‘Human Zoo' expo in Belgium's Africa museum highlights colonial past as EU/AU summit continues

"Human Zoo" exhibition in the Africa Museum in Tervuren, near Brussels where the AU/EU summit takes place, tries to raise awareness about how past attides influence current perceptions. 17 February 2022. © RFI/Jan van der Made

Some twenty kilometers away from the 6th EU/AU summit, Belgian's Africa Museum is showing the Human Zoo exhibition, which revives the forgotten history of colonial powers and their practice of creating displays of human beings in live 'exhibits'.

Just hours before the start of the AU/EU summit in Brussels, Belgian Prime Minister Alexander De Croo met with his Congolese counterpart Jean-Michel Sama Lukonde at the Africa Museum in Tervuren, just outside Brussels, where the Belgian PM handed over an inventory of 84,000 Congolese artefacts stored in Belgium.