Unfinished Freedom The Continuity of Colonial Violence without Accountability

Colonial administrations reorganized gender, authority, and labor across colonized societies. These systems displaced women from positions of leadership and community governance while redefining them as economic dependents. At the same time, colonial economies relied heavily on women’s unpaid agricultural and reproductive labor.

Colonial narratives also constructed Black women’s bodies as sites of control. Authorities portrayed Black women as hypersexual, morally suspect, and in need of supervision. These narratives justified state and missionary interventions that regulated sexuality, reproduction, and family life.

Many of these governing logics continue to shape contemporary institutions. Legal systems, religious norms, and medical practices still regulate women’s bodies and social roles. Across multiple contexts, reproductive governance, maternal healthcare disparities, and gender-based violence reveal the persistence of these historical structures.

Research across Kenya, Namibia, Germany, and the United Kingdom demonstrates that violence against Black women often enters public debate through moments of crisis, including femicide, sexual violence, and racial disparities in maternal health outcomes. Activist movements across these contexts increasingly challenge these conditions and call for institutional accountability.

Unfinished Freedom situates these struggles within a broader historical framework. The project shows how contemporary inequalities reflect enduring systems of governance rather than isolated incidents. 

The research identifies several structural patterns that connect colonial governance to contemporary institutions.

Colonial systems of gendered governance continue to influence legal, medical, religious, and humanitarian institutions across both African and European contexts.

Reproductive regulation remains a central instrument of state authority. Restrictive abortion regimes, documented cases of forced sterilization, and persistent racial disparities in maternal health outcomes illustrate how governance over women’s bodies continues to shape public policy and healthcare systems.

Institutional narratives also produce hierarchies of recognition that determine whose suffering receives public attention and whose lives receive protection.

At the same time, feminist movements across Africa and the diaspora continue to challenge these structures. Mobilizations against femicide, campaigns addressing racialized maternal health disparities, and transnational feminist alliances open new political spaces and demand systemic transformation. 

Phase I — Research Report

Phase I consists of two research reports examining the continuity of colonial violence and the accountability gaps that allow it to persist.

The research traces these dynamics across former colonial powers and colonized societies, analyzing how stereotypes about Black women’s sexuality, labor, and maternity shape public policy, healthcare systems, migration governance, media representation, and everyday life.

Phase II — Podcast Series

A season of the Disrupting the Colonial Script podcast brings the research findings into public conversation.

The six thematic threads of the season are drawn directly from the recurring socio‑historical patterns

identified in the research project and across AfaLab’s broader work. Across all eight countries studied,

these patterns reveal consistent areas where Black women’s bodies, labor, sexuality, and visibility

have been regulated, exploited, or violently controlled. These include:

1. Reproductive governance and population control
2. Economic exploitation and labor devaluation
3. Objectifying colonial and postcolonial representations
4. Beauty norms and the policing of Black women’s bodies
5. State, military, and border-related sexual violence
6. Transcontinental Black feminist solidarities and collective resistance

While the first five themes examine the mechanisms through which colonial logics continue to shape

Black women’s lives, the final theme, focuses on how Black women have historically resisted and built

political alliances across borders. From anti-colonial movements to contemporary Afro-diasporic

mobilizations, transnational solidarities have been central to challenging racialized and gendered

systems of domination.

Together, these themes offer a coherent framework that not only exposes the persistence of colonial

representations and their material consequences, but also highlights the collective strategies, alliances,

and movements through which Black women contest these structures and imagine alternative futures. 

Phase III: A public art exhibition and round table in Paris

The project also includes a public art exhibition featuring works by Black women artists. The exhibition engages directly with the visual imagery through which colonial stereotypes circulated historically.

A public roundtable and documentary film accompany the exhibition and extend the conversation to audiences across Africa, Europe, and the diaspora. 

Unfinished Freedom aims to deepen public understanding of how colonial violence against Black women continues to shape contemporary institutions.

Colonial rule imposed systems that regulated women’s bodies, labor, and political participation through sexual violence, reproductive control, forced labor, and the exclusion of women from positions of authority. These harms rarely resulted in institutional accountability during the transition to independence.

The project connects these histories to present-day inequalities and contributes to broader movements seeking structural transformation.

• Through research and public engagement, the initiative works to:
• Strengthen public understanding of the historical foundations of contemporary inequalities affecting Black women
• Support feminist movements and civil society actors challenging inherited gender and racial hierarchies
• Encourage institutions across Africa and Europe to address the colonial roots of contemporary policy and governance structures
• Contribute to wider demands for justice, accountability, and reparatory transformation

By bringing historical analysis, cultural expression, and public dialogue together, the project expands the political and cultural space required to advance dignity, autonomy, and justice for Black women. 

This project is funded by Fondation de France.  

African Futures Lab works with researchers, artists, activists, and civil society partners across Africa and Europe to advance the project's research and public engagement activities.