Somehow surprisingly, the debate on the restitution of cultural objects from Africa has been quite selective: the focus has gone so far to art objects, statues, documents and bodies. Other types of cultural objects have remained on the sidelines of this debate. Books, for example, were only marginally touched, this despite that for decades many of the stereotypes about Africa were conveyed by the press and, above all, when the spread of the press in many African countries occurred in the colonial period. While a history of the book in the colonial period remains an extremely rich and complex topic, this presentation focuses on a very specific type of documents: printed materials published in Africa, namely newspapers, books, periodicals, flyers and posters published in Africa during the colonial period. These are very rare materials because they were printed in few copies, with a typically local circulation and never systematically collected by libraries. While the rarity and fragility of this printed heritage makes a greater commitment to its preservation desirable, this intervention aims to discuss a possible approach to map and reconstitute this particular aspect of the African past. Parts of this African printed heritage are found in university libraries and research centers in Europe and Africa and the reconstitution of this printed heritage can only take place through a sustained collaboration between the ex-colonial and the ex-colonized countries. These creates unique conditions in which the necessity of retrieving, interpreting and preserving these documents makes possible spaces for fruitful collaborations between European and African stakeholders. Taking as an example a pilot project currently underway in Eritrea, this paper aims to present and discuss a new approach to the reconstitution of an aspect of  Africa’s Cultural Heritage based on close collaboration between research institutions in Europe and Africa. The use of digital technologies makes it possible to make the restitution operation less divisive and problematic and offer spaces for promising collaborations between African and European Institutions.