The ceremony, coinciding with Côte d’Ivoire’s national independence day holiday, was the first time today’s Ivorians were able to see it.
The imposing wooden drum, more than three metres long and weighing 430 kilogrammes, was used by the Ebrie tribe to transmit messages.
Photograph AFP – Bertrand Guay
It was officially handed over in February and arrived back in Côte d’Ivoire in March aboard a specially chartered plane but was not taken out of its huge wooden crate.
Côte d’Ivoire had asked in late 2018 for the return of the Djidji Ayokwe among 148 works of art taken during the colonial period.
It is one of hundreds of stolen artefacts Paris is preparing to send back to Africa, aided by the approval in May of a new French law.
Official presentation of the drum to the village of Adjamé Photograph Issoef Sanogo / AFP
