Reparations For Colonialism Without Restoration Are Incomplete: Why Africa’s True Reparation Is a Return to Its Ethnopublic Trajectory
BY: OMOLAJA MAKINEE
Africa has spoken with one voice.
For the first time since the formal end of colonial rule, African nations—through the African Union—have united to declare colonialism a crime against humanity and to demand reparations. This moment is historic. It is morally overdue. It is politically necessary.
The African Union’s designation of “Justice for Africans and People of African Descent through Reparations” as the 2025 theme, extended into a Decade of Reparations (2026–2036), marks a turning point. It signals that Africa is no longer willing to carry the costs of colonial violence in silence—economically, culturally, or psychologically. Yet even as this call is noble and essential, it remains incomplete.
Because reparations that do not undo structural damage are not reparations at all; they are compensations layered on top of an ongoing injury. The deepest harm of colonialism was not only what was stolen, but what was replaced. And until that replacement is reversed, Africa will never truly be repaired.
1. Colonialism as a Structural Crime
The AU-backed conference in Algiers in late 2025—culminating in the Algiers Declaration—rightly sought to criminalise colonialism under international law, going beyond the silence of the UN Charter. This step is foundational. It reframes colonialism not as a historical episode, but as a crime with enduring consequences.
Colonialism did not merely extract gold, diamonds, rubber, labour, and land—though these alone amount to trillions of dollars in stolen value. Colonialism extracted civilisational autonomy. It dismantled:
- Indigenous governance systems.
- Cooperative economies.
- Moral jurisprudence.
- Communal land tenure.
- Cultural self-authorship.
And in their place, it installed:
- Republican Statehood alien to African social logic.
- Monetary capitalism designed for extraction, not provision.
- Bureaucracy as a tool of control.
- Indirect democracy that disempowered the people.
- Artificial borders that fractured living ethnic nations.
These were not accidental damages. They were structural implants. To demand reparations without demanding the removal of these implants is to ask for payment while remaining colonised in form.
2. Money Cannot Repair a Broken Architecture
The reparations discourse rightly includes:
- Financial compensation.
- Debt cancellation.
- Climate justice.
- Return of looted artefacts.
- Formal apologies and acknowledgement.
These are necessary. But none of them restore sovereign functionality. Africa’s underdevelopment is not simply the result of missing capital. It is the result of operating inside a foreign civilisational architecture—one that was never designed to serve African societies.
You cannot repair a house while keeping a foundation that is cracked by design. A cheque does not dismantle bureaucracy. An apology does not dissolve artificial borders. A returned artefact does not restore governance legitimacy.
Reparation must therefore be understood not as an event, but as a process of civilisational restitution.
3. The Final Undone: Africa’s Ethnopublic Displacement
The deepest and least addressed injury of colonialism is the displacement of Africa from its ethnopublic trajectory. Before colonial interruption, Africa was not a collection of republics or nation-States. It was a civilisation of ethnopublics—organic societies organised around:
- Shared ancestry.
- Moral economies.
- Communal sovereignty.
- Participatory governance.
- Collective responsibility.
Colonialism did not merely rule Africa; it re-coded Africa. Ethnopublic governance was replaced with republicanism. Commicracy was replaced with bureaucracy. Populocracy was replaced with representation. Resource-based provisioning was replaced with monetary survival.
Africa did not “fail” after independence. It was forced to continue functioning within a structure designed to fail it. This is the final undone—the wound beneath all other wounds.
4. Why Structural Restoration Is Reparation
True reparation does not ask: How much was stolen? It asks: What was Africa prevented from becoming?
The answer is clear. But for colonialism, Africa would have continued evolving its own civilisational logic—organically integrating technology, trade, and global exchange without abandoning its internal coherence.
The Manifesto of African Corporatist Society argues that the highest form of reparative justice is not monetary compensation, but structural restoration. That restoration has a name: Ethnosocialism.
Ethnosocialism is not an ideology imported from elsewhere. It is the formal re-articulation of Africa’s interrupted trajectory—governed through:
- Ethnopublic sovereignty.
