Chao Tayiana Maina, Kenyan historian and digital heritage specialist and co-founder of Open Restitution Africa (ORA), points out the tendency to elevate Western narratives.
“If France decides to give ten objects out of 50,000,” she says, “it is positioned as a remarkable thing when essentially there’s still a lot of injustice going on.”
Now Maina and the South African artist and cultural strategist Molemo Moiloa have unveiled the first data platform to centralise knowledge of African restitution and address a narrative imbalance on the subject “very skewed” towards Western institutions.
The platform, the fruit of three years’ research, mostly on the ground at the local level, has case studies, analyses and a resource library—to highlight efforts to restitute belongings looted from the continent, and now located around the world.
A team of women researchers, engaged cultural practitioners, historians, scholars, museum professionals, artists, policy makers and communities across Africa to gather primary data about restitution efforts.
