France returns Djidji Ayôkwé to Ivory Coast. Will Britain return the Pokomo drum to Kenya?

On 7 July 2025, the French National Assembly has approved the restitution to Ivory Coast of the Djidji Ayôkwê, an important talking drum, stolen in 1916. In the same period, the British Museum came with a statement that it is unwilling to restitute an equally important drum to the Pokomo council of elders in Kenya.

Kwame Opoku notes:

In the French Assembly, 117 Members voted in favour, 34 against.

Some MPs who supported restitution, did so ‘without moraline and without repentance’. Moraline is often used by right-wing persons to take distance from moralising remarks by left-wing colleagues. The wordt Moraline was invented by Friedrich Nietzsche.

The British Museum will not g into the 2019 claim of the Pokomo council of elders in Kenya to return a comparable drum. It considers its function as a world museum more important.

It has no pictuire of the drum. Readers must judge for themselves if the statement by the British Museum that it has no image of a precious spiritual and cultural object of a people looted by colonial masters, is acceptable in our days. The so-called ‘universal museums’ have always prided themselves of showing looted objects to the enormous number of visitors. But what about cases where they are not even showing the object at all and keep it in a storage? Why keep an object you cannot display when the owners are asking for its return?

Until now, a special law has to be accepted for each restitution. But a more general restitution law (comparable with the one in Belgium) is in preparation.