I think the difference with Africa, with respect to how European nations acted there versus Russia in the Baltics et al, is that Europeans didn’t want to occupy the African land. They wanted to basically enslave the native population to help them extract and then abscond with the natural resources there, so they couldn’t genocide the population there. This, versus certain European nations wanting to wipe out other populations in other European countries so their citizens could take over their lands for a bit more lebensraum.