Peace Without Repair: Europe’s Return to Africa and the Unpaid Debt of History

They always arrive with the same vocabulary. Peace. Partnership. Stability. Shared values.

And every single time, Africa is expected to forget the bill.

From the Berlin Conference to Abidjan in 2017, from Brussels to the present moment, Europe’s engagement with Africa has followed a consistent pattern: appear when the system is under strain, speak the language of cooperation, extract concessions, and leave the structural injustice untouched. What changes is not the strategy — only the urgency.

President Isaias Afwerki has stated repeatedly and without ambiguity that Africa’s challenges do not stem from a lack of resources or capacity, but from externally imposed systems designed to control them. He has consistently rejected the idea that history can be bypassed through slogans of partnership, stressing that unresolved structural injustice continues to reproduce instability.

When Europe Comes “in Peace”

Europe has never come to Africa out of moral awakening. It has always come out of necessity.

In 2017, the European Union convened the AU–EU Summit in Abidjan not because Africa had suddenly been recognized as an equal partner, but because Europe was facing internal pressures it could not resolve alone. The migration shock that followed 2015 fractured European politics. Borders hardened. Right-wing movements surged. Africa was repositioned — not as a continent owed repair, but as a buffer zone for European instability.

The language was humanitarian.

The intent was containment.

Africa was asked to absorb Europe’s anxieties, police movement on Europe’s behalf, and shoulder the social costs of a global order Europe itself had engineered. Not once — not in Abidjan, not in Brussels, not today — were reparations placed on the table as a binding obligation.

Peace was discussed.

Justice was deferred.

The Colonial Debt That Never Left the Ledger

Europe’s prosperity did not emerge in isolation. It was built through the systematic carving of Africa into labor pools, extraction zones, and captive markets. France, Germany, Portugal, Italy, Belgium, Britain — no major European economy stands outside this record.

Africa paid in stolen labor, broken societies, artificial borders, enforced dependency, and arrested development.

Europe accumulated industrial capital, financial dominance, geopolitical leverage, and institutional control.

Yet when Europe speaks of partnership, the colonial ledger remains untouched.

Here lies the hypocrisy: other communities harmed by European violence have received apologies, reparations, legal recognition, and institutional redress. Africa — the largest and longest-exploited victim of modern imperialism — is told to “move on.”

Peace without repair is not reconciliation.

It is silence imposed by power.

From 2017 to Now: Same Tools, Deeper Crisis

Absent from most public analysis is the central truth: the European Union returns to Africa today not in confidence, but in retreat.

In 2017, Europe still believed it controlled the global order. Today, that illusion has collapsed. Energy insecurity, industrial decline, political fragmentation, and the erosion of Western dominance have forced a recalibration. Africa is no longer peripheral — it is strategic.

It is in this context that French President Emmanuel Macron publicly questioned how the United States could impose tariffs on a member of NATO, framing the issue as a violation of alliance norms and mutual obligations.

The contrast requires no interpretation. Europe invokes rules, shared responsibility, and historical obligation when its own interests are challenged, yet excludes those same principles when addressing Africa. The long-standing extraction of African labor, land, and resources — a process that materially contributed to Europe’s economic foundation — remains absent from Europe’s peace and partnership discourse.

Migration as Management, Not Resolution

Once again, migration is weaponized. African governments are pressured to criminalize movement, detain their own populations, and align domestic law with Western enforcement priorities. Some comply. Others resist. The method is familiar: externalize borders, outsource enforcement, preserve European stability at African expense.

What differs now is leverage.

Europe no longer monopolizes alternatives. Africa has options — and that reality unsettles Brussels far more than any migrant flow ever could.

Why Europe Has Never Wanted an African Rise

The unspoken truth is uncomfortable but unavoidable: a sovereign, industrialized, unified Africa would dismantle Europe’s economic advantage.

Europe has historically profited from African instability. What it resists is African leverage exercised without permission.

That is why raw materials leave Africa unprocessed; trade agreements remain structurally unequal; debt systems are preserved rather than dismantled; security cooperation replaces development; reparations are excluded from every agenda.

Peace is offered.

Justice is withheld.

Partnership is promised.

Power is never shared.

President Afwerki has consistently argued that durable peace cannot be achieved through externally designed frameworks that ignore historical responsibility and power imbalance. Stability, in his view, emerges only when nations control their own resources, define their own development paths, and reject arrangements that reproduce dependency under new terminology.

The Double Standard Laid Bare

Europe’s outrage over tariffs reveals more than trade anxiety — it exposes a hierarchy of whose grievances matter.

When Europe is harmed, history is invoked.

When Africa is harmed, history is dismissed.

The connection from 2017 to now is not coincidence — it is continuity. Each time Europe faces systemic pressure, it turns to Africa. Each time it speaks of peace, it avoids repayment. Each time Africa is told to be patient, Europe buys time.

But multipolarity has fractured the old hierarchy.

Africa now holds leverage — real leverage — if it understands the board and refuses inherited rules. Reparations are not charity. They are settlement. Justice is not symbolism. It is structure.

Peace without reparations is rhetoric.

Partnership without justice is extraction.

Diplomacy without memory is surrender.

Africa does not need Europe’s approval to rise.

Europe needs Africa’s consent to endure.

That is the contradiction Europe avoids —

and exactly why this moment must not be wasted.