- Commicratic organisation.
- Govox-populi administration.
- Non-monetary, resource-based provisioning.
- Moral-judicial supervision rather than political rule.
This is not reform. It is restitution.
5. Reparations Without Ethnopublic Restoration Are Symbolic
The AU’s alignment with CARICOM and its 10-point reparations plan strengthens the global Black claim to justice. Individual successes—such as the Herero and Nama reparations from Germany—prove that acknowledgment is possible.
Yet former colonial powers continue to reject State-level reparations because they understand a dangerous truth: money is negotiable; structure is not.
What Africa must therefore do—independently of Western influence—is complete the reparative process internally. Africa does not need permission to restore itself.
6. From Compensation to Civilisational Justice
President John Mahama and other African leaders have rightly framed reparations as a matter of dignity and truth, not charity. But dignity cannot coexist with dependency. Truth cannot survive inside false systems.
The AU’s reparations agenda must therefore evolve—from claims against the past to reconstruction of the future. Reparations must mean:
- Ending republican governance imposed by colonialism.
- Abolishing borders that fracture living nations.
- Dismantling bureaucratic machinery of extraction.
- Replacing monetary survival with entitlement-based provision.
- Returning governance to the people through populocracy.
TheManifesto of African Corporatist Society is not a rejection of reparations—it is their completion.
7. Financing the Great Transition: AU’s Mandate for Reparations as Transition Fund
The African Union now carries a historic responsibility that goes beyond moral and symbolic demands. The reparations fund must be sufficient not merely to compensate for past theft, but to finance the monumental process of civilisational restoration—the Great Transition from imposed republican Statehood back to ethnopublic governance, aligned with Africa’s indigenous and ancestral formations.
This is not charity. This is infrastructure for restoration. The fund must cover the monetary, technological, and logistical requirements of:
- Repartitioning Statehood according to organic ethnic geography, reunifying divided peoples, and reinstating ethnopublic jurisdictions across former colonial borders;
- Strengthening the AU leaders and current head of States to function as the continental Statelord authority, with powers to coordinate, supervise, and implement transitions collectively across all African ethnopublics;
- Implementing structural transformation: abolishing republican bureaucracy, replacing monetary survival with resource-based systems, reconfiguring administrative, economic, and judicial structures;
- Supporting regional and national commissions, secretariats, and housing and infrastructure programmes necessary to operationalise ethnopublic governance.
The principle is clear: the reparations fund is not for consumption or general State expenditure. It is solely a transition fund. Personal emergencies, accidents, and hospitalisations are addressed through separate social-protection mechanisms. The reparations fund exists exclusively to finance the Great Transition, ensuring that Africa emerges whole, self-governing, and aligned with its ethnopublic trajectory.
In short, the AU must channel the reparation effort into the operational resurrection of Africa’s civilisational architecture. Every dollar, every resource, every policy derived from reparations must be dedicated to returning Africa to itself—its maps, its governance, its peoples, and its destiny.
Conclusion: Repairing Africa Means Restoring Africa
Africans, the time for abstract justice has passed. The reparations we demand are not for mere speeches, ceremonial handshakes, or empty acknowledgements. They are the fuel to rebuild our nationhood, to restore our maps, to empower our Statelords, and to reconstruct our civilisational order. Every resource must serve the Great Transition, nothing else.
Let it be known: the AU’s mandate is clear, the path is clear, and the responsibility is ours. The funds are for Africa’s rebirth, for the return of its peoples to their rightful governance, and for the reclamation of our collective destiny. Let no hand divert it, let no nation stall it. Africa must rise, whole, sovereign, and ethnopublic once again.
Africa does not seek pity. Africa does not beg for compensation. Africa demands restoration. Colonialism stole Africa’s past, distorted its present, and constrained its future. Reparations that stop at money leave the deepest theft untouched.
The true reparation is this: Africa must be returned to itself. Ethnosocialism is not an alternative path—it is the path Africa was forced to abandon. Until Africa governs as Africa, no cheque will ever be enough.
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