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It moved beyond legal justice and was shaped in many ways by political and social factors. The death penalty in French Africa was an institution with a complex, messy and layered history. In French Equatorial Africa, French Togo and French Cameroon, the firing squad remained the main execution method until 1957. Senegal was the only country in French West Africa to use the guillotine. That year the first public guillotine execution took place in Saint-Louis, the colony’s administrative capital, at a time when the Third French Republic turned away from public executions. The death penalty was first introduced in the region in Senegal, France’s oldest colony in west Africa, as early as 1824, soon after the French took possession in 1817. But it was mainly practised in French Africa around this time, which corresponded with the end of the military conquests in the region and France’s early efforts to consolidate its rule through an established politico-legal administration.
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It had been introduced in British Africa, in the Belgian Congo and in German Africa. The 1890s were a formative time for the death penalty in Africa. While imprisonment became the most common response to crimes in colonial Africa, the death penalty was at the heart of the colonial project, its practice deeply woven into the fabric of state formation and citizenship building. Among them was the death penalty, which was deployed as a key element in the mechanism of colonial repression. Although its use across the continent has dwindled – thanks to concerted efforts from human rights organisations and governments – the death penalty remains on many more countries’ statute books due to its strong colonial legacy.ĭuring the colonial period, punishments that were being abandoned in Europe found fertile ground in Africa. I n July, Sierra Leone became the 23rd African country to abolish the death penalty.