadership for this agenda, reportedly pushing for the selection of the topic as an AU theme.

In terms of specific activities, the AU is unlikely to issue a concrete collective demand for reparations within the year, but there will be efforts to better coordinate resources, activities, and attention among African states, the AU, and select non-Western partners. According to AU decisions, a concept note, and a recent press release, activities could include the establishment of a Committee of Experts on Reparations to develop an African Common Position on Reparations, advocacy for a Global Reparations Fund based in Africa to expedite campaigning for reparations, and enhanced partnership with the comparatively more institutionalised CARICOM Reparations Commission in the Caribbean region, and civil society.

In addition, the AU’s approach to reparations is expected to be linked to the AU’s Transitional Justice Policy, giving the engagement some longevity beyond 2025 and holding the potential for conceptual innovation. To date, the large-scale atrocities of colonialism and their legacies are often under-reflected in transitional justice processes on the continent. As the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights argues, colonialism and transitional justice are linked because “societies coming out of armed conflict or those transitioning from violent authoritarianism face major human and peoples’ rights challenges arising from not only the immediate conflict but also the legacies of the past, including most notably colonial rule.” Conversely, the scope of the theme is indeed limited to transatlantic slavery. When it comes to other crucial issues of decolonization, such as land rights, it is not yet clear whether there will be initiatives.

Quantifying Historical Responsibility, Balancing Material and Emotional Needs

Many factors complicate Africa-Europe negotiations on reparations. One is the geographical scope. Finding a consensus position within the European Union (EU), for example, is complicated by weak political will for a European position, but also varying degrees of historical responsibility and complicity. While some countries’ atrocities committed under state colonialism are undisputed, other states feel unconcerned, notably Central and Eastern European member states, which do not have a history of state colonialism in Africa. Still, they are able to shape EU policy on the matter. Against this backdrop, a sense of European collective burden-sharing for historical responsibility is unlikely. However, research has shown that all EU member states have profited to varying degrees from the Europeanization of postcolonial ties, which has contributed to the collective economic success resulting from European integration. Furthermore, elites from European and non-European states that do not have a history of state colonialism have also profited from investments in colonial enterprises.

Moreover, although many on the African continent who think about reparations are focused on European states, not all are. In 1999, the civil society-led African World Reparations and Repatriation Truth Commission called for USD 777 trillion in reparations “from those nations of Western Europe, America and institutions, who participated and benefited from the European Enslavement and Colonization of African Peoples”. Presumably, the new US administration would not receive a call for reparations well. Growing evidence that President Donald Trump might veto the hard-won UK-Mauritius decolonisation deal for the handover of the Chagos Islands, for example, illustrates that decolonization is not a priority for his government. However, exempting the United States from calls for reparations for colonialism and slavery would suggest a historically inaccurate reading of the complex triangular slave trade across the Atlantic.

What is more, reparations for colonialism are more than demands for money. They can comprise various measures that, in combination, seek to address the material and psychological needs of the victims or their descendants. A recent study on the ICC’s Katanga reparations confirms that, in some cases, acknowledgement and reparations played a role in giving the victims a sense of justice. The challenge lies in finding a balance between material redress (i.e. cash payments or pensions, access to health care and housing) and symbolic acts of acknowledgement (i.e. an official apology, memorial acts) in a way that seems fair to both sides. Those agreements can be reached legally in courts or politically through administrative mechanisms. In both cases, there are procedural challenges of how to represent the absent from the past, how to weigh past injustices in contemporary terms, and whom to make reparations to (individuals, collectives, or states). Although colonialism is universally rejected today, it was not illegal at the time, so the victims and their descendants cannot easily rely on contemporary international law to support their claims. Last but not least, the material dimension of reparations often involves litigation and the formal acceptance of responsibility. The risk of setting a precedent for litigation looms large over any negotiation. Nevertheless, the issue is gaining momentum in public opinion, diplomacy, and, partly, the courts.

European Approaches to Dealing with the Colonial Past

Of late, several European leaders have made symbolic gestures of dealing with the colonial past, including apologies on behalf of their countries and returning artefacts. In its recently published policy guidelines for Africa, the German government declares its ambition to intensify efforts to come to terms with the colonial past, including through academic research, restitutions, and critical exchanges with African states and non-state actors. French President Emmanuel Macron has also called for reconciliation and a focus on restitution and cultural diplomacy. The British government has recently declared its controversial intention to consider “non-financial reparations” in the form of multilateral finance reform or debt relief.

European governments, however, have by and large ruled out material reparations. As a result, examples of financial compensation are scarce. Italy, for example, announced in 2008 that it would provide EUR 5 billion for infrastructure projects in Libya, as part of the Libyan-Italian Treaty on Friendship, Partnership and Cooperation, in which Italy followed up its declaration of “regret […] for the suffering caused by Italy’s colonisation of the Libyan people”. However, construction projects have been postponed for years. In 2013, the UK government settled out of court to pay GBP 20 million to victims of torture and abuse during the Mau Mau uprising in Kenya, which it considers final. The German government offered Namibia in 2021 a reconstruction and development support programme worth EUR 1.1 billion as a means of reconciliation for its crimes in its former colony, including the genocide against the Herero and Nama. However, in the face of public protest against the agreement’s perceived shortcomings, the Namibian government has not yet ratified the agreement.

Overall, hardly any agreement has evaded fierce criticism from the affected groups. However, even if examples are few, they show that it is possible to negotiate the past in the context of Africa-Europe relations. Although there is no script for a successful outcome, the limited track record suggests that it is crucial to deal with both the material and emotional dimensions in a way that brings together expectations of justice on both sides. And whereas European concerns tend to focus on the legal consequences, discussions in Addis Ababa highlighted the need to not neglect the emotional dimension.

Looking Ahead

On the European side, it is only recently that the colonial past, let alone reparations, has gained public interest and some prominence on the political agenda. When it comes to the AU theme, it may be tempting for European actors to remain passive – assuming not much will come of the theme – and to leave the year’s activities to civil society actors, museums, and historians. However, certain opportunities lie in taking the theme up in (high-level) diplomacy – for example during the EU-Africa Summit that is planned to be held in Africa in 2025 or 2026. Although the current spirit of the relationship is more about geoeconomics, dealing with the past in a more open and direct way can strengthen the foundations of the relationship.

In 2025, European actors will have to walk a diplomatic tightrope between recognizing the theme’s various dimensions without imposing a particular vision, framing, or outcome, which could be perceived as undue interference and an abuse of unequal diplomatic capacities vis-à-vis the AU. European actors recognizing the responsibilities arising from the past, while demonstrating constructive engagement, can pave the way for a forward-looking Africa-Europe relationship.

On the AU’s side, themes have often failed to achieve demonstrable success. In February, the AU Assembly is expected to adopt a Roadmap for the theme of the year, which should provide some clarity. Additional questions remain though, particularly as to whether Ghana will continue to lead the agenda after the election of President John Mahama, and whether the new AU leadership will prioritize collective activities under the theme, especially when the continent is busy with urgent humanitarian, governance, and security crises.

Dr Ueli Staeger is Assistant Professor of International Relations at the University of Amsterdam and is affiliated with the United Nations University Institute on Comparative Regional Integration Studies and the Geneva Graduate Institute’s Global Governance Centre. His work focuses on the contribution of international organizations to security and the geopolitics of the African Union. 

Dr Karoline Eickhoff is a researcher in the project Megatrends Afrika and in the research division Africa and Middle East at the German Institute for International and Security Affairs (SWP).