Restitution or Cooperation? Competing Visions of Post-Colonial Cultural Development in Africa

This paper provides a critical and historical perspective on the use of the language of ‘development cooperation’ in characterizations of post-colonial relations between the West and Africa. Using the example of the post-colonial debates over cultural and economic restitution between Congo and its former colonizer Belgium, this paper narrates the historical process by which the post-colonial relations between the two countries became defined as ‘development cooperation’, and the implications of that process. The paper shows that since its political independence in 1960 until the late 1980s, th... Mehr ...