Algiers November 30, December 1, 2025)
We support the establishment of an African Platform for Environmental Justice, tasked with identifying affected areas, assessing the damage, supporting the States concerned, and formulating continental recommendations for rehabilitation and compensation.
We urge the states historically responsible for the environmental damage that has caused climate change, particularly the former colonial powers, to assume their moral and political responsibility, calling on them to provide financial, technological, and institutional support for the continent's adaptation and mitigation efforts.
We call for increased mobilisation of international partners to support African initiatives, in the spirit of equity, reparation, and the right to sustainable development.
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On education, knowledge production, African languages, and the preservation of memory:
We emphasise the urgent need to reform African education systems to fully integrate pre-colonial, colonial, and post-colonial history, and to equip younger generations with an informed historical consciousness.
We emphasise the urgent need to enhance educational curricula to reflect historical truth, honour African resistance, and promote Pan-African consciousness.
We support the creation of an African programme for the transmission of memory, the promotion of African languages, the advancement of cultural and artistic productions centred on African memory and history, and the development of educational and media content that celebrates African resistance.
We encourage African universities and academies to create training programmes and degrees Higher National Diploma (HND), Bachelor's, and Master's degrees whose curricula are based on historical memory, truth, justice, and the right to reparations.
We call for the creation and implementation of a continental platform for African researchers and students in the history of colonialism, providing access to books, documentary sources, and scholarships.
We advocate for public awareness campaigns and national school curricula that highlight the realities and enduring consequences of colonial crimes.
On cultural reparations and restitution of Afri can heritage:
We recall that colonial subjugation was accompanied by the systematic plundering and destruction of African cultural, intellectual, and spiritual heritage.
We reaffirm the right of African peoples to the unconditional restitution of cultural resources, including artifacts, manuscripts, archives, sacred objects, and ancestral remains, taken during the colonial rule.
We demand the restitution of all African cultural properties in accordance with the African Common Position (ACP) on the restitution of heritage resources and the African Union Model Law on the Protection of Cultural Property and Heritage.
We call upon former colonial powers to cooperate fully and unconditionally in the restitution of these resources to their countries of origin.
We urge upon the African Union Commission and international partners to strengthen the legal and institutional frameworks for restitution and to support sustainable mechanisms for the recovery of heritage.
We call on the African Union to accelerate the commissioning of the Grand Museum of Africa as a continental institution mandated to preserving African heritage and documenting the legacy of colonialism.
On the socio-economic dimensions:
We recognise that colonial domination generated enduring economic distortions through the exploitation of African labour, land, and resources, creating systemic underdevelopment and deeply entrenched structural inequalities that persist to this day.
We note that the economic impacts of colonialism continue to manifest in other forms, notably through certain neo-colonial policies such as the control of strategic resources and financial systems, inequitable trade agreements, technological dependence, indebtedness, conditional development aid, and interference in economic policies that limit the sovereignty of African countries.
We also emphasise the importance of undertaking a continental audit of the economic impacts of colonialism with a view to developing a justice-based reparations strategy, including, among other things, compensation for plundered wealth, debt cancellation, and equitable development financing.
Again, we emphasise the need to reform global economic governance in order to dismantle the colonial legacy embedded within international financial institutions and trade regimes.
We encourage the implementation of coordinated legal, diplomatic, and economic strategies to advance reparations and promote Africa's economic sovereignty and industrialisation.
On international advocacy and the Africa-CARICOM partnership:
We reaffirm that Africans in the diaspora have also been victims of colonial crimes and continue to suffer discrimination rooted in colonial racial practices.
We reaffirm our solidarity with CARICOM countries in their pursuit of reparations and call for the full implementation of the Addis Ababa Declaration on the Transcontinental Partnership for Restorative Justice (September 7, 2025).
We encourage African Union Member States, Caribbean countries, and the diaspora to undertake unified and coordinated advocacy and legal strategies to achieve restorative justice.
We condemn the glorification or valorisation of those responsible for colonial crimes, slavery, and racial violence.
We unequivocally condemn all forms of neocolonialism, including political interference, economic exploitation, and the illegal presence of foreign forces or mercenaries on African soil.
On structural reparations in global governance:
We deplore the structures of global governance that continue to reflect the power imbalances inherited from the colonial era and call for the rectification of these structural inequalities to achieving genuine restorative justice.
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Final Provisions:
We recommend that the matter of selecting a date for the African Day of Remembrance for the Martyrs and Victims of the Transatlantic Slave Trade, Colonialism, and Apartheid be referred to the Group of African Ambassadors in Addis Ababa, in order for them to reach a consensual proposal.
The agreed date shall then be submitted to the executive council for endorsement, and subsequently to the Assembly of Heads of State and Government for final adoption.
Adopt this Algiers Declaration on the crimes of colonialism in Africa, and submit for approval by Heads of States at the upcoming 39th Ordinary Session of the AU Assembly of Heads of State and Government in February 2026, as a first continental step towards the criminalisation of colonialism in all its forms and the pursuit of restorative justice.;
We then express our profound gratitude to His Excellency Mr Abdelmadjid Tebboune, President of the People's Democratic Republic of Algeria, for his initiative in convening the Algiers Conference on the Crimes of Colonialism in Africa, and warmly thanking the Government and people of Algeria for their fraternal welcome and the resources deployed to ensure the success of this major event.
The Algiers Declaration is a vital step towards the recognition of the crimes of colonialism and constitutes a practical means of providing Africa with lasting instruments of remembrance, truth, justice, and reparation for a just, prosperous, and dignified future for generations to come.
